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Comment by stevesucks | Hacker News Reader

Ask yourself, why do apple provide this engraving service free of charge? They would never tell that to you in a million years. It’s because the normal consumer protection laws doesn’t apply if a product has been personalized! A very smart way of steve jobs to circumvent consumer protections, a thing he was actually known for.

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And reselling your second-hand, personalized iPod isn't really feasible. So people probably more likely to buy a new one, which likely helped Apple sell more devices.

unless you had them put your name and phone number on it or something there is no downside to reselling it.

Surely the only consumer protection law that would not apply is the "right to cancel" thing in the EU where you must accept returns. And that doesn't exist in the US, where they allow returns anyway. In fact, they are virtually the only store to take back an opened and activated phone or laptop. The HK store is the only region I know where Apple doesn't take repairs.

So they are not trying to avoid returns, rather, they are going above and beyond what the law requires. If you choose to engrave something you know it can't be returned, that is common sense, not a trick.

Apple always highlighted that engraved products cannot be returned during the purchase.

It's one of these things that people do think is cool but it also does limit returns and resale.

That depends entirely on where you are. This is explicitly not allowed within Australian Consumer Law, for example. Impeding resale is an entirely legal and effective dark pattern this provides though.

This might have been true in the past (I’m not going to verify their old T&Cs), but it’s not true anymore - you can send back engraved items back to Apple with no issues.

You can’t _exchange_ them for a different item/credit, but normal returns are absolutely allowed.

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