It turns out that, in order to get the educational discount on this iPod that I may or may not be blowing my tax refund on, I need to purchase it online through the Apple store.
This bugs me.
Leaving aside the fact that I don't have an Amex, Mastercard or Visa, and thus cannot purchase from their online store, I don't think I like the idea of mail order.
Don't get me wrong, I love getting things in the mail, and I check my mail almost compulsively - the only thing that's stopping me from running to check my mail right now is the fact that I'm in the middle of dying my hair, and it's all sticky and fashioned into a mohawk. I'm waiting with great anticipation for a free pen that's meant to be coming from the good people at 3M. It has post-it notes built into it! And if they don't see through my cunning ruse of signing my dad up for one at my address, I should be getting both the pen and highlighter forms of it any day now. I anticipate that these will be wildly useful, as, in my uni work, I use a great many post-it notes and highlight so much that I once used up a highlighter before I lost it - an unheard of occurence for me. (Get your free one here. It might turn up in ten thousand years.)
But there's a difference between getting free and delightful things in the mail, and getting paid-for things in the mail. If I'm going to lay out serious money for something - and most of my tax refund is, in my impoverished, full-time-student world, serious money - I would like to walk into a shop, hand over my cash, and walk out with exactly what I've paid for. It's a quaint olde-worlde sort of a hangup, but I think still related to being a member of what I like to call the ADD Generation - I like instant gratification, or in other words: now now now now NOW!
Anyhow, between these two problems, I'm completley stymied as to what I'm going to do with my tax refund. I can't buy my iPod online because I don't want to wait (and also don't have an acceptable credit card), but I can't buy it in person because I want the educational discount. This is a ridiculous state of affairs.
I would love to love Apple, I really would, but they're not making it easy for me.
This bugs me.
Leaving aside the fact that I don't have an Amex, Mastercard or Visa, and thus cannot purchase from their online store, I don't think I like the idea of mail order.
Don't get me wrong, I love getting things in the mail, and I check my mail almost compulsively - the only thing that's stopping me from running to check my mail right now is the fact that I'm in the middle of dying my hair, and it's all sticky and fashioned into a mohawk. I'm waiting with great anticipation for a free pen that's meant to be coming from the good people at 3M. It has post-it notes built into it! And if they don't see through my cunning ruse of signing my dad up for one at my address, I should be getting both the pen and highlighter forms of it any day now. I anticipate that these will be wildly useful, as, in my uni work, I use a great many post-it notes and highlight so much that I once used up a highlighter before I lost it - an unheard of occurence for me. (Get your free one here. It might turn up in ten thousand years.)
But there's a difference between getting free and delightful things in the mail, and getting paid-for things in the mail. If I'm going to lay out serious money for something - and most of my tax refund is, in my impoverished, full-time-student world, serious money - I would like to walk into a shop, hand over my cash, and walk out with exactly what I've paid for. It's a quaint olde-worlde sort of a hangup, but I think still related to being a member of what I like to call the ADD Generation - I like instant gratification, or in other words: now now now now NOW!
Anyhow, between these two problems, I'm completley stymied as to what I'm going to do with my tax refund. I can't buy my iPod online because I don't want to wait (and also don't have an acceptable credit card), but I can't buy it in person because I want the educational discount. This is a ridiculous state of affairs.
I would love to love Apple, I really would, but they're not making it easy for me.
posted by beck at 2:21 pm
5 Comments:
I don't know if iPods are a special case -- but I do know that there's a handful of Apple Retailers here in Perth that are authorised to sell Apple hardware and software at educational prices (typically a 10% and 20% discount respectively). Digilife particularly comes to mind. Given that, I can't think why they'd make you buy iPods online.
It seems like iPods are a special case.
There's an Apple reseller actually physically on my campus (Sydney Uni), and they told me the same thing -- that while there are educational discounts on, as you say, the hardware and software, the iPods are now only available at that educational price on the Apple website. Apparently this new system has been in place since April.
By way of explanation, they told me that the paperwork which is generated by the selling of iPods at educational prices is highly complicated - apparently Apple reimburse the resellers for the discount? does that sound right? - and when I asked why the iPod paperwork was so many times more complicated than any of the other paperwork, they tried to tell me that Apple are only making $5 on every iPod they sell. Forgive my cynicism ...
At least they tried to offer an explanation, as opposed to Apple, who sent me an email which read, in its entirety, "Thank you for your email. You can find informative documents on the support site at [wherever]. Alternatively, you may contact an Apple Store rep by dialling 133 622 within Australia." I resisted the temptation to send an email back: "Dear Apple, Kindly fuck off and die. Yours, Beck"
Not that I need another technological gadget about the place -- the list of items which has fallen prey to my technological touch-of-death this past year now includes two mobiles, my old laptop (once, but interminably), my new laptop (twice), my microwave, my TV, my kettle and an astonishing number of lightbulbs. The odds are not in the iPod's favour.
Wow. Glad I'm not an iPod of yours. ;)
Though it was only a few hours ago that I managed to burn a perfectly circular hole through my TV with a tea candle.
Hey! My sister did that!
... Except that she did it to my microwave, back when it was still my mum's spare microwave. It continued to microwave happily for a further five or six years, but succumbed to my touch-of-death within four months of moving into my house.
I bought and iPod from the online store, it arrived safely and promptly. Its always exciting to get a package in the mail.
It was an iPod shuffle though, however I have also received a $1000 camera lens in the mail once, in some bad-ass bubblewrap.
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