Hearsay about Apple putting the kibosh on Best Buy’s iPad 2 sales remains hearsay – but if it is true, Gear Live thinks they know why: Best Buy employees (and friends) abusing their sweet trade-in program.
Best Buy employees are allegedly eligible for an extended warranty that entitle them to a total trade-in – iPad 1 for an iPad 2, simple as that – no need to “buy” a new iPad. Great if you’re a Best Buy employee! Bad if you’re Apple, which fetishises its sales data, and certainly loves its enormous tablet hegemony whenever it’s time to talk numbers. Whether this is occurring on a large enough scale to jeopardise Best Buy’s entire relationship with Apple, however, seems kinda dubious. [Gear Live]
Federico
Saturday, April 9, 2011 at 6:01 PMBS. Bestbuy pays for the inventory they get. If they do allow their employees the benefit, it is bestbuy that gets stiffed, not apple. Products on bestbuy are not consignments.
Dave Paul Saunders (From Adelaide)
Sunday, April 10, 2011 at 6:55 PMGood luck with buying anything portable from Apple if your in Adelaide anyway or Australia really. No one seems to have a successful repair story. They won’t replace the entire unit, they will replace it with the same parts that were ALL made at fault. Desktops seems fine, anything portable is a joke & not worth paying the insurance for as your better off getting something windows or andriod cloned off ebay for 400 bucks or so cheaper. Apple have never changed. I love my hackintosh rig. Mac on pc, great idea. Not illegal but you wont get the support if you use a non-pirate disc. They are better of trashing their own portable gear and stick to selling an operating system that is awesome on a normal non mac desktop. Phones and Ipads are just terrible that they produce.
Tobias Lewis
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 5:29 PMI had a problem with the display on my iPad. It had weird imaging problems but still worked fine. I took it into the Next Byte store and Norwood they sent it off and within a week I had a brand new one. They basically said that Apple did this all the time as it was cheaper to give you a new one then have to open the unit up, work out what was wrong, fix it and send it back.
Ryan
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 7:39 AMThe guy above clearly has owned a portable Mac before…..
Raven
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 8:59 AMI disagree with Apple and its history of repaired goods. I had an IPOD4. It was not functioning properly. They replaced it immediately at the Bondi Junction store on the spot, and within 15 minutes. No questions asked. And, the Ipod4 in question had been bought offshore. So Apple did a good job, and the rest is uninformed commentary.
leon
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 10:38 AMWhat does ‘stiffing’ .. mean?
Why use a word like this with inappropriate overtones..
..and ‘Fetishes’ its sales data?
Jake macleay
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 12:15 PM…and what about that comment about ‘extended’ warranty. I’m offended too!
Mike
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 1:12 PMLOL you made my day! I can’t use the word ‘stiff’ because you automatically start thinking about sexy tiems? Sounds like someone had a troubled childhood haha
Graeme
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 1:38 PMYou’ve clearly never worked with South Africans before. They call 3.5″ disks (going back a little I know) by the wonderfully apt name “stiffies”. Makes far more sense than “floppies”, which they aren’t.
Tim
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 2:04 PMIt is just in South Africa their stiffies are 3.5″. :-)
olearymo
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 2:12 PMThe disk is, in fact, floppy. The case is not.
Jake macleay
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 3:24 PMI think you’ll find they are in fact flaccid, not floppy.