UK
buyers will struggle to find a Google Home Mini on launch day
TOMORROW SEES the launch of the Google Home Mini,
likely to be the biggest success story of the recent product launches from
Google thanks to its deliberately modest price point of £49 in the UK in a
choice of Charcoal Greyish-Black, Chalk Off-White and Coral Red.
However, your chances of getting hold of one
tomorrow could be scuppered if you don't already have an order in.
We checked last night and many places have stopped
taking pre-orders altogether, most notably Argos.
Although the device is listed as "pre-order to
be delivered on 19th October 2017", the button to complete the transaction
is disabled. We checked with Argos and they're coming back to us.
John Lewis has charcoal black ones, but is already
out of chalk white. However, delivery for tomorrow costs £6.95. You can order
it for delivery in 3-5 days if you spend an extra quid to make your order £50.
We put some darning needles in our trolley to prove the point.
Currys PC World shows the item as available for
pre-order on the front page of its site, but in both cases is marked "out
of stock" and therefore not available for pre-order.
EE doesn't currently have a separate listing for the
Home Mini but does offer one free with the Pixel 2 or Pixel 2 XL. We suspect
this freebie offer has a lot to do with why they're proving so hard to come by.
Very and Littlewoods both offer next day delivery,
but are both out of stock until 24th of the month - the most honest information
we've had so far. Worth noting also that Littlewoods is the only supplier
charging more than the RRP of £49 - they're asking for £65 (!) despite being
the same parent company as Very.
Maplin is showing pre-orders but again aren't
letting you proceed with the order. But we've just confirmed since this article
went live that they will have stock tomorrow.
Amazon - forget it - they've long had a policy of
not stocking rival products for a while and the Home Mini is in direct
competition with the Amazon Echo Dot.
Just when we were giving up hope - it seems that
Carphone Warehouse has some left, in blacky-grey only with free delivery
promised for tomorrow. Kerching. No chalk white ones though - not even listing
them. Bit strange considering they're part of the Dickphone CarHouse
conglomerate, same as Currys PC World.
Finally, there's Google itself. Surely the home of
the device has got some? Well, no actually - they'll have stock on 29 October,
apparently. And they are the only ones offering the coral Red variant. Shipping
is free when they come, but in our experience, they take a couple of days from
stock to delivery as they come from Ireland. (tip - it looks like the Coral red
one is coming sooner than the others). So plan for Halloween.
So, in short, it looks like supplies are short.
We've reached out to many of these retailers to confirm if they'll have stocks
in branch, and if their reluctance to process pre-orders means what we assume
it does, and will update this article as we know more
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