

Letter from Steve Jobs: No Apple Giftcards for iPads - jakarta
http://www.firstadopter.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9991#post9991

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siukwai
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.gov/publications/legal_guides/s-11.shtml>

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jonknee
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...](http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.shtml)

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eavc
Why would they do that?

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jonknee
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.

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atheken
I think we all read his email and understood it. The point is that this is not
reasonable. The gift card was purchased in good faith that it could be used to
purchase whatever products Apple sells, on demand. I have some gift cards that
I'd like to sell you, but you can only use them when I say so.

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viraptor
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...](http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/30/news/newsmakers/gates_howiwork_fortune/)
<\- 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.

~~~
jonknee
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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jacquesm
Ridiculous, if you have gift cards then you should honour them. You can't just
retro-actively undo the possibility of using gift cards already bought for the
purpose of gifting someone _any_ apple device, including the iPad.

I'm betting they'll be redeeming a lot of gift cards for their cash value
because of this stupidity.

I never really realized just how much of a control freak Jobs really is,
imagine the CEO of a big company second guessing his entire marketing
department by sending out email directly to customers.

Talk about delegation skills...

This also explains to me why Jobs' health is monitored like it is of prime
importance by major Apple stock holders, it probably _is_ of prime importance,
if Jobs believes that stuff like this should be decided by him then Apple is
pretty fragile.

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jodrellblank
Apple is a big company and Steve Jobs is the CEO and he is doing this - no
need to imagine. And Apple seem to be doing ok with it, particularly compared
to the last time they didn't have him as the boss.

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pclark
> The fact that he spends time answering a customer complaint 8:43AM on a
> SATURDAY MORNING speaks volumes about his commitment to customer experience
> and service. Thank you Steve.

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hga
Viral customer service. By answering one (or maybe a few to make sure it gets
out) customers who have a general issue, he lets them take care of getting the
word out, which is so leveraged nowadays it's very easy for them.

Jobs spends a few minutes crafting an email and the crowd takes it from there.
A new form of disintermediation.

People should also be more tolerant of his changing his mind in a later email
vs. an Official Company Policy.

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jseifer
I ran in to this the other day as well. The weird thing is that prior to this
email no one in the retail stores or the Apple customer relations line would
say anything beyond "it's Apple's policy" and couldn't point to anywhere on
Apple's site where it's in writing. Eventually I found Apple's Retail Store
purchase policies: <http://www.apple.com/legal/sales_policies/retail_us.html>
which say that you can't buy an iPad with a gift card. The store reps seemed
annoyed when I pressed for information, saying things like "I don't know, I'm
just an employee. It's Apple policy." while the corporate customer relations
rep offered to enter my concerns in some database.

The gift cards themselves say that "Apple reserves the right in its sole
discretion to determine whether gift cards may be applied to purchases of
particular products or services." So, while they technically tell you that you
may not be able to buy anything with the card, it's still a pretty weird
situation. Especially because you can still use a gift card to buy an iPad on
the online Apple store.

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sjsivak
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.

~~~
gte910h
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"

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dlevine
First of all, this is only in effect for like a month. It wouldn't kill anyone
to wait it out until the ban is lifted. It sounds like Apple put in place a
number of systems to keep people from gaming the rules (they caught that guy
who was buying iPads and shipping them overseas).

If it really is a huge deal, you can sell your cards on Cardpool. It looks
like they are paying $340, so it would cost $60 for the convenience of having
cash that you can use right now...

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

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

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jacquesm
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.

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viraptor
Apple - bringing BRM (Buyer's Rights Management) to your shops since 2010.
Strangely - just like DRM - it affects normal customers more than "evil" ones.

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tommorris
The moral of this recent flux of letters and e-mails: Steve Jobs needs to
start a blog or get on Twitter.

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kogir
So they'll soon also stop accepting cash? I don't see how this can actually
have the effect they want. The people overseas doing this are super motivated
and aren't married to gift cards.

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iaskwhy
Was it sent from his Macbook?

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chaosmachine
I guess he decided it would be kind of rubbing it in if he included the usual
"sent from my ipad" sig line.

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drivebyacct
Only someone who had "bought 5 iPods, 5 Macs, iPhone, etc" could possibly take
Jobs' rhetoric and allow it as justification for a ridiculous policy.

