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Why is Apple encouraging grey market sellers?

S

steffi

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 7, 2003
865
12
The AirPods market is full of grey market sellers. These things don't need any registration and it's obvious the 6 week wait times are due to all the grey market sellers ordering many to sell on craigslist or eBay.

But why is Apple encouraging this practice?
 
steffi said:
The AirPods market is full of grey market sellers. These things don't need any registration and it's obvious the 6 week wait times are due to all the grey market sellers ordering many to sell on craigslist or eBay.

But why is Apple encouraging this practice?
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Apple is in the business of selling things. What people do with them is not their concern and out of their control. If people stopped buying from these resellers they would go away. Personally I never buy from unauthorized sellers.
 
I do think they should limit how many one person can buy at once. They've done that in the past with iPhones. It creates a bad customer experience to make people wait weeks to get an item, also resulting in missed sales.
 
PaladinGuy said:
I do think they should limit how many one person can buy at once. They've done that in the past with iPhones. It creates a bad customer experience to make people wait weeks to get an item, also resulting in missed sales.
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It also creates a bad experience whenever there is a warranty issue.
 
whenever there are a short of supply, there will be 'grey markets'. plus apple can't really control how many pairs one can buy?

I mean, you can limit purchases on one credit card, but people will just go buy those pre-paid Visa cards, or walk into a store with cash.
or, you can limit purchases on one account. then people will just use guest checkout, or create multiple accounts.
or, you can limit purchased shipped to one address. then how many should you limit? I may have a 'shared address' of 10 people, or maybe I have a big family, with multiple people living in one house, and each and every one of us want some extras as gifts.

so, there's pretty much no good way to control who buys it and how many one buys, without causing significant customer experience issue.
 
Well, coming in and buying all inventory is a good sign that it isn't for them. I am honestly interested to know what has plagued their production so much. Delayed launch and then heavily limited supply. Curious as to what component is causing issues.
 
PaladinGuy said:
Well, coming in and buying all inventory is a good sign that it isn't for them. I am honestly interested to know what has plagued their production so much. Delayed launch and then heavily limited supply. Curious as to what component is causing issues.
Click to expand...

Just look at those who are selling them via eBay and craigslist and look how many they have for sale each time. Then look at those tracking sites and how there's literally no stock except in Perth, Australia.
 
As others have said, there are legitimate reasons for people to be buying multiple pairs of these so apple don't want to stop those people. I don't think they thought they would be as popular as they are either. From all the negativity you would think that apple would shift 10 macbook pros, 2 sets of airpods and half a dozen iphone 7's after they were announced.

If they can't ramp up production without compromising on quality then they wont. They will be in stock soon enough.
 
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