Apple has always been a company to restrict the number of devices someone can purchase when it introduces a new product launch and the iPad was no different. When Apple begun to sell their new tablet this April they had the maximum of 2 iPad’s you could purchase. Apple did not just stop there, in order to purchase an iPad you have to only pay with a credit or debit card. They did not allow cash for purchases and as there was no way for inventory to track the number of iPad’s sold for cash sales.
Today when a California woman named Diane Campbell went to the Apple Store to purchase an iPad with the money she had saved up she was turned away by two Apple Store employees as she did not have a credit or debit card.
After finding this practice by Apple draconian she did the only sane thing an irate customer could do! She contacted her local media affiliate ABC 7 (KGO) in California and they ran a story on her plights and Apples anti-cash policy.
Within hours Ron Johnson the senior vice president of Apple said in an interview with one of the news reporters that they wanted to be sure that “it’s as fair as possible for people to get iPad’s,” and the previous policy was just to ensure that everyone can get an iPad during the high demand.
You can now buy an Apple iPad with cash if you purchase it directly from an Apple Store, but there is a catch! You have to setup the iPad account in store, monitored by employees, so people do not try and bypass the currency to get more iPad’s for resell on the grey market.
Steve Jobs personally called the Apple Store in question that denied Diane Campbell her iPad and dispatched two employees to deliver to her door, an iPad free of charge! In a follow up interview she was noted as saying, “I am just so excited.” Of course, she should be.
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Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
