The bite of the Apple

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27 November 2009 - 15:33 - #chair’s blog

How much is the NUJ Apple store discount?

Our wonderful grapevine editor Kim Willsher is always on the ball for a bargain and asked me this morning about the discounts at the NUJ Apple store. She, like others, had heard a totally inaccurate rumour that Apple offer 20% discounts on their gear. In fact the NUJ Apple store is one of the few places you’ll find much discount at all on Apple kit.

I took it up with the store’s manager who told me this: ’Apple have never offered NUJ members 20%. When the scheme first started it was 7% across the board. Later it was 6% on iMacs and their ilk and 8% on pro gear. On top of that Apple make a contribution to NUJ training.

’I have a feeling that what our member may be referring to is the offer Apple have on the NUJ store (and all their others) for new equipment that was originally shipped ’faulty’, returned, remade good and then resold. It is essentially new kit (been out of the box once) but is discounted from between 15-25% depending on how much use it had before breaking. It comes with the usual Apple warranties.’

It’s probably fair to say that the store only really comes into its own when buying the whole box. The bits - memory, hard drives etc - can usually be sourced cheaper elsewhere even with the NUJ discount provided you know what you’re buying. The same is often true of peripherals like printers.

Link to the NUJ Apple store.

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26 January 2010 16:05, by Alison Culliford

Speaking of Apple, I was shocked to hear a friend’s account of sweatshop conditions in its technical assistance call centres. If, under the terms of your expensive extended warranty, you call the French helpline you will be speaking to someone in Athens, where Apple has contracted out this service to the French company Teleperformance. Why Athens? Because there they can get away with paying low wages and exploiting people. €800 a month is the wage, which is not enough to live on. They get bonuses only if a certain number of people fill in the satisfaction report with a glowing review (please do this if you use the service). They are bullied by their superiors and if they put you on hold it’s probably because this is the only way they can go to the loo or smoke a cigarette. 40 min lunch breaks were taken at their desks. They have quotas to fill for selling extended warranties and time limits for the calls. Next door, at i-Tunes, so many workers were walking out that the management held back half their wages at the end of the month. It’s scandalous, it’s not what we expect of Apple, and as unionists we cannot accept it. If anyone is or knows a commissioning editor interested in a first-person account of this you can contact the person through me.
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