I see you’re offering a “free” iPod Touch if we buy a Mac for university. There are two things wrong with this ad, and no, one of them is not the ubiquitous asterisk and “Terms apply” gotcha.
There’s no such thing as a free iPod
Again, you’re proving you’re no different than most other retailers in deceptively saying that the iPod is free. It’s not free, it’s included in the price. Well, actually, it’s worse than that. We have to buy it at the retail price and you will rebate up to $259. Since the cheapest Touch retails at $259 that doesn’t cover the taxes now does it? So it ain’t free, is it?
It’s also just a rebate, which means you’re bribing us with our own money. We pay you. You hold on to millions of dollars of our cumulative money earning interest for weeks. We waste our time filling out your stupid rebate form and sending it in (don’t get a single character wrong or it’s grounds for rejection). You give us our money back sometime while we worry about if you’re using a shady rebate company that will conveniently “forget” to send the cheque. We’ve still paid the taxes and you’ve stolen our time.
Clearance
And, for those who don’t follow your product release cycles, you neglect to mention that this is the older generation model that will be replaced with the next generation in — oh — October. Once all the kids are back at school and have had to purchase the Mac and iPod.
Fine, fine, it’s a nice way for you to clear inventory before the new model comes out. Why not be up front about it or just discount the Mac price by $259? Then we save on taxes and don’t waste time on sucky rebates. Right, because your cost is a heck of a lot cheaper than the cash price, so it’s really costing you nowhere near $259 to make this offer.
You demean yourself with every one of these deceptive tactics.
It’s been reported that Microsoft received a call from someone at Apple telling them that the laptop hunter ads were misleading. Another petty action. So you lowered your prices a teensy bit to make the MS ad just slightly incorrect and suddenly this is worth a call to Microsoft? Good grief, this is a rounding error.