With the (hopefully) impending release of a new series of Powermacs from Apple, I want to share the url of a company I would recommend not doing business with.
www.applepurchaseprogram.com
They claim to be a group purchase site, collect together 100 guaranteed buyers and go talk to retailers and see how low they can get the price. I'm sure it works in many cases, and may even work here. They said that retailers can't advertise Apple prices below retail (as we know, never seeing a price more than $5 off) but can negotiate private purchase deals as I'm sure many schools and companies do all the time.
Well, someone here said they got $500 off a system through this program and Paypal.com had a positive rating for them (a company gets a point for every transaction that goes undisputed.) If you weren't satisfied with the price you could walk away. But I must have been hypnotised by the price goal of $1,000 off. I knew it said "price goal" and didn't expect $1,000 off, but hoped for at least the $500 someone here quoted.
So I decided it was worth the $250 (which could supposedly be applied toward the purchase) to find out. Their site always says "this buying cycle to close this weekend" but it took them 3 weekends to get me my pricequote. Rather than being from a big retailer or distributor as I expected, it was from a small Mac shop in Florida (where www.applepurchaseprogram.com is based.) The quote on the $2,699 machine was something like $2545.13. But then add in a 3% fee that the store can charge for participating in this program (this was not disclosed ahead of time) and then 6% Florida tax since it's a virtual "in-person" purchase in order to comply with Apple rules (this was disclosed) and the price is back up past the retail price. Now, as they pointed out, if I were to buy it locally or from Apple.com I would pay 8.25% tax so adding that in I come out maybe $148 ahead. (I forget the exact numbers.) But the only reason I would order from Apple is to customize it, I could buy the same machine as I was getting from them for $2695 from MacConnection with no tax and then my savings are only like $12. There was no info on how to apply my $250 reservation fee... or maybe it was already applied! (Ha!)
I drafted a complaint email to them pointing this out and got a canned reply saying "Sorry that's the best price we were able to get." So I decided to walk away... it was money I'd been paid for something that sat in my paypal account, I told myself it was money I never actually saw so I hadn't lost much. But as time went on I wondered more and more if getting customers to "walk away" from the purchase was their business model. They say that they are responsible for restocking fees in the event we walk away and that those could be more than the $250, but I'm sure in truth the retailer never orders 100 machines for them because most if not all customers walk away from prices like that.
I filed a complaint with Paypal, but it's been more than 30 days (actually 31 argh!!) so while they will add it to their file, they won't investigate. I did the Google search I should have done before and turned up this: http://www.powerpage.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/powerpage.woa/wa/story?newsID=10551 and this http://www3.macintouch.com/fraudreports2.html
looks like people raised a stink then, and they went away, redesigned their site and returned.
Oh well... guess we can all be "taken" under the right circumstances, luckily at the age of 26 this is only the first time I've been scammed, and hopefully the last.
Michael
www.applepurchaseprogram.com
They claim to be a group purchase site, collect together 100 guaranteed buyers and go talk to retailers and see how low they can get the price. I'm sure it works in many cases, and may even work here. They said that retailers can't advertise Apple prices below retail (as we know, never seeing a price more than $5 off) but can negotiate private purchase deals as I'm sure many schools and companies do all the time.
Well, someone here said they got $500 off a system through this program and Paypal.com had a positive rating for them (a company gets a point for every transaction that goes undisputed.) If you weren't satisfied with the price you could walk away. But I must have been hypnotised by the price goal of $1,000 off. I knew it said "price goal" and didn't expect $1,000 off, but hoped for at least the $500 someone here quoted.
So I decided it was worth the $250 (which could supposedly be applied toward the purchase) to find out. Their site always says "this buying cycle to close this weekend" but it took them 3 weekends to get me my pricequote. Rather than being from a big retailer or distributor as I expected, it was from a small Mac shop in Florida (where www.applepurchaseprogram.com is based.) The quote on the $2,699 machine was something like $2545.13. But then add in a 3% fee that the store can charge for participating in this program (this was not disclosed ahead of time) and then 6% Florida tax since it's a virtual "in-person" purchase in order to comply with Apple rules (this was disclosed) and the price is back up past the retail price. Now, as they pointed out, if I were to buy it locally or from Apple.com I would pay 8.25% tax so adding that in I come out maybe $148 ahead. (I forget the exact numbers.) But the only reason I would order from Apple is to customize it, I could buy the same machine as I was getting from them for $2695 from MacConnection with no tax and then my savings are only like $12. There was no info on how to apply my $250 reservation fee... or maybe it was already applied! (Ha!)
I drafted a complaint email to them pointing this out and got a canned reply saying "Sorry that's the best price we were able to get." So I decided to walk away... it was money I'd been paid for something that sat in my paypal account, I told myself it was money I never actually saw so I hadn't lost much. But as time went on I wondered more and more if getting customers to "walk away" from the purchase was their business model. They say that they are responsible for restocking fees in the event we walk away and that those could be more than the $250, but I'm sure in truth the retailer never orders 100 machines for them because most if not all customers walk away from prices like that.
I filed a complaint with Paypal, but it's been more than 30 days (actually 31 argh!!) so while they will add it to their file, they won't investigate. I did the Google search I should have done before and turned up this: http://www.powerpage.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/powerpage.woa/wa/story?newsID=10551 and this http://www3.macintouch.com/fraudreports2.html
looks like people raised a stink then, and they went away, redesigned their site and returned.
Oh well... guess we can all be "taken" under the right circumstances, luckily at the age of 26 this is only the first time I've been scammed, and hopefully the last.
Michael
