Education discount
This will probably anger some people, but.....I'm a teacher. I was concerned about this issue myself so I asked what the rules were. I was told on more than one occasion by Apple reps, employees at the store, and employees at their Apple education phone number that it is OK to buy a computer and give it to someone else. Based on this information, I once purchased a laptop and gave it to my mother as a gift. She registered it under her own name, purchased Apple Care, etc. with no problems. I agree that abuse of discounts that are well intended by the company is wrong, but I do not feel bad about what I did, considering I was directly told by the company that it was completely legit. I understand that others may disagree on this.
Of course this doesn't exactly address the original question, but it does indicate that they aren't overly concerned about what happens to the computer, since they say in their own rules that they are supposed to be for "personal use" but they then tell people that you can give it away.
I'm trying to think about how Apple might view this. The bottom line is that the discount is designed to encourage people to buy their product, particularly those in eduation where Apple has traditionally tried to cultivate customers. To take it to an extreme, even if EVERY eligible person purchased their allotted one computer in a given year and gave or even sold it to someone else, the net effect for Apple is positive in that more people are using their product. Probably a good number of those people would not be using the product without the discount, which (as some have pointed out) is not that large on many items anyway, but might be just enough to convince people to buy. So my guess is that Apple is willing to eat the discount if it gets their product wider usage. I mean, they have to know this is going on, and they haven't tried to stop it. In fact, I feel liek what I was told encouraged it. Of course I could be way off here, I'm no economist.
On the tax issue, I think the rule is that if the place you are ordering from online has a store in your state, you pay tax. But then again I've ordered from Apple online in states without a store and had to pay tax, so who knows.
This will probably anger some people, but.....I'm a teacher. I was concerned about this issue myself so I asked what the rules were. I was told on more than one occasion by Apple reps, employees at the store, and employees at their Apple education phone number that it is OK to buy a computer and give it to someone else. Based on this information, I once purchased a laptop and gave it to my mother as a gift. She registered it under her own name, purchased Apple Care, etc. with no problems. I agree that abuse of discounts that are well intended by the company is wrong, but I do not feel bad about what I did, considering I was directly told by the company that it was completely legit. I understand that others may disagree on this.
Of course this doesn't exactly address the original question, but it does indicate that they aren't overly concerned about what happens to the computer, since they say in their own rules that they are supposed to be for "personal use" but they then tell people that you can give it away.
I'm trying to think about how Apple might view this. The bottom line is that the discount is designed to encourage people to buy their product, particularly those in eduation where Apple has traditionally tried to cultivate customers. To take it to an extreme, even if EVERY eligible person purchased their allotted one computer in a given year and gave or even sold it to someone else, the net effect for Apple is positive in that more people are using their product. Probably a good number of those people would not be using the product without the discount, which (as some have pointed out) is not that large on many items anyway, but might be just enough to convince people to buy. So my guess is that Apple is willing to eat the discount if it gets their product wider usage. I mean, they have to know this is going on, and they haven't tried to stop it. In fact, I feel liek what I was told encouraged it. Of course I could be way off here, I'm no economist.
On the tax issue, I think the rule is that if the place you are ordering from online has a store in your state, you pay tax. But then again I've ordered from Apple online in states without a store and had to pay tax, so who knows.
