blogs.zdnet.com — Is Apple not accepting cash for iPhones? And if so, are Apple Store personnel offering any explanations to customers? To find out, I paid an undercover visit to a nearby Apple Store and we captured most of the conversation on video
Nov 3, 2007 View in Crawl 4
mosmileyNov 4, 2007
Hmm, I see how this works. The first reply is for sardiax's comment and the this reply is for my first comment.
PaulTheBookGuyNov 4, 2007
Youve never been in an Apple store, have you. They treat you like a king, ESPECIALLY if you have a problem with one of their products. Theyve been real nice to me with my ipods, and now my macbook, having replaced my battery and soon to be replacing the entire outer shell for me. They treat you like gold, so you obviously have never shopped at Apple. To say they have a "our way or the highway" attitude is total bulls**t. They helped me install Ubuntu and XP on my system, which was OBVIOUSLY running a leopard pre-release (the dock kind of gave it away)... is that their way or the highway?Gimme a break, Apple hating is so obsolete, get over it. Its a good computer that now runs any OS you choose.
sonofashoeNov 4, 2007
I don't think there has ever been any mystery around this. If the average 2 year i-phone plan is $80 per month, each hand-set sale is worth $2320 (24 months * $80 + $400). Since it is obvious to all of us that the reason people are buying i-phones has nothing to do with AT&T and everything to do with Apple, it seems obvious that Apple is getting a portion of the $80 per month that is being collected by AT&T. Probably a very big portion. If, for argument's sake, we say it's 50% (it's probably not that high), Apple would be collecting $400 per handset sold, and $960 over 2 years from AT&T.Apple will do anything they possibly can to make sure that as many hand-sets as possible are being activated by AT&T. Not sold overseas and not unlocked. Requiring a credit card for purchase is a very simple way of helping to achieve that goal. Not only does it help them enforce their 2-per-customer rule, but there's no downside for them whatsoever. Anyone who doesn't have a credit or ATM card isn't going to pass the credit check for the 2 year plan.
r3zonanceNov 5, 2007
"I would never purchase it by card only for the fact that they store a connection with my credit card data in their system, or at least have that much access to it at any point"Most personal information laws (i.e. Data Protection Act in the UK) strictly forbid this, as the information can only be retained where "REQUIRED", (i.e. no CC info held for anything other than purposes of charging the card for the purchase of the phone).
joshriceNov 20, 2007
If you didn't have a data plan, you're absolutely right. Not saying it phones home or anything, i'm just saying it *could*
chiefbttlwshrJan 9, 2008
Does it matter?
chiefbttlwshrJan 9, 2008
that's already been done.i'll be much more original.