Many of Apple's most loyal customers are feeling taken by the company after it announced an unprecedented 33 percent price cut on its iPhone handset after just two months on the market, but chief executive Steve Jobs in an interview Wednesday said that's just the tough luck of technology.
"If they bought it this morning, they should go back to where they bought it and talk to them," he said. "If they bought it a month ago, well, that's what happens in technology."
Jobs went on to say that Apple's high-volume manufacturing will prevent it from taking a considerable hit on costs following the $200 price reduction.
"We're also willing to be more aggressive. We think we have a real winner, and customers love the iPhone," he explained. "The product's been extremely well accepted; we want to put the pedal to the metal. A holiday season is approaching; we'd have to wait another year for another one."
In the meantime, however, Apple's dramatic iPhone price cut has drawn the ire of thousands of its most faithful customers, many of which waited hours on long lines in late June to fork over what now seems to be an unreasonable fee for being amongst the iPhone elite.
In fact, the move has sparked an outright rebellion in the Apple support forums, where discussion threads filled with hate mail are piling up faster than Apple can delete them. One customer created a thread to note that Apple in a matter of hours had managed to delete over 2,200 customer complaints only to watch that very thread become victim to censorship itself.
"The more the day goes by, the more furious I become," wrote VSiskos in "1 Million People Slapped In The Face Today," one of the forum threads still standing as of Wednesday evening.
Under's Apple's standard return policy, customers who bought a product within 14 days of a price reduction can ask to be reimbursed the difference, and some Apple stores have reportedly done the same for iPhones purchased earlier than that.
But as Philip Elmer-DeWitt blogs for Business 2.0, those random acts of flexibility seem only to have further inflamed the wounded feelings of those who weren't extended the same courtesy.
"They told me to shove it," wrote tulanejosjh. "14 days or nothing."
"Same here," added jmolina1313. "The guy treated me like I was on drugs!"
Many customers seeking refunds on Wednesday reported being treated rudely, which is not something you often hear about Apple employees and quite a contrast to the scene in the same stores two months ago.
"The last time I walked into an Apple Store there were lines of employees clapping and giving high fives to congradulate us on the wise decision to buy an iPhone," wrote ck2875. "I wonder if going back for this would be similar?"
169 Comments
Where Jobs went wrong with this launch, and the lowering of the iPhone price, is that he had nothing to trump the existing iPhone as its replacement or a newer model. Other than that why are people so pissed? Get over it already.
I think almost 1 million people learned a valuable lesson about impulse buying.
if you bought iPhone on Tuesday, then I feel your pain (you can probably get $200 back though).
but if you bought iPhone like 2 months ago, then what da hell is there to complain about? it is so obvious that Apple shouldn't be giving refunds. maybe I should ask for refunds on some of the macs I bought which went down in price after 2-3 years.
I don't see anything wrong with what Jobs is doing here.
All of the ?Wahhhhh I bought my iphone first so I?m out 200 bucks? post are great comic relief. -- By the by people threatening to leave Apple as customers will quickly replaced by new Mac fans as soon as these great new devices are released. We?ll let you know how Leopard is in Oct
Note to self: Tech prices now are dropping faster than ever. Wait two months and save 33% on hot selling products.
I've really been waiting for a MacBook Pro and now that prices are falling fast I think I'll just wait for it to go from $2495.00 to $1750.00. And you know, since it's actually been out for a while they might even drop the price all the way to $1495.00. I know the price drop is coming so I'll just wait until it does to buy ANY more Apple products.
If Apple sees a big drop in sales in the coming months it's because customers are waiting for the big drop in price.
That's technology!
Hal