Best Buy to HP: I Want My Two Dollars!

Ouch:

Best Buy is reportedly unhappy with HP after having sold just 25,000 of the PC maker’s TouchPad tablets and is unwilling to pay for the more than 240,000 unsold units, according to a new report.

Multiple sources who have seen internal HP reports have told Arik Hesseldahl of AllThingsD that big-box retailer Best Buy took delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has only managed to sell less than 10 percent of its inventory. One source suggested that the 25,000-unit sales number may even be “charitable” because it doesn’t take returns into account.

According to the report, Best Buy has refused to pay for the remaining tablets and has asked that HP take them back.

As I noted two weeks ago:

This is what so frustrates me about the TouchPad. For the way I work, WebOS might just be a better choice than the iPad. But I’ve used one, and it was pretty awful. Unreliable scrolling, unresponsive screen rotations, and apps took forever to load. Even the email app, which should pop up instantly, had me wondering if I had enough time to clip my nails.

HP should have gotten these details right out of the gate. Customers see the snappy iPad ads on TV, then go play with a TouchPad on display, and wonder, “Why doesn’t this thing work?” Then they go buy an iPad.

HP has gone on to try and fix what’s wrong. The WebOS update is supposed to be snappier, and they also knocked $100 off the asking price.

Even so, no one seems to be asking for a TouchPad.