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Apple Axes 'No Cash' Policy for iPad Sales

I agree... if you want The iPad that bad... why dont you just go and get a Pre Paid VISA card. Or get a checking account.

Anyone walking with 500 bucks in their pocket doesnt have that much common sense. What if you get jumped (Im from Brooklyn), robbed? At least with a Checking card you get the money back. What if it falls out while your runnin for the train or simply drops from your hands... too much risk.

If you want something that bad... make sure you take steps to secure that money.
 
aughsum said:
1. It's 2010, cash needs to go away in general..
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That will never happen. Many constitutional scholars have argued that the elimination of any government sponsored anonymous cash would lead to a private script system that would be protected by the First Amendment. Third world use of American travelers checks and "Disney Dollars" is an example of this.

aughsum said:
2. At least our taxes took care of the rest of her living expenses so she could save up for an iPad.
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I feel your sarcasm. Honestly, I would love to aim a Private Investigator at this lady to see how really "poor" she is and who she associates with on a regular basis.

All we know she could be a Stanford student taking a year off, living boho with no declared income and rich parents that are not currently supporting here. There is this strange Standford student boho section in near Palo Alto like that. But no one would know without proper investigation.

aughsum said:
3. I don't have one yet.. this really wouldn't suffice for a first computer? She's going to have a difficult enough time with email - she might even venture into the google, but i dont think there is anything she would need to hook it up to a computer for... software updates but she wont know the difference if she doesnt have them.. I think the iPad is a great solution for the elderly (and the like).
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IMO, the iPad is one of the best successful "appliance computers" that significantly lowers the technical skills needed to work it. What really indicates to me is the "That's not a real computer" labeling that the both the early Mac and early PDAs got when they did their first million units.
 
niceified said:
It doesn't make any sense at all. Apple would sell a lot more if they didn't have limits like that. Sure scalpers will buy them and try to sell them for ridiculously high prices, but Apple shouldn't care. As long as they get their money, they should be happy and not worry about what people do after they buy them. And nothing is stopping them from manufacturing more iPads after the scalpers buy them all. People will see that they can get the items cheaper from Apple than from the scalpers, and will get them from Apple. Obviously the scalpers don't have an infinite supply of money and would eventually give up on buying them. The problem solves itself.
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One counter-point to this would be...

What about those that want to purchase something right now? If all the scalpers bought up all the supplies, then these people would be left out and would likely purchase something else. So they perhaps buy a netbook when otherwise they would have bought an iPad had they been available.

We live in a society of instant-gratification, and not everyone will wait. :)
 
aughsum said:
1. It's 2010, cash needs to go away in general...
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Who cares if she wanted to buy something with cash? That's what you do with money, you spend it. It's the NATIONAL CURRENCY, Apple, while debit and credit cards aren't. They've tried to pull that **** on me in the store and I straight up tell them I'm not paying with a card, then they moan a bit and check me out at the sole cash register they've got in the place. So stupid. I love Apple's products but I absolutely hate their business side. Always gotta be "revolutionary" to the point of "idiotic."
 
niceified said:
It doesn't make any sense at all. Apple would sell a lot more if they didn't have limits like that. Sure scalpers will buy them and try to sell them for ridiculously high prices, but Apple shouldn't care. As long as they get their money, they should be happy and not worry about what people do after they buy them. And nothing is stopping them from manufacturing more iPads after the scalpers buy them all. People will see that they can get the items cheaper from Apple than from the scalpers, and will get them from Apple. Obviously the scalpers don't have an infinite supply of money and would eventually give up on buying them. The problem solves itself.
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Ever heard of stub hub? I think Apple is doing the right thing by trying to limit these sales. But their good intentions have had some not so good results.

A friend of mine at work pre-ordered his 3G, only to find out that his order had been cancelled. He called Apple to find out why. Turns out he was having it shipped to his work address, and that numerous people at the business had ordered them. Apple looked at that and determined that someone at that address must be buying a bunch of them to resell them. He finally got his iPad, but it took several frustrating phone calls with Apple sales before he was able to find someone with a little common sense.
 
infowarfare said:
I agree with that, I'm just saying that for the banks to depend on this private organization that is completely unregulated and autonomous (and wields more power than most people realize) and to have a blanket policy that everyone is condemned for 10 years without regard of their particular situation, is just. not right. If you write a bad check, they should put you on the bank's own blacklist for a year until you can make up for it, not on ChexSystems for 10 years!
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Dude i her ya, thats a ****** deal. In fact while i wrote that i did keep that in mind knowing about what ur talking about. I had something simliar for only $30 and i they wanted my money it was a checking account i had left open for 4 years n forgot about it. They mentioned what u talked about but i didnt think they would be serious, i ignored them and now 5 months maybe later i was still able to open a checking acount with TD bank(knock on wood) But hearing what ur saying and this is no BS im going to find them tomorrow and pay them bc i really thought they were bluffing. I dont want something like that to happen to me. Thanks for sharing that story! i just hope i can find out who it was that was looking for that money now lol i dont even remember. maybe ill call the bank i had the account with and they couldtell me?
 
I had thought that federal law requires the acceptance of U.S. currency notes (i.e., cash) for monetary transactions. Isn't that what the statement "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private", on every dollar bill, is about?

I'm guessing Apple became clued in that they were violating federal law with a "no cash" policy, and that the reasons Apple gave for the change in policy are spin.

But that's just a guess.
 
niceified said:
It doesn't make any sense at all.
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I guess we can just agree to disagree on that one.

I remember seeing some scalpers paying homeless people to wait in line in order to purchase tickets for concerts in the city where I live.

You far under estimate the sleaziness of shady people whenever there is a quick buck to be made. And the iPad is exactly that kind of item, and even far more lucrative than a concert ticket.

And I do think that Apple does care how their products get distributed and who buys it.
 
dell.jpg


Dell customer service should take a page from apple seriously !!!!!!!!!!!
 
What a bunch of bs...

I thought of paying in cash since day 1! Maybe I should get a free iPad too!

Anyways, good for her. I'm sure the Apple employees knew it was her "first" computer and set it up at the store. She can get everything wirelessly now.

One question though, if it was her first computer, why does she have a wireless network set up?
 
charlituna said:
I doubt they intended to keep the no cash policy once the rush was over. with international sales coming up real soon and most stores not having walk in units anyway (so you have to put in a reservation and they can always set the system to watch for repeated emails and cancel them on you) they wouldn't need
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There has been a Steve-mail out for awhile where he said exactly that. When they launch internationally, theyd drop the no cash rule. Apple had already planned on doing this. They just did it 10 days earlier.

evilgEEk said:
But regardless, why couldn't she go down to Wal*Mart, or a handful of other retailers, and get a pre-paid VISA card?! :)
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The actual policy was to only accept cards with the customers name on them, so pre-paid wouldn't have helped.
 
One of the downfalls of being a 'hot company,' or having a 'hot product' is the amount of attention that you will garner, regardless of whether the news is good or bad.

I actually fault the media for picking up on a rather meaningless story. There are a number of reasons Apple may have chosen for a no cash policy. 500 people waiting in line overnight with $1000 in cash on them is a disaster waiting to happen in a poor economy. There are other reasons though.

Really, the only reason this story got the attention it is getting is because when people hear Apple, they pay attention.

If the media outlets that picked up on this story cared more about customers wanting to pay in cash more than wanting to get peoples' attention, those same media outlets will follow up by tracking down other companies with the same policy.

Bet that won't happen.
 
eXan said:
Apple's policy of "2 iPads per 1 person" is ridiculous!

I haven't studied US law, but in our country its downright illegal. One should be able to buy 10 iPads if he wants it - and Apple should be grateful if he does - it means more profit for them.

They are offering a certain product to the public (offerta) and can't refuse selling or restrict the number of units it to any one who comes to buy it (accept).

I'm at a loss why such policy even exists in the first place :confused:
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I was working retail when the Newton came out. Remember the Newton? During MacWorld Boston, (the store), not Apple set the policy that the sales people could only sell ONE Newton PER customer! This was in part due to the fact that we had a limited number to sell. This is the same problem that Apple had, or has with the iPad now.
 
Xtremehkr said:
The danger of not having a sales limit can be explained using the 'scalping' example. Scalping is where people buy all of the best seats to a sporting event and then wait until the day of the event and sell those bulk bought seats for an extraordinary markup. It's good for the scalper but customers are very unhappy because they are having to pay a huge markup on top of an already expensive ticket.
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As a customer I'm usually very happy because it means I don't have to win the 'click lottery' for hard to get tickets. I can go out and buy tickets at their actual market price. Keep in mind that scalper IS selling the tickets and the scalpers goal is to sell all the tickets that he has. Any ticket left in his hand is lost money.

Another fun thing to do is simply to wait outside the venue (this works well for sporting events...especially things like mid-week games with less demand) and hit the scalpers up once the game starts. I've paid well below the listed ticket price to every basketball game I went to this year. Funny how that supply/demand equation works just as well in the opposite direction.

Xtremehkr said:
If there were no limit on an item like the iPad then a few customers would attempt to buy every iPad available in every store they are able to get to. Those same customers would then put the iPads on exchanges like EBay at a ridiculous markup. Honest Apple customers would then have to pay the re-sellers ridiculous mark up. Apple customers would not be very happy about that.
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Cornering the market is hard to do in general and nearly impossible to do on a non-time sensitive item that you don't control the production of. Apple is making more iPads so people can wait it out if they don't want to incur the extra cost. Those who bought them all up are taking a huge risk that they are over estimating demand. There is nothing corrupt about doing this, and for it to really work you would need a buyer who was buying thousands and continued to buy thousands as they were released. On the flip side you would need demand that kept buying them at the increased cost. Neither of those things would happen for very long and the market would quickly equalize to Apples set price.
 
rdlink said:
One thing you're missing is a lot of letters and punctuation. This is a forum, not a text messaging session. There are 104 keys on that keyboard. Use them, please.

As far as needing a computer, not true. If you read the article closely you would have seen that if you pay cash they set it up at the store. So technically it never has to be plugged into a computer again. Of course, when it comes update time...
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LMAO that was a good one :)
Force of habit i work for a cell phone company and im on my HTC incredible more then my computer :p Yea that apple rep i mean he knew his stuff but this was durring the launch so i dunno why he told me that. his actualy words and a quote "you need a computer to purchase the IPAD, yes he is wrong i get it lol but its kinda funny that someone is going around telling people this.

And yes ahhhhhhhh update time...lol im sure she will be setting up and appointment with apple to do that. Unless...over the air updates through your apple account as long as u bought the 3g version??
 
capn7 said:
I thought of paying in cash since day 1! Maybe I should get a free iPad too!

Anyways, good for her. I'm sure the Apple employees knew it was her "first" computer and set it up at the store. She can get everything wirelessly now.

One question though, if it was her first computer, why does she have a wireless network set up?
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Maybe she's stealing signal from her neighbors...

Time to call in the REACT unit. Kick down the door. :eek:

That was a joke...
 
Xavier said:
So she wants to have technology... why not use a debit card?
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this is what I don't get... you can still find cheap or free checking accounts that come with a debit card. She could have deposited her money and went to the store and got one fairly easy.

I don't understand where you are at in life that getting an iPad is so important but you don't have a credit card.

You can't even buy any apps.... It just seems silly.

Not to take away with the policy change, but this was a non-story to begin with...

I guess she could buy itunes cards for apps.
 
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