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Quick Profit?

O

off in the wood

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 12, 2007
105
0
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=iphone+3g&category0=

so I have a question

1. why would somebody buy an iphone 3g on ebay for $900, when they can walk into an at&t or apple store and buy a 16gb for what....$600 full retail right..for the 16gb?

ok, so here's my situation. my girlfriend's white iphone didn't break, but the speaker stopped working, everything else worked fine. Anyway, called apple, and after a border-line argument with the cs guy, he finally offered to send a brand new one to our house.

sort of off subject:
At first they were going to send us a box and then we would send it right back with her iphone in it, approximately 3-4 days later we would have a new or refurb white 3g iphone. For those 3-4 days she would of been without a phone, when I told the cs guy that, his response was "well we do offer a courtesy phone for $31". I was like buddy, how is charging me $31 a courtesy? To which we spoke to a manager and he offered to send a brand new one....

...so back to my situation.

they put a hold on my credit card for $400 for this 3g white iphone. Well, don't know why/how but her original one is working just fine now. So my question is:

should i keep both of them, let apple charge me $400 for it, use the "defective" one and sell the brand new "in package/cellophane wrap" on ebay for approx $900 and make a quick profit?

or is there something I'm not getting here?
 
Hmm... That would seem pretty fishy. What if the apple hold is only 400 dollars, but once you dont send it back or something they charge you the full amount?

If i were you, i would just send the old one in, and enjoy my brand new in the box iphone. Besides, what beats the feeling of opening an apple product for the first time :p
 
When attempting to determine the going rate for a given item on eboy, don't look at current auctions, look at completed ones. Then sort by highest price first. Then click on a few. In the case of the iPhone, the ones going for ridiculous amounts are invariably either sold by someone with 0 feedback, or won by someone with 0 feedback...i.e. scamville. Either the seller is a sham, or the buyer is a Nigerian.

To find the ACTUAL going rate, find a few auctions where both the buyer and seller have substantial feedback. Then keep looking, because those top $ transactions often are mistakes, have shill bids, etc.

In the end you will often find that actual completed transactions are for considerably less than the plethora of garbage auctions. The signal to noise ratio on eboy is off the chart.

My guess is that the phone is really going for $600-$700.

Also, as mentioned, you have no idea what Apple may do if you don't send the phone back. People have reported getting phone calls demanding the customer come back to the store and re-activate due to a system glitch. They can and will contact you if neccessary.

Even if you got one for $400, and auctioned it, you would be innundated with scam bids, bids from bored teenagers with no intention of paying, Nigerians, Mongolians, Clevelandites, etc. If your auction ends, and the high bidder is a deadbeat bidder or a scammer, you face at least a month's wait to get your fees refunded. And speaking of fees, on $700, you're probably looking at around $80 for shipping/insurance and Ebay/Paypal fees.

Seems like a lot of work for a couple hundred bucks profit, with no guarantees that you won't have to pay more to Apple/AT&T down the road.
 
^^^^ yeah, that's what I was thinking. The whole time in the back of my head I was saying there is no way that they will just charge $400 and forget about me.

but thanks for the feedback
 
Another reason for the high $900 price is in some areas it is still to tough to find an iPhone 3G as they sell out every day with long lines.
 
I don't think it's worth it.
Next time you have problem, and demanding apple to fix your phone. They will see that you were fishy the last time, and you may have a harder time getting the phone fixed/replaced.

just my thoughts
 
View said:
I don't think it's worth it.
Next time you have problem, and demanding apple to fix your phone. They will see that you were fishy the last time, and you may have a harder time getting the phone fixed/replaced.

just my thoughts
Click to expand...

Exactly. Plus your girlfriend's phone could continue to be flaky and then you'd have to call again to replace it.
 
Zengrok said:
Yes.

Show them the same courtesy you demanded of them.

Am I the only one to see the hypocrisy in the OP's post?
Click to expand...

Yes, in this case anyway. I'm not trying to scam apple here. They already have a hold of $400 on my credit card, if I don't return the phone, it's not like they still give me the $400 back and say sorry for your troubles.

I would get a another phone and they would of charged me for it.

It order for this to be some kind of scam, I would be getting one for free somehow? and THEN trying to make a profit

in this case, apple has set fourth a price (400) on which they've said something to the effect "hey if this guy doesn't return it, then what's a price we are willing to charge for it?" It's not like they asked me what would be a fair dollar amount to hold on my credit card, and then I low balled them with $400

then my quick profit idea came from seeing what the iphone 3g is going for on ebay. If apple was going to charge $400, and it's selling for $900.....
 
Sell it on craigslist. You may not get as much as on ebay, but you can insist in meeting personally, won't get scammed, won't pay ebay or paypals.

My MO for the first iPhone and again now is to buy them cheap on CL and then sell them for more on CL. I have a brand new 16GB 3g iPhone that cost me nothing more than a scratched up 16GB Touch, a 6-year old Dell Laptop, and a little time. In fact, I actually profited $85 on the deals.
 
why are you now looking to screw the very people you demanded to help you ,.....have you no morals?...is that the way you were raised ?
 
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