All you are doing is competing with your customers - Eckhard Pfeiffer, to Intel
|
|
|
Apple shafts Mac Mini customers
THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING the PR catastrophe that is the Iphone 4 will be aware that when Apple cocks up it will blame the press, partners, business rivals, users and the dog eating its homework before it puts its own hand up.
Last week Apple made a cock up on its website where it put up a price of $619 for one of the models of the Mac Mini with 8GB DRAM. Users should have smelt a rat, because the price was actually reasonable.
After all $619 is about what you expect to pay for a computer without a keyboard or monitor and is the price of one of the lower spec models.
Needless to say there were a fair few orders before the mistake was discovered.
In normal circumstances a responsible company would say it was sorry and refund the money. Unfortunately that is not the way of Jobs' Mob. It assumed that people wanted the Mac Mini at any price.
It changed the price on its website and then proceeded to charge people the full price. In this case the model costs $1,463, which is a significantly more sizable wallop on the credit card.
The problem for Apple is that its webstore is worldwide and some countries have different consumer laws.
According to Digitimes, the Consumer Foundation in Taiwan has told Apple to fulfil its contracts and deliver products.
In 2009, Dell made notebook pricing errors on its online store and was fined quite a bit of dosh by the Law and Regulation Commission of the Taipei City Government for failing to meet the organisation's demands for consumer compensation.
It is not clear how many different countries saw the pricing mistake. So far there have only been complaints from Taiwan. µ
Share this:
Share
A happy ending is when the negotiation goes exactly how you thought it would. Any other outcome isn't happy, even when the consumer's rights were preserved in the end.
If Apple advertised its products with a wrong place for one second, they should honor what they told and sell for that price to all those who saw the advertisement.
Not only they didn't do that, they also charged the corrected price from the consumers who purchased the products while the announced price was still erroneous.
That's Apple.
Also in Italy, if you put up that price and ppl buy and pay, YOU MUST honor it. So i hope some mactard got it in time.
But what amazes me is the fact that they changed the price AFTER the purchase and STILL charged the customer, someone should be held criminally responsible for that.
Also in Italy, if you put up that price and ppl buy and pay, YOU MUST honor it. So i hope some mactard got it in time.
But what amazes me is the fact that they changed the price AFTER the purchase and STILL charged the customer, someone should be held criminally responsible for that.
The Taiwan consumer authorities have dealt with this problem many times. Previously lackluster and accounting challenged computer company Dell was forced to honor its online pricing mistake.
Moral of this story is that all companies try and refuse to honor their online mistakes. However those crafty Taiwanese claim that the online price is a legally binding contract with the public. So no shafting involved, there's only happy endings for the consumer.
xoxo
Shaft Jr.