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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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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"
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.