I Hope You Kept Your iPhone Receipt
On Wednesday, Apple announced that it will reduce the price of its much-hyped iPhone from $599 to $399 for its 8GB model. The new price is still a little out of my budget, so I don’t have one yet. It was completely different story, though, for those people that had bought them before the reduction. They were a little angry.
Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, apparently got hundreds of personal e-mails from furious costumers about the price reduction. Imagine buying a full-priced iPhone on Tuesday, only to wake up to the news of the price reduction. Ouch.
In response to the outrage, Jobs, in a great PR move, posted a letter on the Apple website. In the letter, he explained that he thought his decision to reduce the price was the right move, but compromised with iPhone buyers by offering them a $100 credit that can be used toward the purchase of other Apple products.
Some people think this is brilliant, some people are just steaming mad. Over here at Shoeboxed, I’m just thinking, “I hope they have their receipts.” The only thing worse than paying $200 more than everybody else for your cell phone is losing out on the $100 of free Apple stuff too because you can’t prove that you actually bought the iPhone.
If any of these early iPhone adopters was using Shoeboxed, though, it couldn’t be easier for them to walk into the Apple store, show them their receipt and cash in on that store credit. Apple offers e-mail receipts for any purchase, no matter if it was purchased online or in one of their brick-and-mortar stores. If you bought an iPhone and had the receipt sent to Shoeboxed, you are in the clear. And if you chose to opt-out of the e-mail receipt option at Apple, you could have scanned your receipt into your Shoeboxed account, and saved it.
You never know when your receipts are going to come in handy. Who knows, that crumpled one in your wallet might be worth $100 one day…
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