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Apple Agrees to Honor Mis-Priced Mac Mini Orders in Taiwan

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Apr 12, 2001
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AFP reports that Apple has agreed to honor pricing on as many as 40,000+ Mac mini orders that had been erroneously priced at only about 40% of their actual retail prices. The announcement comes after Apple had quietly raised the prices to their normal levels for orders that had already been placed at the incorrect prices and after Taiwanese officials applied pressure on the company to honor the prices.
The error occurred last Friday when the company accidentally discounted a desktop computer and a server on the Education Apple Store's Taiwan website, with one on sale for a little over 40 percent of what it should have been.

Apple corrected the prices but not before over 41,500 units had been ordered by bargain-hunters, according to figures provided by the company to Taipei's consumer protection authorities.
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Previous reports had indicated that as many as 200,000 orders may have been placed at the lower pricing, but this latest report places the figure much lower than that. In addition, the new report adds the detail that the pricing error occurred only in Apple's online store for educational purchasers in that country, and that Apple will be verifying eligibility for all customers who ordered at the lower price. Consequently, the actual number of orders Apple will have to fill at the discounted price may be considerably lower, as many non-eligible customers may have submitted orders in hopes of slipping past Apple's verification checks.

Article Link: Apple Agrees to Honor Mis-Priced Mac Mini Orders in Taiwan
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/07/27/apple-agrees-to-honor-mis-priced-mac-mini-orders-in-taiwan/
Good for them. They saved themselves a lot of trouble, as it would have been even more bad publicity, which is not at all what is needed right now.
 
ouimetnick said:
Just want to clarify. This means that Apple will make everyone pay the actual price, and not the redicious $19,000 or something like that?
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Basically Apple accidentally put the new mac mini up for a price 60% off of the original price.
 
thx,apple store Taiwan

let us could get a special price to buy a mac mini server with 8G ram

now,I am waiting for my new mac mini server

201073931723158227393138918.jpg
 
Nice to the people that ordered during this deal and go Apple for honoring their mistake.
 
ouimetnick said:
Just want to clarify. This means that Apple will make everyone pay the actual price, and not the redicious $19,000 or something like that?
Click to expand...

Do you mean NT or USD with the $19000? In Taiwan, $19000 NT is about ~600$ USD, which is low, but not crazy low, for the Mac Mini.
 
No worries, Apple can just jack up the prices, so Taiwanese customers may order from elsewhere, thereby the idiotic Taiwanese government can rightly so lose out on their tax revenue. Win win all around.
 
wjlafrance said:
About time Apple does something good for their PR.
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Should note that they actually increased the price of the already ordered items in a quiet manner which probably means that they did not notify the consumer directly. I've only ever had that once with a retailer and that was when they upped the price of a pre-ordered game without notification. I cancelled and don't buy from there now as that's a very distasteful thing to do.

So its not necessarily "Apple did something good for their PR" but rather "Apple got caught trying to load off their **** up on the consumer and did the right thing" which is more than we can expect from Apple these days, eh?:D
 
I couldn't help but wondered where did the price "19900" come from?

And one that occurred to me is that, the previous Mac Mini 2.53Ghz was priced at 19.900 in Apple Store (Education), so the system could have mistakenly list that (though I don't know how)

Anyway, hope Apple will proceed the eligibility check as fast as possible. I believe the customers will be super happy then. (Since there haven't been any e-mails sent from the company, the people are feeling ill at ease)
 
ouimetnick said:
Just want to clarify. This means that Apple will make everyone pay the actual price, and not the redicious $19,000 or something like that?
Click to expand...

Gotta love how people automatically assume that 1 of one country's currency automatically equals 1 USD.
 
You all are missing:

- this price typo was only in the Taiwan online EDUCATION store
- Apple will rigorously check the eligibility of everyone who ordered at the low price through the edu store. (Apple doesn't usually do this).

I expect many of the orders will be fraudulent orders.

Apple said:
To buy for yourself choose the type of institution where you are a student, lecturer, teacher or other member of staff
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That's UK wording, the TW wording is probably similar. If you pretend to be a student at a qualifying institution when you're not, to get an advantage from the mis-pricing, that could be seen as fraud and a matter for the police.

Apple usually isn't that bothered about education orders, but they will be checking this one more closely.
 
Very reasonable compromise position. Odds are that many orders aren't from people who meet the criteria. Honoring the mistake for those who are legitimate is a good way of handling it.
 
I wonder how many of the orders were legit Education orders. How will they verify eligibility? Fax a student ID? Verify enrollment with universities?
 
They have to honour it otherwise it would be illgeal, if a company/shop sells you a product at that price they have to stick by it. Well in the UK anyway.
 
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