Giants won their first.
Actually, the Vikings lost to the Giants rather than Giants “won.” Regardless, Minnesota’s performance meant
that they were likely a worse NFL team than the Giants, and I’ll take it. As I told an Eagles fan early in the season,
New York G-men would be lucky to win two games this season…and one is now in
the bucket.
Halloween costumes have been decided for the kids. This year we will be hosting Iron Man and a
bunny rabbit. Of course, they will be
the most adorable versions of those two characters that you can imagine.
Finally, my experience in purchasing
the Apple iPhone 5s. I like my
iPhone. More than that, I like the idea
that future phones can be automatically loaded with the settings and presets of
my former devices. This is likely true
for Android users as well, but this is my story, and I’m a converted Apple fan-boy…at
least of the hardware.
Well, when Apple announced the new
phone, they also made small mention of a ‘trade in’ program where they’d pay
you for your old iPhone based on its condition.
Well, I didn't want to "order" online, mostly because of this feature. I figured that I'd need to go to the store to make the exchange. But, what did interest me was the 'pick-up at store' option that Apple introduced on its site this year.
First, with a phone so high in demand, how did I ever find one? This way:
This site allows you to plug in your
e-mail address and zip-code and it’ll shoot you a quick note as soon as the
model and capacity you want becomes available at a local Apple retail
store. Genius. (pun intended) This service is free and the dude
unsubscribes you as soon as it finds you what you want. You then have to be quick on the jump to get
to Apple’s site and use the “pick up at store” function, and buy your phone. The nicest part of this was that it allowed me to use two separate credit cards towards the single purchase. They thought of everything!
So, I did this, bought the phone for the upgrade price, and figured that I’d
return it immediately, apply the trade-in value of my 4s to the new phone, re-purchase, and be
on my merry way. And, when I got there,
they indicated that, yes, I can trade in my phone, but, no, it could only be
for store credit. Why? Because, Apple doesn't have the inventory to allow stores to sell the phones outright. The store can only sell phones that have been abandoned/non-collected/pre-purchased
phones ordered online but not picked up.
Those can be sold the morning after they were left in the store. I'm not sure what you do if you ordered one, paid and waited a day to get it...unless they are confident that they can replace it in the next day's shipment of phones. But, that's besides the point. So...unless you wait in line at 8am (or 6 if
you actually want a phone), you can't apply the trade-in value. And, if you do it that way, there's no guarantee that you'll get the color/capacity you had your heart set on.
Now, you say...what if I just
returned the phone and re-bought it right there in the store. Ah, as mentioned, the store, at present, is not allowed to
sell iPhones...only the internet Apple website can do that. Which means, that phone, upon its
return, gets re-added to the inventory, and someone can scoop it up on the interwebs
before you can get back on-line to get it.
Sooooooooooooo, long story long, I
wound up leaving the Apple Store...new phone and old in hand. I discovered that I could sell it to Amazon for credit there for $20 less than the Apple
Store. A used 4S 32Gb was $207 at Apple
and $186 at Amazon (credit again), but the real difference is that at least I'll use Amazon credit for diapers and such...household goods...and, of course, a new
iPhone case! It'll be here tomorrow. (:
No comments:
Post a Comment