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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."
Apple can confirm the identity of any iPad user, so long as they have not purchased the device used.
Very interesting.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you'd better start looking for a carpentry job.
The idea is to limit the number of purchases that a single customer can make. It's sort of hard to sell a hundred iPads on eBay or to people in other countries when you're only able to buy two of them yourself (yes, obviously it's probably possible to use several credit cards or have your friends buy iPads but I think this should be seen as more of a way to eliminate the low hanging fruit to discourage the casual opportunists).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
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.
It's not a debt if the store refuses to complete the sale. If a customer attempts to buy something with cash, and the store refuses, is there any outstanding debt on behalf of the (potential) customer? Nope, not if they haven't actually bought anything yet.
A purchase (exchange of money for goods) is not a debt. You can show up at your bank with $1000 in pennies to pay your mortgage and they have to take it, because that is a debt, but any vendor can decline cash for purchases. That's why it is legal for some fast-food places and such have signs that they do not accept denominations over $20 (which are more susceptible to counterfeiting and also quickly reduce their change-making ability).
Okay, I guess I was wrong:
[from the horse's mouth]
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.
Whatever the legal status of a device is, Apple has demonstrated on plenty of occasions that it doesn't think one really "owns" something bought from them.
Do you have any real examples? Aside from services Apple offers (not purchases) what can't you do with Apple products that Apple prevents you? Once you buy it, do what you want. Take it apart, hack the software, put a different OS on it, since when has Apple stopped you? They even have legal recourse to go after jailbreakers of iPhone or people who make the tools, but they don't bother.
A purchase is not a debt. As per the US Treasury's faq (here):
"all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services."
When someone says, "Any fool can see
False. Nobody's doing that, and if they are it doesn't hurt Apple. This was a marketing move to try to propagate the artificial scarcity ploy Apple is using with the iPad. Nothing more. I'm surprised so many rubes don't see that, it's very obvious.
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.
Oooookay, your examples make absolutely NO sense to me. The PS3? The shelves are full of the damned things, hell my local walmart has been throwing all kinds of little incentives to get them to move...and nothing. WTF is Sony thinking acting like they are going anywhere? Hell they should get down on their knees and thank God if somebody offered to buy a truckload. No offense Sony fanboys, just calling as I see it. And HDDs? Since when did hard drives become rare? Unless Fry's is selling below costs (kinda doubt any B&M is gonna do THAT except to lure the marks on BF) then that also makes NO sense.
Now as for TFA, it's Steve okay? We should probably have a tag line "it's just Steve" because I have NEVER seen a more anal retentive CEO than old Steve Jobs. That man has ALWAYS wanted to control every little aspect, controlling how many of his precious devices you're allowed to have? Par for the course. Again no offense Apple Fanboys, old Steve does have good taste, but you have to admit for old Steve it has always been about "the experience" and any way he can further control what the user experiences just fits into his mantra. Not my personal cup of tea, but it seems to work for him and it isn't like there aren't other choices out there.
What amazes me is the Apple fanboys aren't pushing for Steve to name a successor and get everything ready to hand over the reins if he croaks. Lets be honest folks, the guy has had some serious health issues and nobody lives forever. If Steve doesn't have the reins of power passed before he croaks their stock is gonna take a nosedive when he quits breathing, with the whole "cult of Steve" mythos built around that man. At least Gates, rightly or wrongly, passed the reins over when he started pushing it. But short of them bring Woz back as a figurehead until they get the shit straight behind the scenes having old Steve croak will seriously damage that company.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Or they didn't charge more because they learned their lesson with the iphone that you piss off early adopters if you drop your price, and you end up having to give them free apple store gift cards or the like to slow the stream of negative blogging being reported as a national emergency on TV news.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State