Soooo....you used to get valuable books for $0.25, and now you can't, and you're mad about it? If these sellers are selling the books for 79.95, that probably means that people are BUYING the books for 79.95, so someone wanted them, and is willing to pay $80 for it. Products should go to their highest valued uses, what's wrong with that?
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iPhone Scalpers Force Temporary Closure of Beijing Apple Retail Store
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It is an interesting socio-economic observation that they are so desperate for ANY private sector profit, they will compete to low margins.
The users know they can get a "blessed" one a few short weeks later. The interesting thing is Apple didn't restrict sales per customer at all. One wonders if that is backlash for the wifi fiasco China caused.
If only they had 5x as many the first week.
Rocketman
Why didn't I think of that? Well since I don't speak the language that might have been a problem. The cost of an interpreter would have cut into the profits.
It's a little baffling that they ever thought they could NOT require ID and restrict to 1 per user. What were they thinking?
Just look at any popular consumer electronic launch and you will see the same behavior. They ONLY way to curb it is to require ID and force a 1-to-1 ratio until supply meets demand.
Just look at any popular consumer electronic launch and you will see the same behavior. They ONLY way to curb it is to require ID and force a 1-to-1 ratio until supply meets demand.
That's a very precise location. Where exactly did you go? Iceland? Norway? Sweden? Finland? Denmark? Ireland? Britain? Netherlands? Belgium? Germany? France? Switzerland? Austria? ... Luxembourg? Vatican?
Low margins, but 10% of $700 is $70 which is a great days wage in China. And the scalper groups seem to be moving at least dozens if not hundreds of these phones a day before they got shut down. So even though margin is low on the investment as an hourly wage for their time, this seems well worth it to them, especially since there is low risk that their inventory will loose value before they can sell it.
The following GPS coordinates will point to the exact location where the ship left from. The restaurant was actually a small cruise ship: 47.494414,19.048536.
I figured if Europe isn't specific enough, the name of the country or the city might not be good enough either.
When I graduated from college, I had student loans and didn't have a hell of alot of money. Worked in an animation studio fulltime, but it didn't pay too well for young artists. So yeah, it was really nice to be able to buy books at affordable prices and I was mad I couldn't afford it anymore because someone that didnt even know who the hell these artists were, was buying them all and marking everything up. Many working artists cant even afford to buy art books or art materials. Same goes for computer software. Most young folks can't afford to pay a couple grand for Adobe production packages, Final Cut, Maya or Toonboom Harmony- even if they really really need it. That's why there's a student discount, and many others just steal an illegal copy.
Not everyone is rich. I guess you wouldn't understand......
People are pigs.
Of course they don't HAVE to, unless the English language refers to what is happening when a customer is willing to go to the store to buy a product and ends up buying it from the only source that has a supply.
Do you have a point? Would you prefer to see which country/countries had people acting like pigs? It serves no purpose to name a country when the person simply was relating that this happened when he was on vacation ... in Europe. At all-you-can-eat buffets in the U.S., I have never seen food disappear like that except at functions catering predominantly to younger people.
So...
...You were cruising somewhere between Serbia and Montenegro??? This must have been quite a cruise ship sailing between all these mountains ;-)
Jokes aside, the point was that you referred to Europe as if it is culturally homogeneous which it obvisously isn't. It's like saying "I think everyone in the Americas is geographically and culturally ignorant" when in fact you would be referring only to the US. See?
...You were cruising somewhere between Serbia and Montenegro??? This must have been quite a cruise ship sailing between all these mountains ;-)
Jokes aside, the point was that you referred to Europe as if it is culturally homogeneous which it obvisously isn't. It's like saying "I think everyone in the Americas is geographically and culturally ignorant" when in fact you would be referring only to the US. See?
When I graduated from college, I had student loans and didn't have a hell of alot of money. Worked in an animation studio fulltime, but it didn't pay too well for young artists. So yeah, it was really nice to be able to buy books at affordable prices and I was mad I couldn't afford it anymore because someone that didnt even know who the hell these artists were, was buying them all and marking everything up. Many working artists cant even afford to buy art books or art materials. Same goes for computer software. Most young folks can't afford to pay a couple grand for Adobe production packages, Final Cut, Maya or Toonboom Harmony- even if they really really need it. That's why there's a student discount, and many others just steal an illegal copy.
Not everyone is rich. I guess you wouldn't understand......
Oh, c'mon now, let's not degrade into snarkiness... I have no doubt that it was nice--very nice, in fact--to get a book worth $80 for about one-third of one percent of its apparent actual value. The problem is that there were other people who valued the book much more than you did, and were willing to pay that much more for it. Similarly, in this example in china, ***except for the issue of people cutting in line, which I do think is a real problem***, individuals obviously value the iPhone at more than what it is being sold for (which, apparently, is $0 if you sign up for a 2-year contract with minimum cost/month). When goods are valued by people, prices *will* be paid for them, no matter what. For you, post-college, you would have had to get there earlier than the booksellers to get in line--that would've been a cost for you, paid for in time. You still would have been paying for the books, but in time rather than money. Some people value their time more highly, and would gladly pay more to NOT have to wait in line; to that end, these scalpers provide a service.
You've gotta realize that it doesn't matter if the book buyers knew who the artists were or not. They were people that got the books to the people who DID know who the artists were, and who valued their work at $80/book.
Hmm those coordinates would put you in Budapest, right along (or rather IN the Danube River (CRUISE SHIP))......what part of the U.S. are you from?
The snarky part... You on the other hand are quite the geographer. U European?
American.... U.S.
Not trying to be snarky. Yeah, I understand that those guys were hard core enough to get in line nearly a half day before the sale (no kidding) and they invested their time- after all, that WAS their job. Its frustrating to see people find a great item you would have loved to have and they aren't even happy they got it. They just throw it in the box and grab more. And more. Guess I couldn't bring myself to do something like that for a living. (Those guys never seemed to be happy for some reason....)
BTW, if I saw the same books from the same guy in his bookstore for sale later, apparently they were too high priced for others as well.... and they weren't selling. Otherwise I wouldn't have seen them. Anyway, that bookstore has since gone out of business about 3 or 4 years ago, along with many other bookstores in the Los Angeles area. I must admit.... I don't miss him. Now with the internet, its changing the nature of the marketplace for merchandise and how business is done. Markups are shrinking on some things like used books, software and electronics, as buyers have other options to purchase items at better prices.
It just seems sad that regular people of limited means who want something and would really appreciate it always have to have a middle man inbetween, constantly sucking up a percentage and turning a good thing (affordability) into something else. (Ticketmaster, anyone?) Oh well, good 'ol capitalism, I guess.
Still amazingly cash based. I am in Japan now, and make at least a thousand dollars a month in cash payments that would be check or credit card in North America.
It is not true. As long as the 14 days return policy exists, scalpers can always return their stocks back to Apple if they are not sold out within 14 days after purchase.
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/10/munger_on_middl.html
Definitely check it out...understanding economics has made my (also design-educated) life much less stressful--in this case, I can understand the service that the oft-hated middlemen/scalpers provide
It is an interesting socio-economic observation that they are so desperate for ANY private sector profit, they will compete to low margins.
The users know they can get a "blessed" one a few short weeks later. The interesting thing is Apple didn't restrict sales per customer at all. One wonders if that is backlash for the wifi fiasco China caused.
If only they had 5x as many the first week.
Rocketman
...not quite following your point, rocketman....businesses always compete down margins; if this really is only a 10% markup (which is shockingly low, to me, and must mean that people in china have a very low value of time--that fact, coupled with the apparent limitless purchase quotas, allows scalpers to get a lot of phones relatively cheaply in terms of time and effort), that says to me that there are probably a lot of scalpers competing down profits, just as standard econ would predict.
What'm I missing as far as an "interesting socio-economic observation"?
my bad (I looked up 44.49.. instead of 47..). I guess that's Budapest...
With a user name like 'gnagy' (Nagy is a common Hungarian name), I think we have a second generation immigrant visiting the home country of his parents, who must have left Hungary either after the '56 revolution or in the '80's.
But I might be wrong. He might have been born abroad and moved to the US with his parents.
I don't think there is any country in the world where a quick $70 would be too small for ordinary people. In fact, people in the US did it for even less with the iPad. They bought them in the US and sold it to overseas buyers for a bit more. Take Ebay's fee and the risk into consideration and you'll realise that there are even lower-paid members of this forum.
Frankly, there is no need to patronise people here. They buy the phones, they sell them and they make $70 per item, sold within an hour. That is still above most tech company and they can start their 'enterprise' with the price of one handset. I want to take part in a business where the figures are so good! In fact, no tech company can turn over a 10% profit with such a low initial investment in this timescale. These people must make thousands in a few days - is that still pittance?
In China, you can get multiple phones per person, so there is no Chinese iPhone Lady being denied of her iPhones, despite waving her pile of cash.
I wonder how many people have also ended up with counterfeit Iphones from scalpers / people posing as scalpers.