Microsoft awards 'Smoked by Windows Phone' winner; Auctions prizes for charity

[dgstorm]

Here's a follow-up article to yesterday's post regarding the Galaxy Nexus owner that defeated a "Smoked by Windows Phone" challenge but was sent away empty handed. As we reported yesterday in an update to the original story, Sahas Katta was able to contact some higher level people within Microsoft, and they were going to make up for his poor experience. In fact, Microsoft representative Ben Rudolph publicly apologized on Twitter. He went even further and made sure that Mr. Katta could go back to the Santa Clara Microsoft Store to pick up his special edition Hunger Games HP Folio 13 worth $1,049, and a $899 Nokia Lumia 800 bundle. Mr. Rudolph even tweeted again that he "“stand behind “smoked by Windows Phone” wins (and losses) 100%”

In an interesting twist, Mr. Katta was thrilled to win, but felt that he was already happy enough with his Galaxy Nexus phone and other equipment, so instead of using the new prizes for himself, he is auctioning them off. Furthermore, instead of doing the greedy thing and keeping the money, he will be giving the proceeds to a charity that users in a thread on Reddit will choose. It looks like this particular conflict eventually had a happy ending, and Kudos should be given out to Ben Rudolph for making things right.

On a separate note, what do you guys make of the fact that Sahas Katta had no interest in keeping the prize winnings? Is that indicative of the uphill battle that Microsoft will have in this retail sector?

Source: SlashGear

 

[johnomaz]

ya, I'm not sure why they woudl give him a Windows phone when he has an Android phone that beat the Windows phone. Nice to know he's going to give the money to charity when he sells it.

 

[sdny8]

If he could get a picture with the store manager holding a sign that says "pwnd by Android" I'll bid

 

[52brandon]

classy move in the win

 

[acousticshade]

I think they have a huge uphill battle. The first windows phone had an absolutly ugly GUI and my understanding is that it crashed all the time. A friend of mine had one and dumped it because it would crash in the middle of phone calls. He was trying to get 911 dispatch once at an accident scene and the phone crashed! Even Microsoft employees complained that their phones were junk.

Hopefully the new windows phone will be on the same tier as I-Phone and Android because then the consumer wins. Unfortunately, I don't agree with Microsoft's (and others) tatics as of late trying to misrepresent how their product is 'better' by twisting the truth. If your going to misrepresent your product in order to get more sales, you'll be hard pressed to get a sale from me, even if the product is better.