wavLength: September 6, 2007 Archive

Apple slashed the price of its iPhone by a third just a couple of months after its introduction. Some early adopters are miffed. I like Dwight Silverman's take:

I don't have much sympathy for those who just couldn't wait to get their hands on the iPhone just so they could be one of the cool kids, only to be stung by The Object of Your Desire's $200 price drop. I have a name for them: iChumps. For these folks, hype breeds irrational desire based on impulse, and those with poor impulse control pay the price. In this case, the price is $200. Think of it as your Cool Tax, gang, and an expensive lesson learned.

This is disgusting, but perhaps not a surprise. Dean Takahashi reports in the San Jose Mercury News:

I know that Shu Wong of San Jose hasn't received the $3.50 mail-in rebate for a Vastech computer networking USB hub purchased at a Fry's Electronics in May. Richard Louie of Austin, Olivia Sattaypiwat of Saratoga and Buu Duong of San Jose haven't received their rebates, either.

I know this because they told me so, and because I am staring at more than 1,300 rebate requests sent to Vastech on Bonaventura Drive in San Jose. The envelopes were tossed - unopened - into a garbage dumpster near Vastech. I have two boxes of envelopes that were thrown out without being processed. In all of my years of reporting, I have never encountered such outrageous behavior against consumers.