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All the entries posted on September 06, 2007.
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Home > Plugged In > Archives > 2007 > September > 06
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Early iPhone buyers get apology and $100 credit
Facing hordes of unhappy iPhone customers who paid $599 for their must-have gadget only to see its price suddenly drop by $200 yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs engaged in a rare backpedal today, apologizing and offering a $100 store credit to the early buyers.
“I have received hundreds of e-mails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale,” Jobs writes in a letter to iPhone customers issued Thursday afternoon.
“Even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, 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,” Jobs writes. “Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.”
Jobs said every iPhone customer who purchased a phone from Apple or AT&T, who is not receiving a rebate, will be offered a $100 credit good at Apple’s retail or online stores. More details will be provided next week.
“We apologize for disappointing some of you,” Jobs writes. “We are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.”
(Photo: AP)
Dell says colored laptop problems are being fixed
PENANG, Malaysia — Dell has taken a lot of angry barbs from customers who ordered its new 13-inch XPS notebook, the M1330, and several of its new Inspiron laptops in a variety of colors. Whe it was time to go into full production mode, the company discovered problems with the PC paint job that didn’t show up in lower-volume runs preceding full-scale production. It also had trouble getting enough of a certain type of screen.
Those problems are largely behind them now, said Simon Wong, vice president of operations for Dell APJ (Asia-Pacific and Japan). While there still will be long wait times for customers ordering some of the new models, Wong said, the company has worked through the backlog of orders that stacked up when the problems arose.
“We’re getting out of this hole now,” he said.
“Four weeks ago we had huge customer issues,” he added. “Now that platform (the M1330) is becoming the first platform that all orders are now current to customers.”
Wong said Dell should work through the last of the backlog this week and will then be working on current orders. The wait time will still be long for new M1330 buyers, he said, but Dell is making that clear to customers up front.
The job now, he said, is reducing the wait time on all the new notebooks. As it turns out, some of the most popular colors - flamingo pink, for example - are the ones that are taking more time to paint, build and ship.
But for anyone who ordered an Inspiron notebook in green, I saw a couple of them on their way through Dell’s assembly line in Penang. Maybe one of them is yours.