Bring a credit card if you want an iPhone, and you only get two
Apple has apparently instituted a credit card-only policy for iPhone sales at its retail stores in order to guarantee supply for the holidays and frustrate potential resellers, according to multiple reports.
Would-be iPhone buyers must now present a credit or debit card if they want to take home an iPhone, and they're also now limited to just two units, as they were on iPhone Day, according to The Associated Press. The AP quoted an Apple representative explaining the move as a way of making sure there are enough iPhones for the holidays and to prevent unauthorized resellers from flooding the market.
It's not clear whether the same policy applies to AT&T stores. I e-mailed the Apple representative quoted in the AP report late Friday evening and haven't heard back.
Before Thursday, when the policy was implemented, you could walk into any Apple store and plunk down cash for up to five iPhones. While the concerns about supply are harder to gauge from a distance, the credit card policy seems designed to make sure buyers leave a paper trail.
You can't really enforce a purchasing limit if the customer pays cash. How would Apple know if I walked into the downtown San Francisco store this afternoon and bought two iPhones with cash, then drove over to the Stonestown Galleria or down the road to Palo Alto, and picked up two more? Would-be unlockers might also be wary about using a credit card to pay for their purchases, even though unlocking isn't illegal. Apple is definitely paying attention to the market for unlocked iPhones, estimating earlier this week that 250,000 people have purchased an iPhone with the intention of unlocking it from AT&T's network.
Apple is apparently well within their rights to refuse to accept cash, as outraged as our resident libertarians might feel. U.S. businesses don't have to accept cash if they don't want to, according to the U.S. Treasury's Web site, unless there is a state law that specifically requires them to accept cash.
I'm sure there are at least a few people who were thinking about equipping their family of four with iPhones this Christmas. The reports make it sound like the restriction will just last throughout the holidays, but that hasn't been clarified as of right now.
Change your game with AT&T
be that it gives you access to the Web.
I have used iPhone for a month now and I must say this is one of the grandest false advertising I have seen based on the claim that iPhone
gives you good access to the web.
After all:
1- Who wants to look at the web via a 3inch screen!!! Most web sites are ABSOLUTELY not functional, usable, via a display
screen of less than 12 inches.
2- But MOST IMPORTANTLY: how the HEK are we supposed to fill a form at a web site via iPhone? After all the Keyboard of the damn thing
is on the same screen through which we are looking at the web. To fill a form via iPhone is even slower than typing a SMS message. It is
absolutely retarded. I mean a form that would take 1 minuet to fill via a normal computer (laptop) will easily take 20 minuets to fill via
iPhone!
Apple (Big Media in US) call this progress?
Amazing, Japanese give us Prius that gets 60Miles per Gallon thus cutting our gas bill by 70%, French gives us TGV that enables us to
travel center city to center city in lap of luxury & fast & for 1/3 cost of flying, what do we get from USA (Apple) a mobile phone with useless
access to the Web and priced 3 times of a typical mobile phone.
Further to this, I prefer to use cash. NO SALE!
A stupid policy that is as well thought out as DRM. All they are doing is criminalising the decent majority. It will fail as their target group will quickly work round it.
This and their OSX BSOD makes them look DUMB.
of the state over individuals. It has nothing to do with retailers
demanding credit cards. In fact, a libertarian would support the
right of a retailer to enforce whatever rules he wishes in the
selling of his party to willing buyers.
Since Vista came out, I have been waiting to buy a MAC (a Mac pro or a macbook pro when either is refreshed) In that time I watched Apple as a company, all the great new products they put out and I got more and more excited. Lately though the excitement is fading. Between this silliness, the iphone locking relocking, and third party apps for iphone and ipod touch. I am seeing an alarming trend. Apple seems to be drunk with its own success and seems to taking their customers and potential customers (like me) for a ride.
I lived in East Asia for tha past 8 years and I cam back to this kind of nonsense. You people are paying big bucks for 3-5 year-old technology. Heck, my Korean phone (Samsung), that I paid $200 for had a 4 megapixel camera. My Japanese phone had a 2.5 inch screen and a bar-code reader (Japanese ads in public places have barcodes that you can scan if you see something you like; no more "what was the phone number again?"). Both countries are 3g and Korea is working on the next step. I never had a dropped call until I came back the US. Richest country in the world and we can't even get out phones to work right.
iPhone owners. Congratulations on your status symbol; have fun using it with the inferior network that's as slow as molasses.
FYI:
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/the-tech-observer/2007/07/19/dispatches-from-the-next-generation-eye-opening-korean-cell-phones?addComment=true
http://www.nttdocomo.com/technologies/present/index.html
I'll spend the $400 for a phone in the US when I can watch TV on it like I did on my J-phone or use the internet at break-neck speeds like I did on my K-phone. iPhone, no thanks; I'll wait until the service catches up with the phone's tech before I think about buying it.
Just my 2 cents.
iPhones get into the hands of the right people instead of people
trying to resell them for profit.
Good job Apple!
It also gives you whiny people something else to complain
about.
Whine, whine, whine. Apple is so mean blaa, blaa, blaa.
Cey me a river.
You can bypass their restrictions by pretending you owned a mail company, but still using your home address (123 main st, becomes 123 main st box 142) and using prepaid credit cards (but different names), like the ones they sell at grocery stores, then ordering online.
SpacemanSpitt
rpg-exploiters.com
i can understand why apple is protecting themselves...but i think its futile, i mean few years down the line the iphones are going to be fully unlokced with available third party software..they are just holding onto it a little bit longer
i perseonally would never buy an iphone..blackberry if i wanted something for work and email...i have htc 710 with a great qwerty keyboard and windows mobile 6 which (albeit a little slow) works fine....i dont surf the web from my cell phone, i only use the wifi to sync my email and chat on msn ...it plays mp3....
i dont see anything in the iphone that cant be foudn in other, cheaper phones (aside taht its by apple)
The author is completely off base, and apparently doesn't understand libertarianism at all.
Apple has the right to do this...I find it unfortunate at a personal level, because I'm not going to buy an iPhone precisely because I don't want AT&T service.
But I would never imagine a single libertarian that I have ever met, who would have desired that the government pass a law to force Apple to engage in business that they don't want. That isn't libertarianism....that is liberalism.
This author needs to buy a clue.
The reason I won't get an iphone is it doesn't run a slingbox app, so I will continue to use my ipod touch and my motorola q.
Now whats going to be funny, is when you go to buy an iPhone for your personal use, and Apple decides not to sell you the phone. What if you bought one for you and your wife, and you buy a 3rd one for your daugher as a graduation present.
Won't that be hilarious when they won't sell you one.
You will just have to wonder about Apple and their brilliance when that happens.
I walked into the Apple store on my way home from work on Friday to get Leopard, and they wouldn't sell it to me...I was too early. Well, I had things to do, so I left....empty handed....just marvelling at their brilliance on that move.
Sometimes you let a sale walk away...and you lose the sale.
I don't believe Apple's new policy regarding selling iPhones will impact legitimate buyers very much. My understanding is that store personnel can check a buyer's purchase history and conclude that he is or is not a reseller.
To say you can't spend your cash on them?
sounds like they want to be able to track buyers in some scheme to keep them from using the beloved Iphone with other carriers,or at the very least to get demographics for marketing purposes.
bleh
- That's bullshit
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by gwhitham
October 28, 2007 9:09 AM PDT
- It figures. A company puts out a product and then tells you how you have to pay for it. Who cares if it is a credit card or cash. You are being forced to use a credit card company. Sounds to me like Apple is in bed with the banks. You will not be able to buy a iPhone if you do not have a credit card. Fine then...I won't buy an iPhone and definately will not consider any Apple product now or ever. I don't need Apple.
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