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Apple Nixes iPad Giveaways

Posted by samzenpus on from the too-good-for-free dept.

KingSkippus writes "According to a story at CNN, Apple has begun enforcing third party promotion guidelines (PDF) that, among other things, restricts organizations from giving away iPads, using the word 'free' to describe any Apple products in a prominent manner, or promoting giveaways of iPod Touches in lots of less than 250 and with Apple's explicit approval."

2 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ok? by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Have you not seen "FREE iPad" and FREE iPhone" spam? Real spam in emails and forums, but also just endlessly repeated web-adverts. It pisses people off. Apple don't want that bad-will to reflect on their products. The reputation of the products and the company are worth far more than the piddling amounts of product that promoters would buy from Apple to run these promotions. Especially as most of them are scams.

  2. To cut off "legitimized scalpers"? by ericvids · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Where I currently live (Singapore), the iPad 2 was advertised as "available now!" for several days, but if you ask for one the store will tell you they're out of stock.

    Meanwhile we got so many ad promotions with the magic words "win a free ipad 2" everywhere we turned, from restaurants to supermarkets to banks.

    Long story short: People who wanted them can't buy them for weeks because they've been snapped up by companies intending to give them away instead of selling them. I think Apple is simply preventing this situation from happening again.

    --
    Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.