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Article: Cant Get An iPad 2? Blame It On Asians
- Thread starter KittyKatta
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Well, at least you recognize your place in the world and correctly addressed me as sir....now go back and clean those urinals again, and don't forget the puck this time!!!
Only way for Apple to solve this problem to everyone's satisfaction is simultaneous global launch. That means that each product launch will be delayed in the US by a few weeks to months while Apple builds up enough inventory to launch everywhere. Then you'd just have to deal with US resellers/scalpers looking to make a buck ...
How about enjoy the fact that you are in the US and get the chance to buy an iPad 2 weeks before the rest of the world?
How about enjoy the fact that you are in the US and get the chance to buy an iPad 2 weeks before the rest of the world?
I mentioned on another thread why not just have it a requirement for Apple to "setup" your iPad instore for the first couple of shipments, thus having to open the box and break the factory seal rendering it "used".
Eh it probably wont stop most overseas scalpers, but maybe US reselleres.. eh who knows...
Ill just make the buyers on CL and eBay a little more hesitant of purchasing a used marked up iPad 2.
Gah who am I kidding. The hype is so big on this people would pay a $100 markup if it were used and sold in a cardboard box. =P
Eh it probably wont stop most overseas scalpers, but maybe US reselleres.. eh who knows...
Ill just make the buyers on CL and eBay a little more hesitant of purchasing a used marked up iPad 2. Gah who am I kidding. The hype is so big on this people would pay a $100 markup if it were used and sold in a cardboard box. =P
For those that aren't in the know. www.slickdeals.net has a whole forum devoted to resellers and advice on how and where to get the next big thing. Just based on the use of the English language in that forum, I'm making an educated guess that most are Americans. No use of race in there either. Everyone is out for the same thing...resell to make a profit; it's the American way.
As one who thrives on the hunt for the next big thing here are some observations over my many years of shopping....
Some hot items in no particular order:
Cabbage Patch Dolls: Most of the people waiting in line at my local Toys R Us were Caucasians. Many were parents who camped out the night before waiting to buy those dolls. They wanted it badly enough to spend the time to get there before everyone else.
Tickle Me Elmo: I saw parents of all races camped out days and nights before this came out. The scalpers and resellers were out in full force. Many of them that I saw were Caucasians and Asian Americans.
Nintendo Wii: A lot of college age kids camped out days before the launch at Circuit City, Best Buy, Sears, Target, etc... All races. Resellers came in all flavors as well.
PS3: Same deal as the Wii. lines and camping equipment were in abundance along with people of all races.
For there past few years, there has been reports of some enterprising individuals who hire homelsss people to stand in line for them. That's been confirmed by local news media as well. They come in all races as well.
The fact is, whenever there is a hot item that's good for a quick profit, the reselllers are out in full force. Maybe a lot of them might even be Asians this time around. But the truth is that they come in all colors of the rainbow. As many have mentioned before, it all comes down to how badly do you want it? I don't remember seeing all these types of anti-Asian biased newspaper articles during the Tickle Me Elmo hype. Nor the Wii or Cabbage Patch Kids. I never saw any type of articles in the media that said "Can't Get a Tickle Me Elmo? Blame it on white trash and yuppie parents." (Yes, that was racist, but the point needed to be made and I apologize for dragging those who identify themselves as such into this crazy debate.)
What about Black Friday? Are there articles out there that say "Can't Get A 55 inch LED TV for $500? Blame It On Caucasians. "Can't Get A $200 laptop? Blame it On Poor Americans who camped out a week before."
Instead, I saw articles of organized people who hired the homeless to stand in line for them. They came in all colors but many homeless where African-American in some major cities. Did we see an article blaming the lack of Nintendo Wii's on poor homeless African Americans hoping to earn an easy buck? Of course not. Because that would be racist. But somehow its not racist to blame Asians for the whole reason why no one can get any iPad 2's?
How's this for racist? I'm glad that my fellow Asian American brothers and sisters are finally embracing the American way and have finally figured out how to beat the rest of the American population in grabbing the next hot thing to make a quick buck! Elmo resellers eat your hearts out....you've got NOTHING on the iPad 2 resellers. There happy?!
ARRRHHH You single handily served all of the ignorant, prejudice, racist bigots in this thread. HOwever they will never understand the bigger picture and too self serving to realize their behavor. They are on too high(delusional) moral ground to do no wrong.
There are lots of people in the US who scalp any scarce consumer product, whether it's Tickle Me Elmo or Nintendo Wii or iPads. What's going on in certain large cities is different. We're talking about poor people, working for slave wages on behalf of organized criminals, and capturing nearly all the stock at Apple stores.
For starters, Apple is shipping iPads to stores daily. With Wii or PS3, there was the one night when people camped for the product. Apple has been selling at 9 am every day, and these same people are camping every morning and repeatedly buying up stock. When you've got a few large-scale black-market exporters sending a hundred people out to buy two iPods a day, five or six days a week, the percentage of the overall supply they can capture is much higher than resellers can typically take.
China has a rapidly growing economy with a burgeoning class of extremely wealthy people. Among this group, certain products, like iPhones, iPads, Rolex watches and Louis Vuitton handbags are conspicuous ways to flaunt wealth. These products are more expensive in China than in many other places, and a lot of commerce in China takes place on the grey and black market.
Apple staggers worldwide product releases because it lacks the supply capacity to do a worldwide launch. This creates a situation in which demand exists in territories where the iPad has not been released, and certain opportunistic people try to fill that demand.
In order to make bank reselling iPads in China, one requires 1) a way to get a lot of iPads, and 2) a way to get those iPads into China without having your profits eaten by shipping costs and tariffs/duties. The people who have both of these things are Chinese gangs.
Large cities like New York have large numbers of poor, first-generation immigrants. These people speak little English and, due to the insularity of Chinese immigrant communities, these people are sometimes put into exploitative situations in which they work for less than minimum wage on off-the-books jobs. They are willing to camp out on the sidewalk in cold weather for nine hours for a chance to make between $100 and $200. They'll do this every day, for as long as they can get paid to do it. Chinese gangs know where to round up lots of these people, enough to put a hundred people in front of each Apple store in New York.
These buyers pay for the iPads with cash, and deliver them to their handlers, who wait in cars, and drive away with the bulk of the stores' daily shipments. According to most reports, they get a very small cut of the proceeds, as little as $100 for waiting all night to get 2 iPads. I don't know who is in the cars, but they must be dangerous people; they're driving cars every day at predictable times from predictable locations filled with tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise that is easy to fence, and nobody has robbed them yet.
Apple customers tend to be college or grad students, professionals, or media/technology workers, and Asian-Americans are well-represented in the Apple customer demographic. But these people are easy to distinguish from the middle-aged immigrants who are buying up hundreds of iPads every day from NYC Apple stores and then lining up to deliver them to people in expensive automobiles with tinted windows.
This is not a stereotype. This is a thing that is happening.
For starters, Apple is shipping iPads to stores daily. With Wii or PS3, there was the one night when people camped for the product. Apple has been selling at 9 am every day, and these same people are camping every morning and repeatedly buying up stock. When you've got a few large-scale black-market exporters sending a hundred people out to buy two iPods a day, five or six days a week, the percentage of the overall supply they can capture is much higher than resellers can typically take.
China has a rapidly growing economy with a burgeoning class of extremely wealthy people. Among this group, certain products, like iPhones, iPads, Rolex watches and Louis Vuitton handbags are conspicuous ways to flaunt wealth. These products are more expensive in China than in many other places, and a lot of commerce in China takes place on the grey and black market.
Apple staggers worldwide product releases because it lacks the supply capacity to do a worldwide launch. This creates a situation in which demand exists in territories where the iPad has not been released, and certain opportunistic people try to fill that demand.
In order to make bank reselling iPads in China, one requires 1) a way to get a lot of iPads, and 2) a way to get those iPads into China without having your profits eaten by shipping costs and tariffs/duties. The people who have both of these things are Chinese gangs.
Large cities like New York have large numbers of poor, first-generation immigrants. These people speak little English and, due to the insularity of Chinese immigrant communities, these people are sometimes put into exploitative situations in which they work for less than minimum wage on off-the-books jobs. They are willing to camp out on the sidewalk in cold weather for nine hours for a chance to make between $100 and $200. They'll do this every day, for as long as they can get paid to do it. Chinese gangs know where to round up lots of these people, enough to put a hundred people in front of each Apple store in New York.
These buyers pay for the iPads with cash, and deliver them to their handlers, who wait in cars, and drive away with the bulk of the stores' daily shipments. According to most reports, they get a very small cut of the proceeds, as little as $100 for waiting all night to get 2 iPads. I don't know who is in the cars, but they must be dangerous people; they're driving cars every day at predictable times from predictable locations filled with tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise that is easy to fence, and nobody has robbed them yet.
Apple customers tend to be college or grad students, professionals, or media/technology workers, and Asian-Americans are well-represented in the Apple customer demographic. But these people are easy to distinguish from the middle-aged immigrants who are buying up hundreds of iPads every day from NYC Apple stores and then lining up to deliver them to people in expensive automobiles with tinted windows.
This is not a stereotype. This is a thing that is happening.
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Haha I was going to say... you really think Apple's demograph of costumers are really going to stand up to these shady people hahha?
I've been trying to follow conversations about these scalpers out of curiosity of what is going on with iPad 2 supplies, especially in NYC. I think this is the first post that makes sense to me. It is difficult to follow most posts on this matter due to all the mud slinging.
So if what you say is correct; illegal crime organizations are freely operating without any concern of consequences by either Apple or law enforcement? if so why is this continuing to happen? if this is really what's happening, I find it extremely disturbing.
I also find it disturbing that the NYC Asian Gang Task Force is not on top of this. You'd think that more police presence might discourage them (Triad?)
.BTW good post with some good content.
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Give it six weeks, the supply line will be flushed with new iPad 2s and none of this will even matter any more.
Mark my words: Apple is gonna lock down the hardware and/or iOS something hardcore from here on out. Think cat and mouse game with jail breakers, only 10x worse. Smuggling will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. The devices just won't work outside of the country.
Apple tried to take action last year by refusing cash transactions, and the New York State Attorney General opened a discrimination investigation against Apple. These people are making no effort to hide what's going on. What they're doing at the Apple store isn't illegal, unless the ringleaders' treatment of the shill buyers violates wage and hour laws or something. The NYPost article a couple of days ago suggested they're smuggling the iPads into China.
Organized crime is pretty rampant in NYC, especially in immigrant communities where victims don't know their rights or can't seek help from law enforcement because of language barriers or immigration status.
Who ever gets to the store first gets their iPad first.
Want an iPad? Well go stand in line a bit earlier.
Want an iPad? Well go stand in line a bit earlier.
No offense but you clearly & undoubtedly have absolutely no idea what's going on...
I bet you posted without reading the articles and/or the other posts. Come on...
It's the harsh truth. You want to beat out the resellers, you have to get there before they do. In the end the people that can afford an iPad 2 have jobs to go to, the resellers are just making a quick buck, camping all week just to get by.
Then you lose the bet.
Its none of yours or Apples business as to what people are going to do with their iPads after they purchase them.
What are you going to do? Ban asians from Apple stores? Stop people from buying iPads?
Apple doesn't care if the guy in front of you buys 8 iPads, or if he buys 7 and you buy 1. As long as they are being sold, that is all Apple cares about.
If you want an iPad, you should go to the store early to beat out the lines (regardless of they are resellers or people who just want an iPad) because Apple won't ask them what their intentions are, and Apple won't do anything about it.
@wordoflife
Great repetition of your standpoint. Obviously Apple is doing nothing about it. What people are saying is they should, and if they did how they could do it.
It seems to me this is hurting their relation with their customers and they "should" care about this relationship. But even tis is up for debate.
It's really funny how for some on this forum Apple can do nothing wrong....
Great repetition of your standpoint. Obviously Apple is doing nothing about it. What people are saying is they should, and if they did how they could do it.
It seems to me this is hurting their relation with their customers and they "should" care about this relationship. But even tis is up for debate.
It's really funny how for some on this forum Apple can do nothing wrong....
Sorry but you're wrong. Apple does in fact care if the guy in front of you buys 8 iPads as they already have a 2 purchase limit in place and they have always had a limit on iPhone and iPad purchases. They also went so far as to ban cash and Apple gift cards on the purchases of them too, although they've backed off that stance due to bad publicity from an idiot old lady who obviously has never heard of checking accounts, check cards or pre-paid visa cards.
Also Apple DOES care about the customer experience and the shopping experience. They've said so themselves. Why do you think Apple has their stores the way they do? It's about the customer shopping experience.
I will guarantee you that the next launch of the iPad and maybe the next iPhone, will bring new measures to curb this. Whether they go back to not allowing cash or limiting purchases to 1 per person or maybe even requiring the box be opened in store, they will make changes. Now that there is a lot of negative press (NY Times and many other websites and news channels) about the scalping situation and the frustrated comments I'm sure that are pouring in to their customer relations department, they are getting a sort of black eye and they will make sure it doesn't happen again.
AHHA Are you serious? I love how you justify the difference scalping of other popular products versus the iPad. AGAIN such moral high ground you can justify the difference which favour your argument. HINT: They are the same. I also like how you ASSUME that these people are "organized criminals" as you see it. NO WHERE in the article does it state this. I see capitalism by the everyday man.
Point being what they are doing is not illegal. If you have a problem than you should point you concern at Apple. It will always be challenging if not impossible to please everyone. Sure Apple may have new rules next time BUT until then you just have to realize there is a demand.. and if you have an entrepreneur spirit you too can organize be strategical and do the same. Whether you like it or not, it boils down to at this point in time, limited supply and huge demand. Unfortunately there are people ahead of you in line. STOP acting like a baby. I'm quite surprise at the blatant bigotry, prejudice and racist undertones because a visual minority are ahead of you in line because ONE AGAIN they put more effort than you by getting to the line earlier. Have you all forgot FIRST COME FIRST SERVE?
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Exactly. They say they're not racist and it's plain facts, but their own words say it all. There are a lot of stuff throwing around here just accepted as truth, which they might just be pretty good educated assumptions.
- illegals
- black markets
- poor
- off the book jobs (implying tax evasion)
- gangs
- exploitative
- dangerous
- triads
- organized crime
Just because one is able to use different adjectives just make the person a bigot who has a large vocabulary.
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These accusations of racism are misplaced and irrelevant. For some people, it's good money to line up for iPads. I certainly don't begrudge them that. If you want to lay blame anywhere, it's with Apple.
I believe that Apple didn't have same-day delivery preorders for one of two reasons:
1. To maximize lines after the press coverage of the Verizon iPhone launch; or
2. Because of limited supply, possibly artificially limited by holding stock for an arguably premature international launch.
Many people doubt (1). I actually don't. Everything Apple did seems aimed at maximizing lines: the 5pm launch (on a Friday no less), long wait times for online orders... I think the theory that this is tit-for-tat with the tech press for their previous launch coverage is totally plausible and possible.
Just now I was reading in another forum that someone came back from KL and lots of stores have the iPad 2 in stock (eg $1200 for a 32GB Wifi model) so I don't think there's any question that mass organized reselling is going on and that Asia, particularly Hong Kong, Singapore and KL, are the primary destinations is not racist. It's a statement of fact.
Anyway, it's probably too late to do anything about it this launch but I hope Apple has learned their lesson. Next time around I suggest 1 or more of the following:
- Limit of 1 iPad per customer for a given launch window;
- Limit of 1 iPad per customer paying with cash or prepaid credit cards in that launch window;
- No cash or prepaid CC sales in the launch window.
- A reservation system like the iPhone 4 launch had;
- More focus on online sales as this will help the cash-resale problem (and it IS clearly a problem).
You don't need to treat Asian customers any different (as Cuomo alluded to). In fact, it would be totally wrong to do so and, more to the point, completely unnecessary.
For the disabled, elderly women of Palo Alto who only have cash to buy their iPads: if it means you have to wait so that tens if not hundreds of thousands of iPads make it into the hands of actual customers and not resellers then sorry, but you're just going to have to wait.
I believe that Apple didn't have same-day delivery preorders for one of two reasons:
1. To maximize lines after the press coverage of the Verizon iPhone launch; or
2. Because of limited supply, possibly artificially limited by holding stock for an arguably premature international launch.
Many people doubt (1). I actually don't. Everything Apple did seems aimed at maximizing lines: the 5pm launch (on a Friday no less), long wait times for online orders... I think the theory that this is tit-for-tat with the tech press for their previous launch coverage is totally plausible and possible.
Just now I was reading in another forum that someone came back from KL and lots of stores have the iPad 2 in stock (eg $1200 for a 32GB Wifi model) so I don't think there's any question that mass organized reselling is going on and that Asia, particularly Hong Kong, Singapore and KL, are the primary destinations is not racist. It's a statement of fact.
Anyway, it's probably too late to do anything about it this launch but I hope Apple has learned their lesson. Next time around I suggest 1 or more of the following:
- Limit of 1 iPad per customer for a given launch window;
- Limit of 1 iPad per customer paying with cash or prepaid credit cards in that launch window;
- No cash or prepaid CC sales in the launch window.
- A reservation system like the iPhone 4 launch had;
- More focus on online sales as this will help the cash-resale problem (and it IS clearly a problem).
You don't need to treat Asian customers any different (as Cuomo alluded to). In fact, it would be totally wrong to do so and, more to the point, completely unnecessary.
For the disabled, elderly women of Palo Alto who only have cash to buy their iPads: if it means you have to wait so that tens if not hundreds of thousands of iPads make it into the hands of actual customers and not resellers then sorry, but you're just going to have to wait.
ARe you trolling?
- illegals (Says who? because they are visual minority, they don't dress as cool as you? What substantiate this?)
- black markets AND? This happens all the time (Capitalism). No different you selling your items on eBay or have a friend overseas.. AND it is GREY market not BLACK market.
- poor Awesome so they getting people from the streets? Where does your facts instantiate this? What is the difference from previous "hot products" where others have hired people to stand in line, you white knight? Isn't this illegal as the people hired may or may not be paying taxes? Or you only care if these are the Ipad buyers?
- off the book jobs (implying tax evasion) - HAHAH because someone paying for someone's spot is ok? Or ANYONE selling an iPad2 as soon as they buy it is excerpt unless they are a visual minority you can rage against?
- gangs WHERE?WHAT? I just see group of people some friends some not. I don't look at a group of people and say criminals because they are ahead of me in a line.
- exploitative - HAHAH or a smart person who just made a few hundred for doing pretty easy work.
- dangerous It does get cold out.
- triads HUH? What information instantiates this? WTF?
- organized crime ORganized YES!! crime NO just capitalism you yearn for.
Direct your frustration to the right people if you feel jaded. Ask Apple or call the police (if this is a crime) see what happens when the judge throws your case out of court.
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