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Apple Gives $100 Store Credit To iPhone Customers
MooRogue writes "In an open letter to all iPhone customers, Steve Jobs responds to hundreds of emails from upset iPhone customers. Apple will be giving early adopters who are not receiving rebates or any other consideration $100 store credit at the Apple store.
Details will be posted on the Apple website next week"
Say what you will, but what other company figurehead in recent memory has came out and apologized for other people's willingness to spend their money?
Maybe it was all planned out from the day one though, and if that's the case, I wish Steve would run for the next presidential election. Talk about planing for every contingency...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
wtf is wrong with these early adopters who complain about paying more? they knew from the beginning that apple will drop prices. whiney bunch of pussies
How can you "lose" $100? Does Steve Jobs mug you on the street? You paid $599 for a working product, end of story. Early adopters pay out the nose for bragging rights, film at 11.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
They didn't "lose" anything. That is just the price you pay for having it a few months before people are willing to wait. If your stupid enough to waste $600 or so on a phone, it your own fault.
If you give $100 Apple Store credit to the sort of people who bought an iPhone on iPhone Day, that's all the excuse they need to buy a new iPod, or a MacBook or another iPhone.
What would you have bought with a credit for your SE, a IIe?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Years ago, when the HP LaserJet 4 first came out, I bought one at Fry's for $1600. Three weeks later, they were selling it for $1200. I didn't whine.
Who hasn't bought a computer, a flat screen tv, or a car where there wasn't a discount or price reduction a few months later? Why would anyone expect the iPhone to be exempt from economics?
Clearly, Apple is doing the right thing as far a public relations are concerned, but the idea that you are entitled to a refund for something you bought two months ago is ridiculous.
Intel's a great example, considering they just re-priced their Xeon line so that the quad-core chips cost what the dual core chips of the same clock speed had cost the day before. How many end users that purchased quad core processors the day before do you think saw a refund of any of the several hundred dollar difference? What about the people who bought the dual core chips the day before? Is intel going to send them a free core?
If a product is worth the price to you when you pay for it, then you should be comfortable with price changes after you made the purchase.
Steve Jobs can't even fucking give away money without making money.
An item will sell for exactly what both parties (seller and buyer) believe is a fair price at the time of sale. Those that claimed that they got ripped off are just complaining that they fell for the "early adopter" technolust that comes with the launch of a new gadget. Instead, we should be cheering on those who couldn't afford one before but can do so now; "Hey, good for you! You're getting a deal!" instead of "Oh screw Apple, they let me buy something on my own free will at a higher price! Maybe I can join up with those non-user-replaceable-battery whiners and bitch about my lack of self-control and impulse buying."
And for the record, I paid $600 in early July, and feel that it was worth the price I paid. Mind you, if somebody wants to give me some form of credit after the fact, I won't turn it down, but I won't bitch about being allowed to spend my money on my own free will, either.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
What I find annoying about Apple pricing (or rather "potentially" annoying, as I'm not one of their customers) is the centralized, tightly controlled pricing, combined with a strategy of infrequent price changes. The cost of a flashy new CPU or videocard will start high but drop steadily day by day (with some fluctuation). With Apple, they keep their cards close to their chest and then Wham! the thing you bought yesterday depreciates 30% overnight. It's perfectly reasonable for customers to be annoyed by this, because it's Apple's secrecy and pricing strategy that create the problem.
Me, I'm against Global Warming and Global Whining.
When the iPhone launched, it sold out at both the nearby Apple Stores. If you weren't in line on Friday, you couldn't get one on Saturday. One of my co-workers waited until the middle of the next week, called a couple of stores to check inventory, and just walked right in and bought one.
Those people standing in line weren't just standing in line to get an iPhone. If that's all they wanted, they could have waited a week or two for the second shipment to arrive. What they stood in line for was the opportunity to have it first. They "paid" extra by waiting around for several hours when they could have been doing something else so they could get an iPhone before anyone else did.
Whatever the motivation -- bragging rights, enthusiasm, impatience, etc. -- there is a cost to getting there first. Conversely, there is an opportunity cost to biding one's time: Anyone who waited for the price to come down has gone the last few months with no iPhone.
Apple just beat the scalpers at their own game.
No, there is some PR aspects to this deal but Apple didn't need to do this. It's a way to make sure they keep happy customers [...] tossing half the price cut back to every buyer and the full difference to everyone who bought in the last two weeks is just high class. Indeed. I'm often shocked by how much more open hostility there is on Slashdot toward organizations that try to treat their customers well. Google is constantly accused of being "evil" for
Over and over we see the same thing. Companies that do right by the community are attacked. Cutthroat and downright evil companies that just ignore us (G.E. comes to mind) are ignored in turn. We're training the corporate world to do us no favors.