New Service Lets Users Try Apple's New IPad For 30 Days Before Buying 150
zacharye writes "A new subscription service allows potential gadget owners to test out new devices like Apple's new iPad tablet before committing to a purchase. YBUY, which bills itself as a try-before-you-buy online subscription service, charges users a flat monthly fee of $24.95 for access to a wide range of consumer electronics as well as home and kitchen gadgets. Users can choose one device at a time from YBUY's catalog and trial the gadget for up to 30 days before returning it. Beginning in April, the company's inventory will also include Apple's new iPad."
At face value... (Score:2)
At face value, this sounds pretty slick. Kinda like Netflix for blinkie things. I do hope their 'completely sanitized' procedure actually works, though. The last thing I would want is to rent a tablet then find somebody's snooping my email.
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Shock! Horror! And... a good way for their business to dry up in a hurry.
Incidentally, if you lose your cable box you'll be out $500, too.
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I'm sure they pay for return postage and insure it. And the tracking number proves you sent it back.
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The last several times I sent something through UPS they verified the contents. They do this now because of all the people mailing packages of drugs.
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The last several times I sent something through UPS they verified the contents. They do this now because of all the people mailing packages of drugs.
Wouldn't they rather claim something similar to the telecoms' "common carrier" status? In other words, is there really zero chance that the one cleverly-concealed package of drugs that slips by wouldn't get them in trouble for drug trafficking?
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I recall seeing something on the form referencing a CFR that mandates this.
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If you drop them off with a label already on the box I assume you have an account with them. In which case they know where to find you.
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and suppose you stopped being an AC so these sorts of schemes can stopped being brought up as an actual worry. This service would get sued so fast for pulling this their collective class-action heads would spin. A simple review of UPS documents along with inventory in the discovery phase of the lawsuit would ruin this and for what? A few thousand dollars in merchandise? Even if a couple employees did this after the first few items went missing their internal review would find out quickly. Businesses tha
Re:At face value... (Score:5, Interesting)
It sounds more like people will rent things for vacations and flights who have no interest in actually buying the things.
Re:At face value... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's wrong with that?
Easy solution (Score:2)
Wipe the device before you send it back. It's not hard to do.
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It depends on the device, it depends on the customer, and it depends on the company who claims they'll be sanitizing it.
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It is a walled garden, but you're not supposed to tease the plants.
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Most insightful comment... ever.
Re:At face value... (Score:5, Insightful)
I really do wish people around here would understand what fuck 'marketshare' actually means. Apple could sell 20% more iPads this year than last and still fall in marketshare. Why? Because their marketshare was 100% until their competitors came along.
If you want to experess doom and gloom, go by how much their sales of dropped, not marketshare. Derr.
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I really do wish people around here would understand what [bleep] 'marketshare' actually means. Apple could sell 20% more iPads this year than last and still fall in marketshare.
See, it turns into a race between increasing absolute numbers and decreasing margin. That is where market share really counts, simple.
I have to ask: why is only Apple fanbots who profess not to care about market share? I am sure Apple does, as does everyone in business.
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Of course Apple worries about market share, because it worries about its prospects on a timeframe of more than just one quarter. What I said about Apple cutting its margins? It already happened. Quadrupling its screen resolution has a price: higher bill of materials cost. [techspot.com]. Now hang on for a moment... some actual numbers are not going to kill you. Let's think about what the numbers actually mean. So Apple's bill of materials went up 6% expressed as a fraction of selling price. That translates to roughly $38
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Then short the stock please, I look forward to the short squeeze.
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AAPL is not the best short in the market, but I would not go long either, based on the cracks now appearing in its mainstay franchises. This is entirely appart from the fact that I do not make a habit of investing in unethical organizations. [huffingtonpost.com]
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> I have to ask: why is only Apple fanbots who profess not to care about market share?
Apple isn't hurting for cash, developers, or new customers. An alternative question is why, exactly, are the Haterade Addicts so fixated on marketshare? Is it because there's a really good reason, or is it just interesting because it's a number that went down?
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A.) Haterade addicts & Fanbois are incredibly incendiary terms and probably have no place in the discussion.
B.) Apple will inevitably fall to their relatively normal 30% market share if history tells us anything. Their PC marketshare hovers around 10% and will probably grow somewhat but not to 30% simply because of price.
C.) They're a brand that sells largely over-priced electronics. I won't lie, I really find apple designs endearing and well-crafted. They spend money on quality materials where othe
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>They spend money on quality materials where others do not. But it doesn't justify a 100% premium over their competitors.
Actually, that is pretty much the *only* thing that *does* justify such margins. In just about every other manufacturing industry, there's the cheap crap you can buy at a discount, and the high-quality, well-made stuff that has a much greater than >100% price premium. Toasters, Dining Room Tables, Cars... You name it, and paying for quality has always been profitable.
The only ques
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Er, not really. Many japanese companies tried the whole marketshare-at-all-costs thing at a loss with no real gain, selling products at a loss trying to achieve this fleeting Holy Grail. When Steve Jobs went back into Apple in 1997, he cut
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See, Apple has never had to compete with a product - Linux - which tries its level best to be good for the customer, above all else. That's a new and terrifying threat for Apple. And rightly so.
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I really do wish people around here would understand what fuck 'marketshare' actually means. Apple could sell 20% more iPads this year than last and still fall in marketshare. Why? Because their marketshare was 100% until their competitors came along.
If you want to experess doom and gloom, go by how much their sales of dropped, not marketshare. Derr.
Seems to me you need both figures to get the whole picture.
Let's say your sales go up a little but your marketshare drops drastically. It means you're doing a little better and your competitors are doing much better. It indicates you are no longer so competitive.
Short-term, it's just like you say -- no big deal, it's a fairly new market, etc. Long-term, if that doesn't change, it will prove to be unsustainable. That's the part that remains to be seen. It's easy to have good sales and good markets
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Long-term, if that doesn't change, it will prove to be unsustainable
Why? Apple has millions of units out there and plenty of software to support it.
I wouldn't mind, but this is the exact same rationale people have been using to predict Nintendo's death for over 10 years.
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Long-term, if that doesn't change, it will prove to be unsustainable
...this is the exact same rationale people have been using to predict Nintendo's death for over 10 years.
By no means the end of Apple, but the end of Apple as a good investment. To understand this using your own analogy, just look at Nintendo's five year performance:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=NTOA.F+Interactive#symbol=ntoa.f;range=5y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined [yahoo.com];
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Yeah, it'll be just like that thing apple used to sell. The Macbook I think it was called. Never gained enough market share so they had to kill it. Oh wait.
a) Not having 100% market share doesn't matter as long as you don't keep losing that market share indefinitely.
b) Marketshare is different from marketshare. A Ferrari and a Jetta are both cars, according to you logic that'd put them both in the same market. Apple doesn't care about people who buy $100 tablets and would have never bought an iPad.
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If there is something I said that you believe is in error, as in factually incorrect, let me know.
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I see you making some statements of the obvious
Yes, when I talk to dense people I tend to try to dumb it down to their level. Apparently I need to do so even more with you.
Apple has shown itself perfectly capable of retaining market share while keeping margins high. Their competitors have not. This is because Apple positions their products at the high end and generally competes on features instead of price. They are a brand and not a chine made piece of plastic.
Other competitors cut each other's throats to get the cheapest computer, monitor, phone and t
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Apple has shown itself perfectly capable of retaining market share while keeping margins high.
Excuse me, but both Apple's market share and margins are currently slipping. Or have we now entered that proverbial reality distortion field?
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Apple will remain healthy for the foreseeable future and I agree they don't want or need 100% marketshare. I do believe though a great number of Apple fans were so proud to declare the marketshare when it was higher and now as it falls they rely on profitability which frankly unless you own Apple why would you want to bring it up? I own a Toyota Scion, doesn't mean I am proud when Toyota makes a profit, I could care less since I never see a dime of it and their R&D continues right along with out me.
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In other words, doing well where it actually matters to a company, not doing so well where it matters to dick-waving fanboys?
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Let's all just give a big shout-out to Apple for helping make this the year of Linux on the Tablet!
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Let's all just give a big shout-out to Apple for helping make this the year of BSD on the Tablet!
FTFY.
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Let's all just give a big shout-out to Apple and Linux for helping make this the year of No Windows on the Tablet!
FTFY.
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The first hit is free (Score:2)
Just like any other drug.
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Except in that case most people will realize they don't have an use for one.
At least that's my experience of iPad users. Past the "it's so cool" period, they pretty much only use it in the toilet.
I don't think Apple will like this.
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And yet they still buy each new model at release.
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Is there an app for wiping?
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Personally, I just check out Facebook while sitting.
That would certainly explain the vast majority of the content on Facebook...
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At least that's my experience of iPad users. Past the "it's so cool" period, they pretty much only use it in the toilet.
Not my experience. Gave my wife an iPad last Christmas . Nearly three months on I'm amazed how much she still uses the thing - Scrolling through photo albums, epicurious recipes when cooking, watching TV shows, playing games with our kids, Facebook - On and on. In our house it's a total multipurpose device - Every week she's using it in some new, nifty neat way.
Re:The first hit is free (Score:4, Insightful)
Same as my wife. For a lot of people, a tablet can be the ideal device. If they spend most of their time in a web browser anyway, and don't do a whole lot of typing, the tablet is a shoe-in. A laptop is too much for them.
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For me, that's exactly how it played out. I'm a programmer, I need a beast of a machine with a good keyboard and tons of display real estate. The only time I ever use the tablet is for playing Angry Birds on the crapper.
For my wife though, the tablet is her new PC. She uses it almost exclusively, because it does 99% of what she needs from a computer: surf the web, play dinky little games, read email, stream youtube. The other 1% is when she needs to edit a real word doc or print something for work.
Thing
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Except in that case most people will realize they don't have an use for one.
At least that's my experience of iPad users. Past the "it's so cool" period, they pretty much only use it in the toilet.
I don't think Apple will like this.
Yup, definitely on the shitter, plus on the train, or when I'm waiting for someone. Getting half and hour back here or there adds up.
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Yes, but 30 days means people either:
A) Are still on the honeymoon and think it will be useful to them
B) Set it aside after a few days and decided to return it "later"
Returned iPads resold as new? (Score:2)
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But they do have to worry about paying for it if they should damage it.
This isn't news, this is an advertisement (Score:2, Informative)
There is no article to discuss, it just goes to a quote of a giant press release. This is spam.
Re:This isn't news, this is an advertisement (Score:4, Informative)
I tagged "slashvertisement"
Re:This isn't news, this is an advertisement (Score:5, Insightful)
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...it's also an interesting service that many geeks would probably be quite interested in.
Sorry, if you use Apple you have to turn your geek card.
Agreed. That's the way I feel about Facebook too.
Especially for those who remember Apple prior to OS X, the major selling point of Apple and "computing for the rest of us" was that they made devices that didn't require a geek to use. And I admit that claim had some merit; completely non-technical people I know who bought a Mac some years back were delighted not to have all the problems with it that they had with Windows PCs.*
* Most of which involved malware, some involved the tendency Windows had t
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Ah, the attempt to make a virtue out of a preference for shitty products.
You can't be a gearhead if you drive a BMW. That's way to well designed and pleasant to drive.
Try driving this customised Edsel, with a mixture of fat and skinny wheels, hydraulic jacks and blue under car illumination. You have to be a real good driver to drive this.
Terms of service: lost device liability (Score:5, Informative)
From the Terms of Service [ybuy.com]:
6. Delivery Confirmation
Because many instances may occur at your delivery address that is beyond our control, you agree that any delivery confirmation provided by the carrier is deemed sufficient proof of delivery to the card holder, even without a signature.
So let's say that UPS claims to deliver it to you but takes no signature -- and the box promptly walks away. From the language above, it sounds like you have the responsibility to hassle with UPS for an insurance claim.
And on the Chargeback Policy in case you decide that it wasn't your fault that a device didn't exactly isn't on your doorstep when you get home:
7. Chargeback Policy
All references to a “chargeback” refer to a reversal of a credit/debit card charge placed on www.ybuy.com. There is no reason for a chargeback to ever be filed. If a credit is due, simply contact us and we will gladly issue it. Unnecessary chargebacks are theft and can be prosecuted. If you feel that your credit/debit card was used fraudulently on www.ybuy.com, please contact us for immediate resolution at support@ybuy.com.
YOU AGREE THAT YOU WILL NOT CHARGEBACK ANY AMOUNTS CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT/DEBIT CARD ON THIS SITE. IF YOU CHARGEBACK A CREDIT/DEBIT CARD CHARGE FOR A PAYMENT INITIATED BY YOU, YOU AGREE THAT THIS SITE MAY RECOVER THE AMOUNT OF THE CHARGEBACK IN ADDITION TO $ BY ANY MEANS DEMED NECESSARY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO RECHARGING YOUR CREDIT/DEBIT CARD OR HAVING THE AMOUNT RECOVERED BY A COLLECTION AGENCY.
Re:Terms of service: lost device liability (Score:5, Informative)
You can put anything you want into terms and conditions. If it violates their service agreement with the CC processing service (which it is practically guaranteed to), it will be null and void. Credit card companies value your revenue stream more than they value the vendors. It's very hard to run a service without being able to accept MC/Visa/Amex - and if they really use this tactic, and the CC companies get an earful from several customers, it's likely to put them out of business.
Yes, you might have to fight with UPS or Fedex or USPS about the delivery - but often (again) you can cry foul to the CC company, and they'll refund your money and take it up with the carriers insurance. For the big carriers, it's cheaper to pay the occasional claim and save the 1-1.5 minutes of downtime getting a signature. You'll notice that tomorrow, none of the carriers will leave the iPads without a signature in any place that's even remotely dicey. Dell boxes tend to get the same careful treatment. These guys track cost/benefit very carefully.
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You can put anything you want into terms and conditions. If it violates their service agreement with the CC processing service (which it is practically guaranteed to), it will be null and void. Credit card companies value your revenue stream more than they value the vendors.
I just wouldn't do business with these "fine people" in the first place.
Reading their ToS it occurred to me. Honest businessmen wake up every morning, in a cold sweat, trembling, saying "man, today's the day, I can feel it in my bones! A satisfied customer I haven't wronged in any way is going to seek justice against me, I just know it! They'll probably do it with a chargeback. How EVIL! Damn, I gotta protect myself!" Oh wait, no they don't. Honest businessmen don't do that at all, come to think o
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Hope they do not take Amax because there is no way that will stand up to them. You can return anything physical for a full refund period. Anything intangible you can say you do not want. It's heavy handed and some people abuse it but there is no opting out of it.
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And considering how UPS and other deliverers usually either toss them over the wall if nobody's home or simply hands it to a neighbor (at least in my country), I guess that will happen more than just occasionally.
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"There is no reason for a chargeback to ever be filed" and "YOU AGREE THAT THIS SITE MAY RECOVER THE AMOUNT OF THE CHARGEBACK IN ADDITION TO $ BY ANY MEANS DEMED NECESSARY" (sic)
Pretty sure that statement's in breach of their merchant agreement. At least it would be for me. Sounds like they found their lawyer at the bottom of the foreign owner's family.
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> "There is no reason for a chargeback to ever be filed"
That's also more of a statement than a contractual term, and a wrong one at that. It is like saying "We never make any errors." IANAL, but I would not expect it to stand in court if they rely on it.
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There is no reason for a chargeback to ever be filed. If a credit is due, simply contact us and we will gladly issue it.
In other words ... "trust us! we never make mistakes and we always act on good faith, that's why we demand that you surrender the usual means of recourse in the event that we grossly fail you..." Yeah, that's what honest people always require.
Unnecessary chargebacks are theft and can be prosecuted.
If chargebacks and the private arbitration that could result are theft, then a legal suit in a real court must be robbery! Yes, as everyone knows, honest businesses always threaten their customers up-front, without reason or provocat
If this catches on (Score:3)
Its the final nail in brick and mortar retails coffin. There will be no reasons to even visit the local shop to have a look at something you are going to order on New Egg or Amazon later. Retail at least could hope that might stop in to see the new IPad and leave with something else that just had to have on impulse, now habitual online shoppers will have no reason to set foot in a local store. The can just try out $ITEM in the own home.
Re:If this catches on (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno, it doesn't really affect the one compelling advantage of brick and mortar retail -- walk in, walk out with the product today.
People doing that (unless they change their mind and buy at the store) are a burden, not a benefit, to brick and mortar stores.
Plus, the main browsing advantage of brick and mortar stores isn't browsing a single chosen item before buying it, its side-by-side comparison of competing items.
Plus, compared to the ToS posted for YBUY, in-store browsing (even if you are unusually prone to impulse buying under those circumstances) involves less financial risk than YBUY's delivery liability and chargeback-recovery policies.
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Plus, the main browsing advantage of brick and mortar stores isn't browsing a single chosen item before buying it, its side-by-side comparison of competing items.
I'd argue that's actually the main benefit of online shopping. They provide way more details about the item than a tiny postcard in front of a shelf. Comparison shopping is a main driver for cheap online prices as well.
rent a center can say we do the same with no shipi (Score:2)
rent a center can say we do the same with no shipping or we use own own trucks and crew
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Brick and mortar still wins at "pay now, get it now". There's nothing that annoys me more in this world than women, but my second greatest annoyance is slow/costly shipping for online purchases. If I can drive/bus/taxi to a store 10 minutes away, get my gadget, and get home an hour later vs ordering online, paying $75 in shipping, waiting four days and having to stay home all day because no big name couriers work after 5 pm... yeah, I'm going to the store, saving my money and my time. Even if the reta
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Yes.
Or try for two weeks free via an Apple Store. (Score:5, Informative)
Apple Retail Stores have a 14-day, no restocking fee, no-questions-asked-as-long-as-it's-not-damaged return policy on iPads. (And Macs, and iPods, and purchased-outfit iPhones, and pretty much anything that's not software...)
Just buy one at an Apple Store, and return it if you don't like it.
(Posting AC because I'm a Genius.)
Re:Or try for two weeks free via an Apple Store. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm a genius too, but I hardly ever post anonymously.
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But you're too young! ;)
Pavlovian Response (Score:2)
$25/30d - shipping + ??? = profit? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a bit baffled - $25, less packaging and shipping, on a $500 item (even at wholesale, say $400) means a payback period of no less than 24 months. That's probably longer than the expected lifecycle of a device like this. How many people would be interested in trialing a original iPad?
On the flip side, do you really buy enough stuff to justify $300/year? Especially when you can't get 2-3 similar items to play with side by side (Transformer, iPad, and Note; or three digital cameras like the Lumix TZ20, Sony HX30v, and the Canon SX 260HS).
And then there's the whole - pay retail for a returned and worn product part. I'm sure there's a marketing case for this, but clearly I'm not the demographic!
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Probably they aren't paying the $500 retail price that we do. Either they have some kind of agreement or even the very first recipient of a product gets a refurbed item
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The resale may be what they plan on using to make up the difference. A well refurbed Apple item will fetch 70% or more of the retail value after a year as the new ones come out. They might be able to flip a lot of these tablets for $300 (for the $500 model, next year's $400 model) around launch time, which means that if they cost $420 wholesale (probably higher at launch, who knows) and they can sell them for $300, less about a 5% return rate and shipping costs of $10, for $275 net. To them, 12 months onl
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I'm a bit baffled - $25, less packaging and shipping, on a $500 item (even at wholesale, say $400) means a payback period of no less than 24 months.
The $25 subscription fee doesn't cover the purchase price of the device. It only covers the trial of it (and potentially the trial of other devices). If you decide to keep your iPad after one month, then you would buy it at their full listed price (with no discounts).
Also, it's a subscription fee, so after you've tried out the iPad and a couple of other gadgets after a couple of months, they intend to keep on charging you that $25 a month even if you don't order any other new items.
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Surely the point is if an ipad costs the $500 and they can only loan it to one person at a time who pays them $25/month. Then it will take 20 months for them to break even on buying that ipad. Since there's shipping/etc ballpark it at 2 years.
Of course loss leading is harldly a new strategy.
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Of course they are losing money on the iPad. It's a product that will get people to sign up for their service. It's like that 1 good song on a CD album. Or that $50 HD on sale today only on an ad flyer for Best Buy -- while everything else is regular price.
And so far, I would say their going pretty good. They got an article on slashdot. And now I know they exist. +1 for brand recognition.
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At end of product life cycle (when a new, shinier iPad comes out, for example), old stock could be offloaded through places like Amazon, which already provides for selling of used electronics. This business plan is very similar to what car rental agencies have used for quite a while.
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You're ignoring the fact that they will resell the item as a refurb, recouping a significant chunk of the purchase price. I still see private individuals selling the original iPad for $400 - good old Apple resale value hilarity. I doubt YBUY is worried about this stuff. Any cash they earn by renting them out is gravy on top of the eventual resale, and it's quite likely they've negotiated a volume discount with Apple.
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What discount would Apple give them? They have _maybe_ 100 of these (probably a lot less). That's not a volume purchase. And there are some people that would have purchased iPads, but decided to rent them instead, and decided they didn't like it.
I really don't see what the upside is for Apple to negotiate with them.
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Tons of people buy iPads, change their minds, then resell them in the used market. That "hurts" Apple more than a rental.
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May work in your country... (Score:3)
In my country (as well as most of Europe that I'm aware of) you have the right to return what you buy online within 14 days without questions asked. By law. Some companies already extended this, knowing that people will either return it right away anyway or keep it anyway, so 30 days no-fee returns are pretty common already.
So... well, maybe a nifty idea but I fail to see the news.
Ohhh, slashvertising... never mind, silly me, living in the past when /. was about news and not ads.
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Just don't loan one to a Dutchman (Score:2)
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You should see how nuts some of the blogs dedicated (yes dedicated) to the new Ipad are O_o:
http://whereismynewipad.tumblr.com/post/19363428088/when-it-comes [tumblr.com]
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Dear Trolling AC who pretends to be foreign or actually is:
Please recognize that overeating has little to do with actual mass intake and more to do with caloric intake, so the perception of overeating is very different from the reality. A plate of healthy eggs and bacon is usually better than a large muffin of relatively equal mass (carbohydrates add up quickly). As it stands the UK and western Europe is slightly thinner than the US but also has a slightly lower poverty rate. In a food-rich environment l
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Yeah, moderation. A fried egg, couple strips of bacon and some whole grain toast is a fine breakfast, moreso if you have a pear or something like this with it.
Eating a pound of bacon for breakfast is something altogether different, though. Limey style (back) bacon is better too, vs. north america's fatter (belly) bacon. Kind of hard to find here, though.