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Comment by hvgk | Hacker News Reader

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hvgk

Yeah as always no one seems to have got the optimum apple ownership thing yet.

1. Buy the cheapest premium device plus one minor upgrade (more storage etc) as that has the lowest total depreciation.

2. Get AppleCare and pay up front

3. Sell it the moment the AppleCare runs out on eBay. Don’t part exchange it.

4. Your monthly TCO is the sticker price plus AppleCare minus the sale price all divided by the months you owned it.

Make sure all the costly events are someone else’s problem.

I’m running a whole stack of apple devices with little incidental cost if anything happens and lowest overall ownership.

Edit: keep one iphone back which isn’t yet entirely obsolete if you need a backup. Still got a working 6s here.

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In my local market, I prefer a modified version of this.

I buy a second hand last generation Apple device from someone that comes with a year of AppleCare or warranty. I then sell that device and repeat every year or so.

AppleCare does not add THAT much value to devices sold on my local aftermarket, so you get a deal on it.

> 3. Sell it the moment the AppleCare runs out on eBay. Don’t part exchange it.

If you destroy the device a day before AppleCare runs out you can swap it for a brand new one, easier to sell.

Yes but that’s dishonest.

I’ve had no problems selling anything yet either. Usually goes within 6 hours here at a well inflated price.

I bought an iPhone 12 December 2019 and decided to swap it out for a 13 pro a couple of weeks back for the camera improvements. Apple accidentally refunded the entire AppleCare cost and I sold it for £190 less than I paid for it. So TCO was £16 a month.

With recent iphones I’ve yet to have one that didn’t already have cracks on the back glass around the time applecare was about to end, that seems to immediately qualify for a device replacement.

Also, doesn’t applecare+ cover scratches and dents anyway? They’d probably swap out a perfectly functional phone over minor damage if you insist, never tried that though.

What are you doing to your poor phones? Even my 15 year old’s SE is still mint.

An active lifestyle and a disdain for phone cases gets you there.

The iPhone SE is indestructible, I have a few of them. Never managed to break one.

If you're selling via Ebay, does your sale price also account for the distributer fees, shipping and handling, and withheld sales tax?

I’m in the UK so I charge the shipping and handling to the buyer, sell on an offer day and there is no sales tax on private sales. Total cost to me is usually £1 to sell it.

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