“Best Buy began accepting iPhone X pre-orders alongside Apple at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time today, but several customers quickly realized that the electronics retailer is charging an extra $100 for the smartphone at full price,” Joe Rossignol reports for MacRumors.
“In a statement issued to MacRumors, Best Buy said its prices reflect a customer’s ability to ‘get a phone the way they want,'” Rossignol reports. “‘Our prices reflect the fact that no matter a customer’s desired plan or carrier, or whether a customer is on a business or personal plan, they are able to get a phone the way they want at Best Buy. Our customers have told us they want this flexibility and sometimes that has a cost,’ a Best Buy spokesperson told MacRumors.”
“Apple charges $999 or $1,149 for the iPhone X with 64GB or 256GB of storage in the United States,” Rossignol reports. “Best Buy charges $1,099 or $1,249 online and in stores for the equivalent models on a Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint account.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple lets customers choose from among carriers and payment/upgrade programs or to pay in full for an unlocked device – in other words, “get a phone the way they want” – for $100 less, so we remain unsure WTF Best Buy is blathering on about. Do you?
Best Buy is certainly ironically named. If we were ever, for some insane reason, to shop at Best Buy, we’d ask them to price match iPhone X with Apple.com just to see what happens.
Interns, TTK!
With corporate thinking this backwards, it’s amazed they’ve stayed in business this long.
You’re faulting a company making the best of the demand that is available to get a good margin on sales? They’re just pricing to what they believe the market will bear for the product even if it is for a very short window.
Not to mention collaboraating with the FBI to spy on all of their customer’s hardware, it’s just makes good business sense!
Beats paying $60,000 off eBay.
I assume the only reason BB stays in business is by selling extended warranties to the clueless. Very fat margins on that and a needless “insurance” 98% of time.
BB=Thieves
Um, in this case, Worst Buy.
FYI—-just checked BB and 256gb X pre-order arrives for store pickup on December 15thhhh
In time for Xmas and cheaper than Ebay……
It’s odd. If they’d had the same scam set up for an Android handset, one could understand the business logic of fooling customers who are cognitively less fortunate. But to try to get away with it on iPhones is contradictory.
If the demand is strong enough they could just sell fine at that price. Might actually be cheaper than trying to buy one off of Ebay from a early purchaser.
Douchay!
First world problems you got there in US.
Bought 256GB X for official EU price today: 1,350 EUR =1,567.27USD
Will recieve on nov 3rd.
Have no complaints.
If demand > offer = be ready to pay.
Capitalism ABC, who nam I to teach you this? 🙂
During the soviet era, cars and phones where cheap (but junk) and people had to wait in a queue for many years, often got nothing. My parents never got a landline for a telephone, the soviet union collapsed before. And then we got a phone line. Now I can buy almost all I want and need and dont have to do discusting unethical things to get ahead in that queue, which the system used to get collaboration. My conscience is clear.
Does your price include VAT?
All prices in Europe include VAT because it is paid by the seller, not the buyer like a US sales tax.
There is no US sales tax. In the US there are state and local sales taxes in most, but not all, areas. With few exceptions, sales tax is collected by the seller and sent to the tax jurisdiction.
Prices in the EU include the VAT because of EU regulations requiring this. Prices in the U.S. may or may not include tax, because few jurisdictions have this regulation. Most often where they do include tax in the price, it’s for efficiency of the transaction for the benefit of the seller… Think of a vendor selling items for $1 at an event.
VAT and sales taxes are end-user targeted. When a business sells an item to a customer, the VAT is included in the price, collected and paid to the government. However, if that customer is not the end-user, that VAT can be deducted from the amount they then pay when they sell the item to the next customer in the chain.
The difference between a sales tax and a VAT is that the sales tax gets charged in its entirety at the point of retail->consumer, whereas with a VAT, it would be charged collectively in each chain of the process: Parts/materials supplier-> Manufacturer -> Retailer -> Consumer. The amount the consumer pays could be the same, just with the payments distributed at each step in the chain.
The benefit to a VAT is that there’s no incentive to cheat by means of falsely claiming you’re a business in the chain.
Would MDN’s take work about price matching work if the $100 extra is considered a special ‘plan’ fee?
Doesn’t Apple have a pricing policy so that its retailers can’t undercut one another? Did they never think their idiot retailers might try to rip off their customers instead?
Normally the higher priced store won’t get sales. But this is a special case. No one has to buy from Best Buy. But if you do it will just cost a bit more.
Also since the iPhone is not considered an ‘essential’ like water, flashlights, etc. during emergency times, it also doesn’t fall under the laws in various States that put a ceiling on prices for those products.
In addition, BestBuy is far from being “essential”. They’ll be out of business not long after Sears who lasted much longer due to size. BestBuy is and always will be a subpar retailer who overcharges for everything they sell.
Ummm. Thats called price fixing.. And therefore illegal.
Okay, had to look it up. I know other companies do the same, like camera companies, Canon and Nikon, etc. It’s called MAP, minimum advertised price. Apparently, there are two parts: one, the wholesale price is not that much less than the retail price, so the retailer has little wiggle room to start with; and two, the MAP. The net result is that customers don’t shop based upon price, because pricing is relatively close amongst retailers, but they go to their preferred retailer, the one that provides the best service.
Apple and other companies have done this for ages, so it’s clearly not illegal. I’ve always told my family when shopping for Apple products to buy from the store with the best customer service, rather than the cheapest price since there’s usually so little price variability.
Apple’s actually opened up in recent years. Previously, like Bose, they controlled reseller prices to stay within a few dollars of their own price.
There’s a name for this pricing model (beside the MAP model in another comment below) that I’ve forgotten – but whatever, there’s much more variation than previously.
And Apple restricted price-CUTTING in that era, not charging more than they do….
Didn’t MDN post an iPhone x for bid earlier today. In order to get the most for the phone they bought at Apple. I know Best Buy isn’t a great deal but theoretically someone going to Best Buy might get a better deal than the MDN auction. And no I’m not trolling for a fight. Just saying. It never looks honest to milk demand like that. The same thing that ticket resellers do and we all frown on it.
~ ~ Memories ~ ~ HDMI cables sold at 10x their value ~ ~
With so few brick store competitors left in some markets I think they over price items for the convenience of obtaining a product without a wait (or reduced wait). Sort of the Convenience store mentality when compared to a small local grocery store during ‘off’ hours.
√ Yup! Locally, I’ve watched the competitors die off one by one until only Best Buy is left, that and the Apple Store, where I ended up buying HDMI cables for a far more sane price. Meanwhile, I’ve heard nothing but insults directed at Best Buy’s tech support, which consisted of a well respected company they bought and apparently have driven into a state of incompetence.
And this past week I read that dumbass Pai over at the FCC is busy enabling further removal of competition in the cable TV/ISP market. It’s federally assisted monopolization, IE screwing over of We The People. IE Short term thinking, long term disaster. IE Screw Thy Customer. IE Neo-Feudalization. IE If you can’t compete, cheat.
So many destructive Spirits of the Age to keep track of! 😛
Anytime I need a cable, I buy it from Amazon at about a 10th of the price. So what if I have to wait 2 days. F Best Buy.
Amazon makes a meagre profit as a company. But I like how they’re run and I’m constantly finding they’re the best or only source for what I want/need/desire. That’s why their ticker price is flying high! I bought $150 worth of stuff from them on Friday, stuff I’d rather have purchased locally but can’t, or at least not without significant relative price inflation. The times have changed.
Since this only applies to upfront purchases, not installment plan purchases, I’m guessing this is to profit off of arbitrageurs who resell phones on ebay or abroad. Basically, Best Buy wants in on the action, and they’ve figured that this “tax” will only hit the folks who are reselling. Anyone buying for themselves would just opt for the installment plan to save 100 bucks.
^^This.
If one wants to buy for themselves, just get the installment plan, which allows for early payoff.
Not sure why all the hate on Best Buy. I find them accommodating and mostly helpful. It’s great to go in the store and try out products. And they price match, even Amazon. Personally, I’m glad they are still around. For a while it was looking bleak.
Worst buy. Fitting and they definitely deserve the title. Absolutely a horrible place to shop.
I screwed up and didn’t order phone online last night. Stopped by Best Buy after work (to see options) and ended up ordering 256 silver with delivery Nov 15. Apple showing mid December at same time. Total charge is 1149 on my contract. Not sure what hidden cost the article is referring to. Hopefully it arrives as advertised.
I agree with MDN’s take, but Best Buy’s response is BS.
I just bought an unlocked 256 gb iphone 8 Plus at Best Buy and they matched the price on Apple’s site. I paid $949 for the phone. They knocked off $100 to match Apple’s price. Enough said.
My bad. This article was about the iPhone X. I bought an iPhone 8. I don’t know what their policy is with the iPhone X.
I purchased two through Best Buy. For every generation of iPhone the past few years they have charged an additional $100, but have quickly price-matched when I asked them too. Will they do the same on the X? I will find out when I pick up my two phones (due to be in November 10th).
I certainly understand their position, even if I don’t agree with it. As a consumer, I also have a right to determine where I will purchase an iPhone X, and I was willing to do so from Best Buy, as I got a November 10 pick-up date, when I ordered at 4AM CST. I also get an unlocked phone (even though I had to choose Sprint as my carrier), which is a plus.
Yes, Best Buy may be tone-deaf to their customers, but the consumer has the final say.