Apple Halts 10 Percent Restocking Fee For iPhone 4

Geek Sugar ^

[EagleUSA]

Apple has not changed in over 30 years -—

[Chet 99]

Apple has not changed in over 30 years -—

Okaaaaaaaaaay......

[Psycho_Bunny]

I can respect Apple for this. I assume AT&T is going to let people walk away from the contracts?

[perfect_rovian_storm]

Never! Apple has it’s issues, but AT&T is truly evil.

[cynwoody]

How many disk swaps to do a Pascal compile?

[CSI007]

Your right...They are still trash, just like the II/IIe days.

[TomServo]

Kudos to Apple, and any other company, for squaring it up with the customer.

[mylife]

Whats 30 bucks when you are paying $150 a month for service?

[ROTB]

>How many disk swaps to do a Pascal compile?

None, if you have two floppies. Could you get a hard derive for that puppy?

[moehoward]

I asked several times if there was any penalty if I cancelled in the first 30 days. I was assured each time there was none.

Hasn’t been a problem, 6 months in now. Looking forward to the iPhone upgrade. The rest of the family is excited about moving over when their deal with Verizon is up next year.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

AT&T doesn’t have a choice; Federal law requires that a wireless carrier let a customer out of the contract within the first 30 days.

Apple, on the other hand, was pretty slimy for charging 10% restocking fees on a phone they knew was defective... They’re in full damage-control mode now, as problem after problem manifests itself with the iPhone.

I suspect the next version of the iPhone will be out by the end of the year, so that Apple can put this Vista-like fiasco behind them as quickly as possible.

[denydenydeny]

My iphone 3G died last week, and when I went to the Apple store to get a new one, I had the choice between a 3GS for $99 and a 4 for $199.

Didn’t have to ponder that one very long.

[Sto Zvirat]

10 percent is charitable compared to sleazy places like Best Buy.

But, no thanks, I’m not an Apple fan, even when they try to recover from a screw up. I can build a faster system for much less and have the freedom to do what I want with PC.

[Swordmaker]

iPhone4's are returnable up to 30 days from purchase... with no restocking fee. PING!

PLEASE NOTE, if you post a thread on APPLE, iPHONES, iPAD, or Macs, and wish to notify the Apple/Mac,iPhone,iPad list, please have the courtesy to Ping me, so that I may ping the list. Certain anti-Apple persons, notably, for-q-clinton, PugetSoundSoldier, and a few others are deliberately NOT pinging me to their negative, anti-Apple threads... for reasons of their own.

Please don't feed the Anti-Apple Trolls™

Apple iPhone4 Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Swordmaker]

None, if you have two floppies. Could you get a hard derive for that puppy?

Yeah, they had a 5MB hard drive... I think it sold for $799.

[Mobties]

Lesson #1. Never buy the first edition, series, etc. of any tech product unless it has been on the market successfully for at least six months.

[Locomotive Breath]

Exactly. No one ever gets it perfect the first time out of the gate. Ever.

I’m thinking of finally upgrading to Snow Leopard.

[cynwoody]

None, if you have two floppies.

I was recalling a Pascal compiler, developed at UCSD in the seventies. As compilers usually are, this one was organized into phases, in which the output of one phase was the input to the next. Since the compiler was quite large, and the floppies only held 140K, they divided the phases across multiple floppies, which you needed to load in sequence to complete a compile. One minor mercy: if your program contained syntax errors, the first phase would find them, so you didn't have to go through the whole procedure.

Could you get a hard derive for that puppy?

They did introduce a hard drive before the product's end of life, but it only held five meg or so.

[dayglored]

> Apple, on the other hand, was pretty slimy for charging 10% restocking fees on a phone they knew was defective

Hey Puget, Swordmaker, a favor: Please quote me the figures on how many iPhone4 units have been returned as defective, compared to how many have been sold. I don't know, but I figure you do.

Just two numbers: How many sold, how many returned. Here's how I look at it.

If the number returned is over 25% of units sold, then I'll agree with Puget that "Apple knew it was defective", and I'll agree on the "slimy" characterization, no doubt.

If it's between 10% and 25%, then I'd say it's probable that Apple knew -something- was up, but they hadn't figured it out yet, and continued to work on it while selling initial product. That is not uncommon, but I personally find it poor engineering and business practice.

If it's between 1% and 10%, it's entirely possible they had no idea -- depending on their product testing, they could have missed it, or maybe a marginal batch of components took a few percent of the production units over the edge. I doubt it's component related, though. I'm inclined to think it's a combination of antenna design and the improper software algorithm they say they discovered, both of which are not "statistical" in nature -- they're integral to the product design. I would expect them to show up uniformly across -all- sold product.

If it's less than 1%, it's not a design problem, that's down in the noise of AQL and such things.

You're bright guys with experience in the industry and you follow this stuff -- what are the two numbers?

I'm not looking to start anything -- I'm just asking about what percentage of units have been returned as defective, and hence ran into the restocking fee question. Assuming Apple or somebody reputable has the numbers.

Thanks, guys.