Apple Offers $100 Credit to Angry iPhone Owners

Thursday, September 06, 2007

By Paul Wagenseil Fox News



AP

Sept. 5: The Apple iPhone, left, compared to the new iPod touch, right, in San Francisco.

Sept. 5: The Apple iPhone, left, compared to the new iPod touch, right, in San Francisco.

Steve Jobs said something unusual Thursday: "Sorry."

After a cataclysm of criticism from iPhone owners followed the unexpected price cut Wednesday of this summer's must-have gadget, the Apple CEO posted a letter on the company Web site announcing a $100 credit for every customer who felt cheated.

"We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers," he wrote. "We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple."


The credits will be good toward anything in an Apple online or retail store.

Not eligible for them will be customers who bought iPhones in the past two weeks, who can get the $200 difference in Wednesday morning's and Wednesday afternoon's prices from the store where they bought their phones.

The 8-gigabyte iPhone, once $599, was cut to $399. The 4-gigabyte model, formerly $499, was discontinued, and will sell for $299 until stocks are gone.

The iPhone first went on sale June 29, less than 10 weeks ago, to long lines and huge media attention.

The 33 percent cut means early adopters who rushed to get the devices despite the high prices paid a premium of at least $20 for every extra week they could say they had the much-ballyhooed combination cell phone/media player/Web surfer.

"The technology road is bumpy," said Jobs in his letter Thursday. "There is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever."

But, he conceded, "we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these."

More details about the $100 credits would be posted on the Apple Web site next week, Jobs promised

It's a good thing I don't have money to buy that phone. I would've been terribly disappointed.

the funny part is they cant even give the iphone away in japan because its already "old technology". yet the US acts like its the holy grail of phones. I think apple in general has POS products. Ill stick with my open source windows products that allows apps from any maker.