russellholliman.com

You paid what for that paper? ... chump.
Thursday, September 06, 2007

Dwight has a rather disdainful post about how those that paid $599 for their iPhones before then recent price drop are chumps. Actually, he uses the term 'iChump' which made me think it was going to be more 'tongue and cheek' that it turns out to be (because you know, adding an 'i' to a word makes it creative and cute).

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.

I could wait. I waited over 50 days to buy one. I bought mine for business reasons. There was nothing impulsive or irrational about my decision. Its not like I knew there was going to be an Apple announcement when I bought my iPhone. If anyone pretends to have known that Apple was going to do something so historical - slash the price of their new product by 33% within the first 70 days of launch - they are lying.

My father-in-law* recently let slide an invoice from the Houston Chronicle to renew his subscription to the newspaper. When he talked with someone on the phone from the Chronicle, they offered him a 44% discount. He asked why. They replied:

...no reason. Anyone can get the discount if they just know to ask.

If paying $200 more 20 days ago is a "Cool Tax" what do you call the extra amount the majority (I'm guessing) of your readers pay because they don't "know to ask?"

We can all guess why Apple would make such a drastic cut in their pricing, and guess why the Chronicle ~~has to~~ might, but the real question is: what cute little name do the Chronicle cronies use at the end of the day for their readers that simply pay face value for their paper?

*I have to use my father-in-law as an example because even as a native Houston with a tremendous amount of pride for, and history in, the city of Houston, I don't read the Chronicle. And my kids? They've never even seen a newspaper... but they love looking at their blog on my iPhone ;)

Labels: houston chronicle, iphone

posted by Russell @ 10:38 PM,

5 Comments:

At 12:40 AM, Anonymous said...: It was an iLinkbait attempt.
At 8:22 AM, Andre said...: Comcast cut my broadband bill 50% for 6 months when I complained about a 23.95 promotion.
Does that mean I have been an iChump for 3 years? Guess so.
At 8:40 AM, Andre said...: One more thing...
That's the line Mr. Jobs should have used in his open letter to customers.
I searched "$100 credit iPhone" and got about 815,000 links. Then 3 segments on the Today Show, GMA, CBS Morning Show, Fox on and on.
That $100 per customer is starting to look like a bargain.

Marketwatch headline:
Apple introduces the iPology
Marketwatch - September 07, 2007 8:32 AM ET

Related Quotes
Symbol Last Chg
AAPL Trade 135.01 0.00
Real time quote.

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Apple Computer has developed and introduced an entirely new marketing innovation called the iPology that turns customer complaints into free publicity
At 9:49 AM, Russell said...: The $100 seems well worth it this time. But something like this can only work once. The press the second time would be 10x worse.

And yes, anyone stuck with Concast is probably an chump for one reason or another. In my case, where they block the ports on which Microsoft Exchange servers talk, we're comcastrated.
At 1:37 PM, Andre said...: But they told me "I was a Comcastic customer" (or was that comatose)