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Apple Reverses iPad "No Cash Purchase" Policy
ZipK writes "After a few days of bad publicity, Apple has reversed its no cash purchase policy, explaining that the policy was originally implemented to limit the number of iPads an individual could buy during the introductory period of short supply. Now that supply has caught up with demand — and the story has hit front pages and gained national attention — Apple has reversed its policy, and taken the opportunity to put a bow on the story by giving the formerly scorned Diane Campbell a free iPad."
I've lost count of the number of times I've seen this pattern in the last few months/years, especially as it relates to the iPhone OS devices.
1. Apple does something really dumb
2. They get bad press for it
3. A higher up at Apple goes "yeah, now that I think about it, that is really dumb"
4. Apple reverses the policy to something not dumb
It seems to me that maybe Apple should look at how they are formulating these dumb policies and see if they can get it right the first time.
Now before I get modded down by the fanbois, let me just say that I own an iMac and an iPhone and generally like Apple products. Yet I simply have to admit that it seems they've had a serious injection of dumbness of late.
This wasn't a dumb move, and this isn't bad press. They tried to make it look like the iPad was in such MONSTER demand that they wouldn't take cash. Then there was press, some moderately bad (Apple won't take cash), but mostly in their minds good (their iPad is selling like such hot cakes that they want to slow it down by not taking cash). Seriously, this late in the game who could possible be convinced people are still buying 50 iPads at a time and selling them at a markup?
It's stupid marketing done by stupid people targeting stupid people.
That's how it's done in the real world: Make a policy that seems reasonable at the time, have something unforeseen pop up to show that maybe it's not as reasonable as you originally thought, re-think and change that policy to something that is.
While Apple's policy was not a good idea, at least they were able to see that and be flexible enough to change it. It's just too bad for them that they had to get a black eye in order to recognize it was bad policy to begin with.
This ain't rocket surgery.
They limit sales to two per customer,
So I'll use multiple credit cards then. I've got 6 or 7 of them, so I could get 12 or 14 iPads. Again their reasoning makes little sense when closely examined.
Okay, then you have 12 or 14 of them and you have to deal with paying 6 or 7 different bills and you've made a small profit while having driven around to a bunch of different shops or risked your credit card by loaning it to someone to make purchases on your behalf. Congrats. That's still a lot harder than sitting outside an Apple store and paying a bunch of people $20 each to go buy 2 iPads then reselling them and making an easy profit while scalping the average person.
This isn't some lock-down method or they're be requiring your SSN or driver's license number. It's just a way to make it harder and less common so it is not a big problem for normal people. This isn't even an unusual business practice, it's only getting press because anything having to do with the iPad gets readers right now. Next there will be an article about how iPads can't be modded to run radio stations or "Apple" will send the FCC to arrest you.
>>>They limit sales to two per customer,
So I'll use multiple credit cards then. I've got 6 or 7 of them, so I could get 12 or 14 iPads.
And 6 or 7 names and addresses? And even so, it doesn't matter if a few people get around the limits. What matters is the overall effect, and there can be no doubt that this has helped keep iPad scalping down to a minimum.
Again their reasoning makes little sense when closely examined.
No, it's your reasoning which has failed you. Apple doesn't have to completely stamp out scalping to be effective.
No, actually, research it; you’ll find that I’m right.
Debt is not created during a sale. Until you pay for something, it belongs to the store, and if you decided to walk out with it without paying you wouldn’t be walking out with a debt, you’d be walking out with a stolen item.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
In what universe is adding more middle-men better for the consumer? Scalpers raise ticket prices without adding anything of value, except being able to buy tickets after an event has sold out. This isn't terribly bad so long as scalping is kept down to a minimum. But what if there were no rules in place to limit scalping? What's to stop someone from buying every single ticket, then selling them at double the price? How is that good for anyone?
If people wouldn't pay those prices, they'd very quickly go out of business. If people will pay those prices, the venue probably should raise some/all of the ticket prices to match what the market will support. Higher ticket prices would actually FORCE OUT scalpers -- buy a $30 ticket, resell for $100, that's a good profit margin, that's what keeps scalpers afloat. Buy a $100 ticket that will only sell on the open market for $100, MAYBE $110? I'd love to see scalpers find the profit there.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
The demand wasn’t that high. Speculators would have bought up all of the supply, using an artificial demand to create an artificial scarcity and then trying to sell them for a higher price once they were scarce.
You may then ask – well shouldn’t Apple just charge more then? – in fact, you did ask that.
No; because if every speculator were able to buy 50, they might create an artificial scarcity, but the scarcity would drive up the price, the demand would go down, and many of the speculators would be stuck with products that nobody would buy for the prices they asked, driving the price right back down to where it started – or even below it. Net result? A few speculators might make money, but most of the people who wanted an iPad would have to wait for the black-market price to come down to something more reasonable. Since Apple doesn’t want speculators profiting off of its R&D on its product, and Apple doesn’t want its customers being forced to pay high prices or wait, it’s a lose-lose for them to allow this sort of thing... so they don’t.
Apple sets the price so that they can make the highest profit. Not highest profit per sale, but overall. If they priced it higher, they wouldn’t sell as many; if they priced it lower, they’d sell more. Speculators hoarding the products screw up this system and Apple wants to prevent that.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Simple. Apple should have learned how to do business by people who've been doing it long before Apple existed... Limit two (2) per person, per purchase . Grocery stores and Walmarts all across the land have been doing this for decades. You can buy as many as you want... 2 at a time. On launch day, that would equate to exactly two -- by the time you got back to the counter the second time, there wouldn't be any left.