Apple Sued by Retailers

totally sucks but then Apple is right because i find that the people at the Apple Stores and online are actually nicer and more knowledgeable and they have a lot of cool things like the genius bar you really can't get with a reseller.

I'm for the resellers the whole way, i hope they come to an agreement or they the resellers win the settlement. The people in that article are absolutley right. we have been treated better than those resellers have but there are some things in that story that we have had issues with and i wish apple would just treat us better sometimes. for what we are asking, it wouldnt be hard at all for them to honor.

iJon

Hopefully they can negotiate a settlement and come to a mutual agreement. In the end Apple needs the resellers.

As a son of small business owners, my heart instinctively goes out to all those Apple vendors. From a consumer standpoint, it's very hard to justify a purchase from a local vendor given they can't offer any discounts, special deals (free printers, etc.), or even the latest models in a timely fashion. I was talking to my local Apple reseller about selling my used TiBook, (more details here) and during the conversation he was telling me how resellers have no price protection when Appe cuts its prices. "We have to move them quickly or else," he said. It's very difficult, of course, to plan for such price shifts given Apple's secrecy and the uncertainty it generates ("It's been 6 months now, will Apple cut the price or introduce a new model . . ."), it makes it harder to operate a business.

Now, if you offer bad service, you deserve to be driven out of business. However, you can't deny that Apple resellers are having a very difficult time competing against Macwarehouse and MacMall, not to mention Apple.com and the Apple stores themselves.

i personally do not understand why those resellers are in business. ME. For others they might be nice, but for me, I get nothing special to buy from them, the same computer, same tax, same everything.

i don't NEED to see a computer before i buy it. I know what I am getting by reading. i will go where the deals are.

but, some people want to see the computer before they buy, and a retail store is where you go.......

Originally posted by macktheknife
As a son of small business owners, my heart instinctively goes out to all those Apple vendors. From a consumer standpoint, it's very hard to justify a purchase from a local vendor given they can't offer any discounts, special deals (free printers, etc.), or even the latest models in a timely fashion. I was talking to my local Apple reseller about selling my used TiBook, (more details here) and during the conversation he was telling me how resellers have no price protection when Appe cuts its prices. "We have to move them quickly or else," he said. It's very difficult, of course, to plan for such price shifts given Apple's secrecy and the uncertainty it generates ("It's been 6 months now, will Apple cut the price or introduce a new model . . ."), it makes it harder to operate a business.

Now, if you offer bad service, you deserve to be driven out of business. However, you can't deny that Apple resellers are having a very difficult time competing against Macwarehouse and MacMall, not to mention Apple.com and the Apple stores themselves.

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thats odd, every reseller i talk to gets price protection. they may not be fully authorized. you may want to let me know he can get price protection.

iJon

Originally posted by iJon

thats odd, every reseller i talk to gets price protection. they may not be fully authorized. you may want to let me know he can get price protection.

iJon

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Gosh, I hope he wasn't lying to me--I got the sense that he was an honest guy. Yes, perhaps he isn't fully authorized. What, may I ask, does being an "Authorized Apple Reseller" involve? Do you get full price protection? Access to the latest goodies?

Originally posted by idkew
i personally do not understand why those resellers are in business. ME. For others they might be nice, but for me, I get nothing special to buy from them, the same computer, same tax, same everything.

i don't NEED to see a computer before i buy it. I know what I am getting by reading. i will go where the deals are.

but, some people want to see the computer before they buy, and a retail store is where you go.......

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ill tell you why we are in business. we have things the apple stores dont. we have personal service, we will talk to you on the phone and help you out, well come to your house and help you out. we will develop a very friendly relationship with you. these are things people like, i would say 10% of my customers know what to do when something break. People like to have someone to go to when something goes wrong. They can bring it to me and ill fix it for them, plus how many states have apple stores, not all of them. thats where resellers come in. apple needs resellers and if they think they dont they will fall like a bad empire. also, apple will work on nothing earlier than the original imac. many customers still have performas and other older macs, even lc II's that need work on. apple store will just send them on their way, which is smart, but that is where the reseller comes in. we will take care of them. i dont think you will understand why we are in business and how hard it is until you open a apple reseller on your own. apple needs to treat us better. we are a essential to apple's success and they would have fallen if it wasnt for us selling their products in the early 90's when macs just completly sucked. they treat us pretty good, they just need to step it up a notch and treat us the same way they do with the apple stores, thats all these apple resellers are asking.

iJon

Originally posted by macktheknife


Gosh, I hope he wasn't lying to me--I got the sense that he was an honest guy. Yes, perhaps he isn't fully authorized. What, may I ask, does being an "Authorized Apple Reseller" involve? Do you get full price protection? Access to the latest goodies?

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I cant really talk about the specs because im not allowed and im not sure what the requirements are. he may just be telling you that so he can sell outdated equipment at a full price and get money from you and apple. you may wanna check into it.

iJon

Originally posted by iJon


ill tell you why we are in business. we have things the apple stores dont. we have personal service, we will talk to you on the phone and help you out, well come to your house and help you out. we will develop a very friendly relationship with you. these are things people like, i would say 10% of my customers know what to do when something break. People like to have someone to go to when something goes wrong. They can bring it to me and ill fix it for them, plus how many states have apple stores, not all of them. thats where resellers come in. apple needs resellers and if they think they dont they will fall like a bad empire. also, apple will work on nothing earlier than the original imac. many customers still have performas and other older macs, even lc II's that need work on. apple store will just send them on their way, which is smart, but that is where the reseller comes in. we will take care of them. i dont think you will understand why we are in business and how hard it is until you open a apple reseller on your own. apple needs to treat us better. we are a essential to apple's success and they would have fallen if it wasnt for us selling their products in the early 90's when macs just completly sucked. they treat us pretty good, they just need to step it up a notch and treat us the same way they do with the apple stores, thats all these apple resellers are asking.

iJon

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I agree with the personal service part--the reseller I was chatting with yesterday was helping some lady recover the e-mails on Outlook she deleted on her Pismo. Yes, maybe the lady was foolish or something, but problems are problems and they need solutions. I don't know for sure, but I seriously doubt she could get any help directly through Apple.

Originally posted by macktheknife


I agree with the personal service part--the reseller I was chatting with yesterday was helping some lady recover the e-mails on Outlook she deleted on her Pismo. Yes, maybe the lady was foolish or something, but problems are problems and they need solutions. I don't know for sure, but I seriously doubt she could get any help directly through Apple.

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exactly, dont get me wrong though, ive been to the apple store and they are GREAT. i love the fun enviroment with being able to play with stuff. are store is very similar, but just with one of every product. the thing is apple needs the best of both worlds. apple is only gonna put apple stores in big cities with huge traffic. for the smaller states and individual towns, resellers come in handy. i have not met very many people who dont want to see the computer first before they buy one. it is usually once they come in and play with and love it some much, then they buy it.

iJon

My local store that sells Apples is a small shop, but can do things that many other companies can't. It can upgrade old powermacs to new ones by putting new motherboards and chips in them. It can also customise Macs much better than anyone else I have seen; they can do things like install PC hardware in Macs and get it to work properly e.g. PCI Voodoo 5 cards in Mac OS X and extra network cards. This is a very good thing because PC hardware is generally cheaper than Mac, but can easily be made to work in Macs if someone has the know how.

So there is a place for shops like this that are able to do things Apple does not want to do.

I find this pretty interesting...

I live in montreal so i dont have the luxury of Apple Retail stores.
Im stuck deling with ressellers. and to tell the truth, im anything but impressed.
first of all they rarely have anything in stock. they take for ever to get there items you order and so on...
just last week, i went to a resseller (B.Mac) i wanted to see the dual 1.25. they had only one model on show. it was a dual 867. wich i find to be very bad on the ressellers part. they didn't even have a dual 1 ghz or anything.
when i asled them if they had any in stock, the man said the show model was all they had and they did not know when they would be getting more.
so i am all for apple computer winning the lawsuit. i would also love to see apple spread thier brach of stores into canada...

I think there are good and bad resellers but bottom line apple should treat them better, I had 1 comment to me that it was supposed to almost be a privelage for them to sell macs though the mark up they had after taxes was less then 10 %.I cant imagine anyone staying in business with that little of a mark up.

Originally posted by aethier
I find this pretty interesting...

I live in montreal so i dont have the luxury of Apple Retail stores.
Im stuck deling with ressellers. and to tell the truth, im anything but impressed.
first of all they rarely have anything in stock. they take for ever to get there items you order and so on...
just last week, i went to a resseller (B.Mac) i wanted to see the dual 1.25. they had only one model on show. it was a dual 867. wich i find to be very bad on the ressellers part. they didn't even have a dual 1 ghz or anything.
when i asled them if they had any in stock, the man said the show model was all they had and they did not know when they would be getting more.
so i am all for apple computer winning the lawsuit. i would also love to see apple spread thier brach of stores into canada...

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haha, you need to get your facts straight. this is the whole reason the lawsuit began. We now just got in 7 powermacs today...TODAY. its not like the people in montreal go to cupertino and pick up the computers. This is APPLE's fault they are not getting them. We got our FIRST copy of iLife yesterday. Please get your facts straight before you comment who is at fault, please.

iJon

Originally posted by iJon

haha, you need to get your facts straight. this is the whole reason the lawsuit began. We now just got in 7 powermacs today...TODAY. its not like the people in montreal go to cupertino and pick up the computers. This is APPLE's fault they are not getting them. We got our FIRST copy of iLife yesterday. Please get your facts straight before you comment who is at fault, please.

iJon

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Tell them more iJon.... Tell them about the month delay on the 17" Powerbooks that the Applestores already have... the same with the dual 1.42's..

Tell them about Apple's incredibly ludicrous demands on retailer's Apple-to-third-party product sales ratios, subsequent bad attitude on the tech support line, complete lack of 3rd party support, totally inept sales-closing ability in their stores and circular logic in their qualifying online vendors as "authorized".

Apple is a company saved only by it's incredibly cool product. They treat their resellers and employees like ****; get away with one by offering generous bennefits to employees and the other by exploiting the general lack of Mac resellers.

Grrrr........ Much as I love the product they really piss me off in many other respects.

This is the oppinion of someone who's been working for a reseller on and off for 3 years, had 2 relatives working for apple that both got screwed over by rampant internal feudalism and isw local enough to watch the pattern extend out into much of the (San Francisco) Bay Area.

I really want Apple to LEARN from this.

Disclaimer: Nothing in the above rant reflects the position of the companies I am now or have in the past worked for, nor does it reflect anything more than my own personal frustration after being exposed to Apple's poor and ludicrous behaviour in these areas.

Originally posted by mischief


Tell them more iJon.... Tell them about the month delay on the 17" Powerbooks that the Applestores already have... the same with the dual 1.42's..

Tell them about Apple's incredibly ludicrous demands on retailer's Apple-to-third-party product sales ratios, subsequent bad attitude on the tech support line, complete lack of 3rd party support, totally inept sales-closing ability in their stores and circular logic in their qualifying online vendors as "authorized".

Apple is a company saved only by it's incredibly cool product. They treat their resellers and employees like ****; get away with one by offering generous bennefits to employees and the other by exploiting the general lack of Mac resellers.

Grrrr........ Much as I love the product they really piss me off in many other respects.

This is the oppinion of someone who's been working for a reseller on and off for 3 years, had 2 relatives working for apple that both got screwed over by rampant internal feudalism and isw local enough to watch the pattern extend out into much of the (San Francisco) Bay Area.

I really want Apple to LEARN from this.

Disclaimer: Nothing in the above rant reflects the position of the companies I am now or have in the past worked for, nor does it reflect anything more than my own personal frustration after being exposed to Apple's poor and ludicrous behaviour in these areas.

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wow, what all do you want to know. how about we have only gotten two copies of ilife in, we have only got 7 powermacs, lcd's came in ok. how about them sending up airport extreme base stations but no cards. how about them sending us 4 12 inch powerbooks and the rest are on a 3 week backorder. what about ipods, havent seen those in about a month. need i go on. i think what apple needs to do is throw a calendar on their deks and cirlce the days they say the release dates are. i swear sometimes that apple is on their own calendar. they should put ical to use and acutally use it.

iJon