Save $100 At Apple By Being A Tease Over The Phone?
An Apple telesales rep tell us you can get them to knock $100 off your price when ordering over the phone just by playing a little hard to get:
If they make it obvious that they're purchasing but are a little resistant to it being "too expensive" by about $100 - sales representatives can take off $100 off an order (as long as it's purchased through the standard consumer store).We're thinking this is more likely to work if it's a big-ticket item like a laptop.
Give it a shot and let us know how it went in the comments! — BEN POPKEN
(Photo: Getty)
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Nope. They wouldn't budge on the 8GB nano...
Oh boy, before I read the article I thought it was going to be a how-to article. I mean, using my womanhood and being a tease works in some situations, and if it were able to get me an ipod for 100 dollars less, I would have tried years ago! :-P
It works with Dell too. I got $50 off and an extra $75 in coupons for a future purchase by saying my laptop cost too much and I'd have to think about it and call back. My brother did better than I did, but I'm not as good at playing hardball.
@msb2:
Just be glad that, as a female, you can flirt your way out of speeding tickets. State troopers don't find my shaggy beard and gruff voice very appealing (well...most don't...)
How about they just lower their damm over priced products as a whole.
If you flash a student ID at an Apple store, you can get a student discount ($250 off a Mac Pro)
There are corporate/government discounts with the proper ID's too.
Any kind of percent off is nothing to sneeze at -- Northrup Grumman, for one, gets as much as 17% sliced off the top!
There are way easier ways to save money on Apple. Amazon usually has a $150 mail in rebate on MacBooks and MacBook Pros, or you could become an Apple Developer for the one time hardware discount.
If you're buying a higher-end Mac that runs $2,000 or more and you like living on the edge, purchase the Select developer package at developer.apple.com. It costs $500 and comes with a hardware discount that amounts to at least $500 once you cross the $2,000 barrier. "So what," you say? You also gain immediate access to the latest developer build of Leopard, among other perks.
If you buy off Amazon, you won't be paying shipping and there's almost always an instant rebate on just about every machine available. When I bought my 20 inch iMac, I nailed no shipping costs plus $150 off the MSRP, no haggling needed.
@madetoheal: Dell is awesome. Not only did they honor an expired laptop special for me, but they they threw in a free vid card for being on hold 15 minutes.
@nighthwk1: Yea. Another trick is to buy it through your university, which seems to give the maximum discount and/or freebies (nanos and such). This is especially helpful on the cheaper macs that don't qualify for the widely publicized student discounts (which concentrate on the higher end stuff). A free nano ($199 value) with a $900 computer is pretty cool.
That $100 discount is just the education discount. Lots of reps will 'finesse' it into an order just to make the sale, even if the customer doesn't really qualify.
On another note, Apple has discontinued education discounts on iPods.
Wait, Apple offers product that aren't big ticket items? News to me.
Show the person typing in your sale a student card and they'll knock a whack off, and often give you extra forms to fill out for mail-in rebatey things.
nice one ben. this may be helpful as well:
http://www.macprices.net/
just select which computer you're interested in and it'll give you tons of info like price, stock available, sales tax, bundles, shipping costs, etc... so if you're calling apple to get a good price you have all the info in front of you :)