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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"
I just found 1300 iPhones in a dumpster. That's $130,000!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
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...
... and send the request to Vastech, located on Bonaventura Drive in San Jose.
No one has mentioned it but it is a great move by Jobs, $100.00 "Apple Store Credit" probably costs them $40.00 and in addition it is that incentive mentioned earlier. So,in no way does it cost Apple 100.00 to look like they are meeting Joe "early adopter" halfway.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
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.
I'm myself bordering the state of Apple fan boy, but this is scary. People crying fool yesterday now praise the company for being responsive. I'm not into conspiracy theories, but if Apple had had this planed, this would be pure genius. Lowering the price and then getting the people who payed more to cheer you. Just scary how perfectly they play their crowd.
I don't think this was planed. But I think Apple knows that we now live in an attention society and that people highly regard companies who admit errors and change. In fact people overvalue this since they do not expect it (yet. Microsoft will obviously copy it someday). They did it with "greener Apple", they do it again with credits for iPhones which will generate more money for them due to people buying stuff in the Apple store.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
For the same reason that I can't go to Intel and ask for $200 after every round of price drops. If someone chooses to buy a product he or she must make a decision if the purchase is good value. Yes= buy. No= don't buy. Just wait. Early adopters thought the price was right at launch. Just because a new, better deal comes along it doesn't change their initial decision; the purchase was good value. Surely they knew a price drop was innevitable, granted perhaps not so soon or so much, so any free money is a terrific deal.
As Mr. Jobs so delicately points out these people technically aren't entitled to anything but Apple wants to keep them happy. If they were given all $200 then they get the benefit of being the first to have an iPhone for nothing. People who decided to wait for a price drop would be a little upset if there is no 'early adopter penalty', and that they could have been using an iPhone all this time if only they had known they could get $200 back.
"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."
Even better if most of them spend it on Apple software. Such as, I dunno, maybe Leopard? Due out next month?
Teh Steve is laughing all the way to the bank, and this time I'm laughing right along. This is so brilliant it almost has to be on purpose.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Certainly not the normal "Please piss off, and have a nice day." response of:
"We're sorry to hear of your disappointment with our product.
Unfortunately, we have a very large volume of customers who
are very satisfied with our products, at the the prices
we offer. We do our best to please every customer"
.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
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.
I take it you don't meta mod very often. You'd be amazed at the crap that gets modded insightful, or how many informative posts get modded troll. Give it a try sometime.
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?
Unfortunately I only bought my iphone because my beloved Samsung D807 suffered a premature demise.
That said, I think most of us early adopters aren't angry so much that we might have saved $200 by waiting, but by the fact that all kinds of riffraff can now afford the most fabulous object in the world. We paid a premium to assert our superiority and now we have to hear: "Oh, you bought it before the price drop?"
Hmmm... I'm trying to decipher this. Is English not your first language? Are you saying there's something with my anatomy? Are you saying someone should copulate with me until I cease to function?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Think about it - if this had really been planned, the best timing would be to announce the credit a week or two AFTER the new iPods go on sale. That way a lot of customers buy new iPods, then head back to the Apple store for accessories after they get the rebate. If Apple was as devious as people claim, issuing an announcement about a rebate ahead of the actual rebate is a terrible non-profix-maximizing idea.
Like everything else in life, the reality is probably between the two extremes - Apple probably thought recently about deep price cuts, and held in reserve the strategy of a rebate if complaints about the price drop from current owners were loud enough (which they were). Apple is a company yes, but Jobs is not a Ferengi (or Mother Teresa in a turtleneck).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
I gained two months of phone use over someone who has waited; and I have made good use of the phone in the last two months, it's been way more useful to me than the previous phone I had. Well worth the slight extra amount I paid.
After all, any electronics purchase is a gamble - you never know when prices will be cut. But it's a gamble you cannot lose if you like what you bought and you buy at a price that works for you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I laugh at you, sir. You're a sad, sad human being. Have you considered that are people for whom $400 isn't a small fortune? You can mock people for making a good living if you want, but it seems kind of ineffective.
"You have a lot of money and can afford nice things, you LOSER!" doesn't have quite the sting you seem to think it does.
An item will sell for exactly what both parties (seller and buyer) believe is a fair price at the time of sale.
Please refrain from introducing basic economic concepts into this discussion. You could start a dangerous trend.
But seriously, for priding ourselves on our supposedly rational behavior, geeks can often be just as irrational as anyone else.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I bought my iPhone on my American Express Card.
I called their dispute claim number at 1-800-297-8019.
They said they would process the claim for my 200 bucks.
No guarantees, but they will let me know if I get a refund through them.
Worth a try if you bought on a credit card.
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.
That's not different from a lot of high-ticket consumer products. Want to by a new Lexus from the dealership, or a tailored suit, you'll find the pricing just as foggy. If you want to buy a computer priced like gasoline, buy a Dell, but they're just as weird and capricious about their prices, they just hide their actual price in a vast system of rebates. Apple's pricing is also supposed to be simple to make their market segmentation simple. If I'm looking for a cheap iPod, it's easy to see which one's for me and compare it (well, not as easy as it has been, but still). I don't have to wade through four or five different lines with different price levels, rebate options, compatibility, capabilites, form factors, etc... There's both a downside and an upside to going with a single vendor.
With Apple, they keep their cards close to their chest and then Wham! the thing you bought yesterday depreciates 30% overnight.I know you picked that number off a tree, but just about any computer (or car, or expensive resellable item, for that matter) depreciates 30% the moment you take it out of the store. I would also direct you to eBay to compare the relative resale values of 2 year old Macs, compared to 2 year old Dells or ThinkPads.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Apple structures their prices in this manner so that people do not wait to they purchase products. This is also the reason they do not engage in price trickery (different prices for different verticals for no reason, arbitrary, limited-time rebates).
In practice, as long as I've been following these things, I have not seen the actual prices change muchh. The units get upgraded and the prices stay the same. Therefore, while it is true to say that your unit is worth less, it is difficult to make a direct dollar comparison. You just get more for your money - sometimes incrementally, sometimes radically. In this case, well, they probably weren't selling as many units as they wanted, or figured they were losing points with the demographic that made the iPod famous because of the outrageous prices.
The only other area I've noticed with radical price drops was the monitors. There are good reasons to lower their prices. For one, they have price competition from other companies who are making very similar or identical products, and it's harder to push the idea that a monitor worth just more for being Apple. Secondly, the iMacs are so cheap, and the desktops so expensive, that the potential market for the monitors is much smaller.
I'm with you on this one.
I bought two: an 8gb for myself and a 4gb for the wife, and we stood in line on opening day.
I honestly believe that the phones were worth every penny that we paid for both of them ($499/$599 retail).
For the record, my wife let her phone slip while she was walking out of her parking garage, and smacked it at the pavement while flailing to catch it. The sleep/wake button got jammed inside the buckled aluminum, and we had to bring the phone in for service.
Apple took the phone back, offered us a loaner ($25ish, IIRC... we didn't take it), and had a *brand*new*phone* shipped to us the very next morning. Priority overnight Fedex, 7:45am, I might add. For a phone that my wife admitted to beating up and was ready to pay for repairs.
So, that was two weeks ago, now Apple offers us $100 apiece for being early adopters.
You just don't get that kind of service in the technology industry anywhere else these days that I've experienced.
I mean, I bought a Vista OEM copy and an nVidia "Vista Ready" mobo on launch day (it's my job to know how to support *everything*, turd or not). You don't see MS or nVidia offering to make things right because little things like on-board sound and networking don't function...at all...nVidia passes the buck to MS, and MS passes the buck to nVidia, and eight months later now, I still have to use USB dongles on that particular mobo for sound and ethernet. And neither of those companies have any intention of making things right. And that's just driver issues. Let's not even get into Vista quality (utter pile of refuse, kthanxbye). No rebate, no exchange for something that actually functions as described. Not even an option to downgrade to XP from MS.
Anyhow, I contrast that experience with something like buying my iPhone, Macbook Pro or any of the dozens of other Apple products I've purchased over the years and there's just no comparison. The iPhone is a *killer* product, and they're going to gain a ton more goodwill out of a gesture that they didn't have to make.
Long story short, the wife is now an absolutely fanatical Apple supporter just from these experiences.
Blogging Whiners are whining because they paid a premium to be an early adopter? Well, duh. I had no illusions that it wouldn't be substantially cheaper by EU launch or the holidays.
Reminds me of a T-shirt I saw recently.
--d
Hey Steve,
I'm pissed. I didn't buy an iPhone because I was waiting for the price to drop. And, now your'e refunding a big part of the price cut.
I missed out on all the ohs and ahs of showing one off. You owe me big time.
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
a minority of fanatics who believe that iPhone costed every single dollar of those $600 they paid.
I'm not sure those people are wrong.
I've seen lots of stuff that focuses on the cost of the parts. These people seem to act like it was inevitable that if you dumped enough of the specified parts into a vat together that they'd eventually inevitably produce an iPhone.
I've only seen speculation about costs for manufacturing/assembly, software development, and hardware R&D. Probably because only Apple really knows. But I'm sure those costs are there. Perhaps others that aren't immediately obvious.
This isn't to say there wasn't a good margin built into the iPhone on top of that. However true it actually is that Apple actually is a damn smart company that is in fact driven as much by a desire to produce quality products as the desire to reap profits, it and its shareholders also probably desires to reap profits. They probably knew they could command the price of early adopters and many would pay it.
It's also possible that high price helped them recover development costs, and with that done, they're free to drop the price.
It's also possible the high price likely keeps it in the hands of people who want one so badly they're willing to overlook some Rev A problems.
It's also possible the price itself was intended as a quality/caché signal.
Tweet, tweet.
Usually when Apple announces something like this in a special event they get tons of free press describing their new product becuase their events are interesting enough to be news. Just look at the recent iMac announcement and the articles on cnn.com and other places. But now what made the news was this price drop that was uncharacteristic for Apple and how the drop made the early adopters mad and how it must be a sign that their not selling enough iPods. All this and barely a mention of the iPod touch outside of the tech websites like ars....
:)
But C'mon the iPod touch is freakin' cool, and way more newsworthy than the iMac. The Steve really f*cked up by announcing the price drop at the same time as the iPod touch. This $100 rebate is his effort to try an recover from this and hopefully get some positive press.
Yeah, the rebate is good customer relations and preserves the brand... but I think the main benefit is in squashing the 'disgruntaled iPhone people' meme before it got out of control.
I'm not saying this to be critical of his motives, but to admire him for doing a good job protecting shareholder value. As a little-guy shareholder I am really greatful that he works so hard to protect my investment's value even though most of his personal wealth comes from his other business (Disney/Pixar). This rebate is really good (and timely) damage control. Next step: he has to give Pouge and Mossburg free iPod touches
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
http://www.apple.com/legal/sales_policies/retail_u s.html
Should Apple reduce its price on any Apple-branded product within fourteen (14) calendar days of the date of purchase, you may request a refund of the difference between the price paid and the current selling price. An original purchase receipt is required, and you must request your refund within fourteen (14) calendar days of the price reduction.
Yeah, but that $100 iTunes gift card (just to pick something) would still have cost ME $100, whatever their costs.
Secondarily, no one held a gun to our head and forced us to buy anything. Apple made an exceedingly cool product and we weighed the "cool" and utility against $600, made a decision, and bought it. They could just as easily spent millions making a technological flop like the Zune, in which case all of those R&D and marketing costs would have been a total write-off. They gambled and rolled the dice.
You may also notice that they made an Apple iPod HiFi dock... that just disappeared from the store. They made the AppleTV, which isn't exactly blowing off the shelves. In fact, I was just in a store yesterday and saw the new nano. Don't like the form factor, build quality, or the interface. So I'm not getting one, nor recommending them, nor buying them as gifts. Maybe other people will make the same decision and do the same. Maybe not. The point is that people don't buy EVERYTHING Apple makes just because it has their logo on it.
On the flip side, my MacBook Pro is the best notebook I've ever owned. OS X makes other most OS's look like they were designed by brain-dead committees (if that's not redundant). Aperture and Final Cut are some of the best tools on the planet. And if a truck rolled over my iPhone I'd be back in the store in a second buying a new one.
Fan? Yes. But I'm only a fan for as long as they continue to make great products.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.