Chinese scalpers booking up all Genius Bar appointments and selling online | Hacker News Reader

Chinese scalpers booking up all Genius Bar appointments and selling online

9to5mac.com

56 pointsjack-r-abbit41 comments

Reminiscent of the old one-trip salad bar ploy:

http://kotaku.com/how-chinese-ingenuity-destroyed-salad-bars...

Stanford teaches an entrepreneurial course. During one of the courses students were given $5 to use to make money.

The group that made the most money did so by getting reservations to restaurants on Friday and Saturday nights and then selling them to groups who didn't have reservations.

I thought it was clever when I first heard about it but this type of thing is old hat by now:)

pretty sure Dwight did this (The Office, US version). That's where I first remember hearing it

Interesting, I don't remember that. I do, however, remember him buying up all the unicorn dolls at Christmas and then scalping them to last-minute parents.

Yesm he made reservations at nice restaurants for valentines day six months in advance.

And this isn't frowned upon at standford?

Brilliant! Is this actually illegal? I don't own any Apple products and have never booked a Genius Bar appointment so I don't know the terms of that booking. Maybe there is something in the fine print that your appointment is non-transferable? I wish the article went into more details about if this is illegal or just frowned upon. My gut tells me it is a loop hole that Apple will either change... or not care about. :)

Apple clearly does not wish to make money off Genius Bar appointments; if they did, they'd charge a fee. They're providing it as a service to their customers to improve their experience. This is akin to taking food from a soup kitchen and reselling it at the market rate. Nothing 'brilliant' about it.

If you can figure out how to take food from a soup kitchen, sell it at the market rate, and make a profit, you're brilliant.

Stand in front of the soup kitchen with a bat, declare the kitchen to be "yours", and demand people pay you tribute for admission.

That doesn't make you a genius, just an asshole.

That would make you arrested.

In an ideal world, yes. Homeless people are frequently preyed upon though, particularly in less developed parts of the world.

At a much different scale, consider warlords that sell intercepted donated food to the people it was meant to go to for free. They aren't geniuses, just massive assholes.

This is the kind of thinking that ruins good things for everybody.

There you go.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/isle_take_that_welfare_sc...

No, it's not a soup kitchen. The point's the same. It's just people acting as parasites. Nothing brilliant about it.

I would not put them in the same bucket. I would put the Genius Bar thing into the same bucket as those Task Rabbit people getting paid to stand in line so someone else can show up last minute for the latest iGadget. I seem to recall people having mostly favorable thoughts about that idea. Taking food from the homeless is just jackassery.

I'm just going based off US law and not Chinese law (since I don't know Chinese law), but I don't see why it should be illegal. It might be against Apple's TOS, but take ticket scalping for example. In the US, there's no federal law against it, and it's only against the law in a handful of states.

Even if the TOS said you couldn't do this, it wouldn't make it illegal (in the US). The TOS is not law, and the only repercussions would be civil.

That was my thought too. Simply exploiting a loophole of sorts. It sounds like once a booking is made, there is a way to go in and edit your info. Still curious if this a TOS violation or not.

well per replies on the original site, restrict access to those who an Apple ID and associated CC info on file.

The only issue I see with that solution is, is the Genius Bar also there so advise people on which apple products to buy, hence new customers?

Those replies simply give ideas on how Apple could prevent it if they wanted to. But that doesn't mean it violates the TOS currently. If it is not in the TOS right now, adding it would be one possible way to prevent it without causing issues for new customers.

It needn't be illegal to be disallowed. Apple provides this service at will, and can set the terms in which you use it. There are, of course, legal boundaries within which every company must operate, but I'm not familiar with Chinese consumer protection law, so I have no idea if this is inside or outside the law.

Also, it's not that brilliant, IMO. It is not unusual for secondary markets to spring up when the commodity is fungible and there is a supply constraint. See also: scalping sporting event and concert tickets; a practice that is also seen as a shiesty thing to do.

Thinking outside of the box, applying a known business tactic to an entirely different thing and being able to create a market for it all have a bit of brilliance at heart, IMO.

Charging for something that is supposed to be free (or, more realistically, built into the cost of your iPhone or Mac) is just slimy.

Like this? https://www.taskrabbit.com/blog/taskrabbit-news/after-nearly... People ate that up in gulps.

Charlie's TaskPoster hired someone's time to perform a task he could have done himself.

These scalpers are making it impossible for anyone to book a Genius Bar appointment without paying them.

Consuming a shared resource just to sell it at a profit is completely different from acting as an agent of someone else.

It sounds like fraud to me. They are booking under the pretense that they need their iDevice fixed. They do not, they are booking in order to make money off other people. I'm not sure how the law in China would play out, but Apple could probably file a suit against these guys.

Capitalism in action.

Why don't you just check the names?

>The reporter was sent login details for the booking by instant messenger, and was then able to access the booking on the Apple site to change the details to their own.

Once you buy the slot, you get access to it to change the name.

The scalpers are just "adding liquidity to the market". /sarcasm

Clones will be clones.

Charge a fee and refund to the person that shows up.

I'll still turn a profit; I'll just charge the actual customer what I was charged, plus a profit, plus some extra to cover slots I don't sell (or, alternatively, I'll just come in to those slots myself to pick up the refund).

Charge a fee. Require the credit card used to make reservation to be physically present to use the reservation.

So, when a legitimate customer doesn't pay attention to that rule, turn away business?

If you're a restaurant who doesn't want your reservations system gamed with, yes.

Scalping reservations isn't innovative, it isn't clever. It's just plain old douchebaggery. Don't be a dick, and its not a problem.

EDIT: With regards to bringing the right card, concerts and other businesses that sell tickets online with a will call option require the same card in person that you purchased with online. I don't believe it to be a burdensome requirement.

EDIT 2: @jack-r-abbit: Okay, how about requiring an Apple ID to make the appointment? And limiting the amount of appointments you can make online? Low hassle yet still effective.

I meant, a legitimate customer -- one who has no link to scalpers -- might forget to bring the proper credit card.

That is a known procedure when buying something online and picking it up in person. And it is somewhat burdensome for people without credit cards. But then those people wouldn't be buying stuff on line anyway. But the Genius Bar is a service that doesn't cost anything and might not even end with you paying anything. And even if you do end up paying/buying... Apple stores still take cash right? Requiring that you give them a credit card just to talk with someone does not sound like the Apple way.

EDIT (to answer the above EDIT 2): Both would be effective and easy for Apple to do if they cared. Although, requiring an Apple ID could be problematic for a person who doesn't have one, right? Admittedly, I'm not an Apple consumer myself so I don't really know what is involved in getting an Apple ID or why a non-user would need a Genius Bar appointment.

I wonder what the credit card ownership rate is in China

Quite small. But everyone has a government-issued ID card, with a unique number. Except foreigners, most of whom complain about people telling them that their passport isn't an acceptable ID (at places like internet cafes, where registration is required for obvious reasons).

By "ownership", do you mean "issued to owner by bank" or "acquired off the black market"?

You assume you will sell close to 100% of the slots. Which you won't. Not even close. If you sell 20%, which is crazy high, you will have to charge them 5 times the price just to break even.

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