When I used to work at IBM, we used to get 23% off an unlimited amount of Desktop PC's, screens & ThinkPad's. There was even an online employee shop full of special configurations with a heavy discount.
Not too long ago, a Microsoft employee was sent to jail, because he used his rebate on Microsoft software licenses to run a million dollar business in expensive server software licenses. (The rebate was only for personal use, but nobody checked for a while. I guess his colleagues where wondering why the sales person with the lowest sales numbers could afford the most expensive car
)
On the other hand, many businesses sell or make things that are of no use to their employees. On the third hand, I heard of companies selling prefabricated buildings, where every year groups of employees take their holiday together and build a new home for one of them, with only the cost of the ground and the materials to be paid.
When I used to work at IBM, we used to get 23% off an unlimited amount of Desktop PC's, screens & ThinkPad's. There was even an online employee shop full of special configurations with a heavy discount.
This new offer by Apple seems incredibly tight in comparison.
If you could buy a new PC ever month with 23% rebate, with no questions asked, that means the company actually expects you to be a sales person with a 23% commission, and they expect that they wouldn't have made the sale if you hadn't sold the computer. With PCs, it is all about price, so they increase the number of sales that way. The same thing at Apple, number of sales won't increase by much.
For example: "Hey, my nephew worked for apple for one month and bought his iPad 3 for $250. Why the heck should I pay $600 to get one?" Good question.
Daft question. Because it is an employee benefit, and you are not an employee. Apple also gave a lot of cash to the nephew, and not to you. Because he is an employee, and you're not.