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KingOfScalpers

macrumors member
Mar 25, 2011
31
0
We decided to buy our daughter an ipad for her birthday. We had no idea it was almost impossible to get one. After calling around for a few days we decided on an apple store that said they get a good amount of ipads delivered every day. Today is her birthday, it was imperative we get one. My son and I got up at 5:00 a.m. and drove 45 minutes to the apple store where they had said if we got there by 7:00, we'd be almost guaranteed to get one. We get there at 6:50 a.m. and were greeted by about 7 asian people who immediately came up to us and said we were 10th on line. Hmmm, I thought 6:50 was early enough but I guess not. Anyway, after awhile, it became apparent that these people were going to buy 2 ipads per person. That means they would walk away with at least 14 ipads which may have been the entire shipment. There were about 3 people behind them when we showed up. I complained immediately upon learning what was about to transpire. Apple people said there was nothing they could do. UGH!!!! After about 1.5 hours of waiting and hoping for the best, the security guards came over and started questioning the "asian" people waiting in line. Apparently, there was trouble with these people before. When the police were called, the lady who told me we were 10th in line disappeared. The 4 still left got as many as they could buy. Fortunately, we were still able to purchase one - whew! I don't mean to be profiling here but every "asian" person waiting in line either got chased away by police or bought 2 each. No one else walked away with 2 ipads each. i was shocked by what happened this morning. I had no idea what was going on. Because of this experience, I googled asians buying ipads and came across this forum. I just wanted to share my experience firsthand. It was an interesting eye opener. :eek:

What law did they break where they found it necessary to call the police?
 

matrix2011

macrumors newbie
Apr 23, 2011
1
0
What law did they break where they found it necessary to call the police?

Overstaying their visa? I seriously have to question how many of those pests are really supposed to be here. Maybe INS could deport a few of them who've overstayed their welcome :D

And if they're checking suitcases full of iPad 2's, I wouldn't mind the airlines "conveniently" losing those bags in transit :D

(and yes, I am Chinese-American, so don't go accusing me of racism)
 

MSUSpartan

macrumors 6502
Jul 13, 2008
400
0
(and yes, I am Chinese-American, so don't go accusing me of racism)

Not saying you are, but there is such a thing as self-racism. I can picture a scenario where individuals reject or deprecate their own ethnicity in an attempt to fit in.
 

clyde2801

macrumors 601
Ignorance, prejudice or racism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism : Racism is the belief that the genetic factors that constitute race, ethnicity, or nationality are a primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that ethnic differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice : A prejudice is a prejudgment, an assumption made about someone or something before having adequate knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy. The word prejudice is most commonly used to refer to preconceived judgments toward a people or a person because of race, social class, gender, ethnicity, homelessness, age, disability, obesity, religion, sexual orientation or other personal characteristics. It also means beliefs without knowledge of the facts[1] and may include "any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence."

I live in Oklahoma City, which has a fairly large subset of Asian-Americans (for being stuck in the middle of nowhere), mostly of Vietnamese origin who came here after the Vietnam War. I have been told many of them are of Chinese ethnicity who were the former ruling class of that country forced out by or fleeing the communists. A fair number of the state's colleges are clustered around it. Some of them, such Oklahoma City University and the nearby University of Oklahoma, have sizable populations of international students.

If I have been thwarted in my attempts to get an Ipad2 by a number of Asians standing in line really early at the Apple Store (which I have not, nor have seen) and blindly assume they're all scalpers working for an asian gang selling tablets on the gray market overseas, that may show I'm prejudiced. It could be a bunch of grad students being pressured or wanting to get their families and friends the new apple hotness before everyone else back home, and my preconceived notions based on race kept me from noticing observing noticeable, objective facts indicating otherwise: they were all apparently in their late teens or early twenties, speaking fluent English, some were holding textbooks, and many were wearing OU and OCU apparel.

I may be jumping to conclusions without knowing all the facts, that's ignorance. If the conclusions are based or guided by preconceived notions of race or ethnicity, that's prejudice. If those notions mean that I have an underlying belief that a different race or ethnicity is inherently better or worse than the one I (think) I belong to, that is racism.

The charges of racism being thrown out are, IMHO, out of hand. There have been news reports in Asia and the US about the gray market scalping. People have observed groups of asians in certain cities standing in line early at Apple stores and buying the maximum number of GSM equipped iPads allowed. Some have witnessed seeing the same people standing in line on different days to do this. Without having been to, much less intimately knowing, the populations of the cities where the posts reporting scalping on this board are coming from, I would suspect that some are based on inaccurate and/or incomplete information (i.e., ignorance), some are jumping to conclusions based upon race or ethnicity (prejudiced), and others are true. Maybe I'm missing the last piece of the puzzle in my box, but I can't see how any of these posts show any sort of bias or inference that one race or ethnicity is better than another.
 

upbraid

macrumors member
Apr 24, 2011
62
0
the economic principle that make this nation great is capitalism. if you wanted the ipad2 bad enough, you would have waited longer. lmao at all the whining in this thread.
 

ChocolateApple

macrumors 6502
Apr 9, 2010
366
4
New York
Those Gangs Are Why I'm Not Buying This Year

They're not students. They have a distinctive appearance that I'd be taken to task for describing in detail. I've witnessed it and am not getting the new iPhone because of it.

My experience last year (2013) was horrible as some others have stated. I missed buying one overnight online, so I attempted multiple times to get one at the Apple store near my job.

On the first day, after several hours in line, I was able to get a black one but wanted gold. I returned several times for several days, once waiting 4 hours, getting to the front and being told they'd sold out.

I have gotten the iPhone on day 1 since 1997. Each version. I sell my current one, buy the new one, all's well. This was the first time I came face-to-face with the gangs mentioned here.

First as I noted above, there's a distinctive look. They are not prototypical iPhone customers. If you think I am being ugly by being observant, do a web search and tell me if you see Apple or heck even Android marketing anyone in their ads who look like them. No, because they are not individual buyers. They are in a buying gang or whatever the term being used is, and it's blocking others from getting the phones.

One lady tried to harass me for my extra ticket since I was there alone, but I didn't take an extra ticket. Multiple people in line added people to the line, smiling and saying "It's my Aunt/Uncle/cousin, etc." Bull.

One security guard took pity on me after seeing me there multiple times and brought me inside to try to get one. But the gold (the one I wanted) wasn't the right storage size. By the way, each time I returned (failing to get one), I saw the same people from that same group buying the phones.

I took it up a level by complaining to the manager who kept me in mind and let me know when one was available even after my exchange period expired. They made an exception, which I believe was their way of acknowledging the problem inadvertently.

This seems like a big to-do over a gadget, but it's the larger issue at hand that's already been addressed in other posts and by the OP. It has soured me against the product. Like Starbuck's, Apple has a simple product but sells an experience. Unfortunately the experience has been tainted and the product isn't worth it to me anymore. I'll wait until my contract's up this time.

----------

the economic principle that make this nation great is capitalism. if you wanted the ipad2 bad enough, you would have waited longer. lmao at all the whining in this thread.

Waiting means not being able to get a good re-sale value on your existing one. Once the new products are released, the market is flooded. Many people (like me) lock in a re-sale price with legitimate sites to maximize the purchase price, then put that value toward the purchase of the new one. Hence you always have the latest and you've gotten the maximum or at least a good price on your old one.

This year I don't plan to jump into the sea of gangs to fight for the iPhone 6, so my iPhone 5S will likely have little to no value when I finally do upgrade.

Saying "Whining" minimizes the greater issues discussed and experienced.
 

Ledgem

macrumors 68020
Jan 18, 2008
2,034
924
Hawaii, USA
This year I don't plan to jump into the sea of gangs to fight for the iPhone 6, so my iPhone 5S will likely have little to no value when I finally do upgrade.
That won't be the case. I sold my family's iPhone 4Ses when we upgraded to the 5S a few months after their release. Despite some of the phones having cracks on the screens, we lost very little (and for some of the phones, made a small profit) over what we paid for them initially. Bear in mind that we bought the phones at a carrier-subsidized cost.

Regarding your story with the gold iPhone, it's possible that the "gangs" were to blame but the gold version was hard to get everywhere. Apple slipped up with the 5S launch in two ways, first thinking that the demand for the 5C would be greater (and somewhat less for the 5S), and second for not realizing that the gold version would prove to be so popular.

If you're the type of person who enjoys standing in line over night, or staying up to be one of the first online orders, then by all means do it. Otherwise, order when you get a chance, and don't worry about the resale value. The devices hold their value fairly well, and certainly won't drop as the days (or even weeks) pass.
 
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