Those early buyers who JUST HAD TO HAVE the latest and greatest the minute it went on the market have no grounds to gripe. No one coerced them to buy the first iPod phone. If they didn’t worship at the church of conspicuous consumption, they wouldn’t have paid the extra premium. There’s no one to blame but themselves. That said, Steve Jobs’ magnanimous $100 rebate is a great PR move. He’s a genius!

@Patrick: What you said is what I mean. Apple is in the position to take advantage of this kind of strategy. And they have such a large rave fans, that they can do it without worring about the kickback of the market. I’m not complaining, absolute the oposite, as an entrepreneur, I wish I could have that vision of business for myself.

Nice write up in the NYTimes Kevin!!!!!

It’s not called “bleeding edge” for nothing.

If you want to jump in the game at v1.0, you pay the premium. Quit whining, people. You paid extra to have the coolest new toy months earlier than us techno-plebians. Don’t whine about the entrance fee not that the luster has faded.

Read about your blog in the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/technology/07apple.html

How about this for a T-Shirt:

I got pwned by Steve Jobs.

lol.
My condolances.

Anybody who pays $599 for a cell phone has no business complaining that they were duped. Of course they were duped! They paid $599 for a cell phone!

Anybody who pays $599 for a cell phone has no business complaining that they were duped. Of course they were duped! They paid $599 for a cell phone!

“Google search on price matching.”

You purchased something using a credit card (such as the American Express Rewards Gold Card and the American Express Starwood Credit Card) that has pricematching capability.

If you find a lower price in print within 60 days, you can file a claim with Amex to get the price difference back. You can find ads with low prices in form of store flyers, or ads in some magazines.

Isn’t that cool? You can make lots of similar deals by pricematching. You are covered for up to $250 per covered item, up to $1000 per year.
How to file a claim:

You are covered for up to $250 per item, up to $1000 per year. They will not price match coupons, rebates, sales tax and shipping. So it is best to buy from a source with low shipping and without no sales tax. Here is what you should do to file a claim:

1. Call 800-557-8317 to request a price guarantee (or call it price matching). Write down the claim # that they give you.

2. Have your original invoice, the prints of the lower price.

3. Send them the documents, you can

* Fax the documents to them at 800-858-5971, or
* Mail the documents to: Best Value Guarantee, PO Box 495, Golzen, CO 80402-0495.

4. You are done, just wait for your check to arrive! Just keep a copy of all documents.

In store credit? Means he gets the money back anyway…now who feels better?

@Patrick- there is nothing stopping someone from buying a 100 gift card for iTunes, right? Can’t you buy that from the Apple.com store?

You what I just thought about, isn’t this similar to Sony cancelling the UX180 and immediately putting out the UX280 with a bigger HD and double the RAM for the same price?

@matias: But you’ve gotta admit, Apple is only capable of executing these sales practices because they put out such desirable products. I’m sure most other companies would love to be able to get away with the same practices, but they just don’t have the brand loyalty/obsession to warrant it.
To be honest, I think I’m more angry that few companies(if any at all) are carving out a slice of the market in such a aggressive way like Apple – its making this former Apple-hater (yup, that’s me) making more frequent visits to the apple stores near my area and drooling at the shiny gadgets.

Well handled apple – you’ve done enough to appease the fan-boys and early adopters, but its probably made a whole lot of people more wary of buying apple products right away.

BTW, some people were wondering how come you can’t use the store credit on itunes: well, based on people’s estimates, apple gets hardly any of the itunes revenue, so if they were to give $100 of itunes credit, then they’d be out-of-pocket about $90-95 per iPhone to pay for the royalties due to the record companies. With store credit, they’d only be paying the whole sale equivalent of the product, which is more manageable.

Great business strategy. Put the price at $200 more than you will go to charge. Use the great anxiety to get people buy the phone at a overprice. Get fresh money to pay the development and the first round of production. Then when the waters settles down, lower the price, Make a great show around it. Get more people to buy the phone becouse the price drop. Get everybody who bought the phone angry, and a day after that anounce gift of $100 to those that bought thein other thing that will not cost to apple a dime. THAT’S GENIUS!. Steve and troup… you are true geniuses. You get fast money, fast advance in the lifecicle of the product to massification, get a nod becouse you are fast response to an “error”, and everything costing you only a lower discount in other products.
Behold a great stategist. CLAP CLAP CLAP!!!

LOL… the “Jesus phone” ??? I haven’t heard that one. Yea, most of the people who slept outside didn’t really care, it is the people who just bought their phones in August that are the most pissed. Imagine missing the 14-day return deadline by 1 or 2 days.

I for one found that it wasn’t the “early adopters” that were screaming the loudest. For me the loudest screams have been coming from those whom had to scrape and save to afford the non-subsidized high priced “Jesus Phone” and then discovered if they’d just waited a bit more…

Kudos to my hero for doing the right thing. Shame on him for not anticipating (or not caring) that early adopters would be ticked.