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Letter from Steve Jobs: No Apple Giftcards for iPads

firstadopter.com

11–20 of 28 posts

Re: Letter from Steve Jobs: No Apple Giftcards for iPads

#11
post #5

is this legal? per the department of consumer affairs, "Any gift certificate sold after January 1, 1997, is redeemable in cash for its cash value, or subject to replacement with a new gift certificate at no cost to the purchaser or holder.3 Effective January 1, 2008, any gift certificate with a cash value of less than $10 is redeemable in cash, which includes currency or check, for its cash value." http://www.dca.ca.…

They could give him cash and they could still refuse to sell it to him. It's legal to not accept cash.

http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.s...

Re: Letter from Steve Jobs: No Apple Giftcards for iPads

#12

I must be missing something ...How does banning gift cards have anything to do with people buying craploads if iPads and shipping them overseas?

They're requiring you to use a credit card and that's pretty simple to track (only 2 per card).

Re: Letter from Steve Jobs: No Apple Giftcards for iPads

#13
post #11
post #5

is this legal? per the department of consumer affairs, "Any gift certificate sold after January 1, 1997, is redeemable in cash for its cash value, or subject to replacement with a new gift certificate at no cost to the purchaser or holder.3 Effective January 1, 2008, any gift certificate with a cash value of less than $10 is redeemable in cash, which includes currency or check, for its cash value." http://www.dca.ca.…

They could give him cash and they could still refuse to sell it to him. It's legal to not accept cash. http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.s...

Why would they do that?

Re: Letter from Steve Jobs: No Apple Giftcards for iPads

#14
Does anyone really believe anymore that S.J. himself writes all the letters / messages which are so popular lately? I sometimes don't have time to respond to everyone, even though I'm just a developer. I know many managers who could spend the whole day writing and answering emails and they're not even that high in the hierarchy. I can't even imagine how many emails must Steve get from inside the company -- and these are the emails he has to actually handle himself.

I remember an article about Bill Gates a couple of years ago saying that there was a team of ~10 people handling his mail, but can't google it now :/ I don't believe S.J. would answer himself, if the question can be handled by any assistant with access to some internal knowledge-base. (just like this one)

Edit: not what I saw originally, but: http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/30/news/newsmakers/gates_howiwo... <- in 2006 B.G. got only ~100 emails a day from people worth his attention - the rest got filtered out / handled by assistant. And there was already some time after Vista. S.J. probably gets more right now since the iPad release.

Re: Letter from Steve Jobs: No Apple Giftcards for iPads

#15
post #2

It is funny how Apple manages to simply punish everyone for the bad behavior of a few. This would really frustrated me because the poor guy was not evening buying the entire thing using a gift card. He was only using it to cover a portion.

Which he can now get back in cash. No biggie IMO. In the world of Apple's many issues, this is a small one solving a "real problem" as much as you view shortages of popular consumer devices a "Real problem"

Re: Letter from Steve Jobs: No Apple Giftcards for iPads

#16
post #12

I must be missing something ...How does banning gift cards have anything to do with people buying craploads if iPads and shipping them overseas?

They're requiring you to use a credit card and that's pretty simple to track (only 2 per card).

Of course nobody has more than one card, and of course nobody could ever have a shipping address different from their home address on some of their cards for their business... and then there are all those people that have no friends that would allow them to go and buy an iPad because they're not going to. And so on.

The weird thing about stuff like this is that those that want to get their hands on as many ipads as they want are likely not going to be deterred by this, the majority of the people this will bite are just regular guys and girls that want to buy a product.

Re: Letter from Steve Jobs: No Apple Giftcards for iPads

#18
post #13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could give him cash and they could still refuse to sell it to him. It's legal to not accept cash. http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.s...

Why would they do that?

It's explained by Steve's response in the article.

Re: Letter from Steve Jobs: No Apple Giftcards for iPads

#19
post #13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could give him cash and they could still refuse to sell it to him. It's legal to not accept cash. http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.s...

Why would they do that?

For the same reason they're not accepting gift certificates... To limit the number of iPads purchased by an individual while supplies are still tight and limited to the US market. Did you not read the email? Steve Jobs is quite terse and easy to read.

Re: Letter from Steve Jobs: No Apple Giftcards for iPads

#20

Does anyone really believe anymore that S.J. himself writes all the letters / messages which are so popular lately? I sometimes don't have time to respond to everyone, even though I'm just a developer. I know many managers who could spend the whole day writing and answering emails and they're not even that high in the hierarchy. I can't even imagine how many emails must Steve get from inside the company -- and these…

It's Steve. He's a control freak and would never allow other people to pretend to speak for him. The replies are classic Steve Jobs too so unless they hired Fake Steve Jobs to do a bunch of email correspondence it's almost certainly him.

If a personal anecdote helps, a friend of mine emailed him a few years back and immediately received a quick reply asking for his phone number. A few minutes later a blocked call came in and it was him.

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