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Apple had a lot of trouble with the Indian market back the early 2010s. They had to pull AppleCare+ out of the country because people were abusing it a lot. [†]

• Y_Y 6y ago
  hey
• jetrink 6y ago
  Why would people want to have an iPhone for only a week? That sounds like more of a hassle than it is worth. Just to see what they are like?
  • mciancia 6y ago
    Unless you are trying new iPhone every week ;)
  • _jal 6y ago
    Same reason people do the same thing with clothes.
    • cghendrix 6y ago
      And what would that be?
      • mbit8 6y ago
        wearing it for some special occasion like a date or meeting and then returning it, so that's why it doesn't work in low income countries
        • cghendrix 6y ago
          Ah makes sense now. Similar to people buying tv’s for the Super Bowl and then return it. Just never thought of that with phones.
  • oblio 6y ago
    Random guess? Low/very low income folks, wanting a status symbol they can't afford.
    • AppleIsWeaknes 6y ago
      They are regarded as a veblen good everywhere. Getting a lower quality product at a high price is by definition veblen good. You pay for Apple products because it's impractical and hard to use. It shows the world you are part of the group.
      • gambiting 6y ago
        I always wonder how extremely dedicated someone has to be to bashing a product/group to make a whole username dedicated to it. >>You pay for Apple products because it's impractical and hard to use Exactly, that's why developers who charge big money for their time use them - because they are impractical and hard to use. You cracked it mate.
  • sss111 6y ago
    In India returns are almost always picked up from your home. No need to print labels or package it. On the other hand, In the US, more often than not, you have to pack up your item and drop it off to a store to return it.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • kylehotchkiss 6y ago
      This has helped e-commerce grow significantly in India just because people are busy and getting around is always a chore (especially with brands like Nykaa, Myntra, and Ajio) This model would work great to bring more developing countries on board with e-commerce
      • sss111 6y ago
        Agreed, also the traffic in Indian metros like Delhi and Bangalore (and increasingly smaller metros like Jaipur) is horrible. That has certainly helped local e-commerce brands like Myntra and Ajio grow. It's interesting how these clothing retailers still offer a very customer friendly return policy compared to electronics retailers like Amazon or Apple.
  • sheikheddy 6y ago
    Maybe they wanted to flex on social media? People do weird things for "clout".
  • Philip-J-Fry 6y ago
    Maybe it's a status symbol thing. Rent a designer electronic for an important meeting or a date or something to look good. Return it afterwards and get your money back.
    • kylehotchkiss 6y ago
      Not a bad business idea!
  • newsbinator 6y ago
    People have more time than money. If you had a Star Trek replicator in your home that could replicate a brand new iPhone for you for free that lasts a week then poofs out of existence, you'd go ahead and use it, probably more than once. If you don't mind the hassle and the ethical, er, annoyance of going to a store, waiting in queues, having $1000+ temporarily blocked off from your savings, a bunch of back and forth with the sales people, etc, then that's equivalent to replicating yourself an iPhone for a week for free.
  • truth_ 6y ago
    I knew of a guy who "bought" Apple Laptops from Amazon and used it as his DJ laptop and worked some gigs where the Apple laptop was a status symbol of how big a deal he is. He used to perform in small town and rural India and organizers paid him ₹3k-30k per night. He returned his laptop after doing 3-4 such gigs in the "marriage season" in India. He did this 7-8 times from different addresses and different accounts.
    • DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      30k/night is about $400 - that’s decent enough money to afford to buy a fully-loaded MacBook Pro after only a handful of gigs.
      • egeozcan 6y ago
        If you're living gig to gig, spending the earnings from a couple may not be an option. Doesn't justify what's being done, I'm just arguing against this single argument.
      • devenblake 6y ago
        Not if you have bills to pay.
      • yarcob 6y ago
        Only if someone else pays for your living expenses.
    • easton 6y ago
      After 21 gigs (3 gigs * 7 laptops) he would've made around 21k USD (presuming he was making at least 10k rupees per night, which between 3k-30k would've made sense). Seems like at that point you just buy the darn laptop, it's not like you need something more than an Air for DJing, and 1/21th of your revenue to be legal seems like not a bad idea.
      • dharmab 6y ago
        I think part of the point was he always had the current model.
  • alpaca128 6y ago
    As status symbols. Many people also abuse return policies to buy expensive cameras, use them to shoot nice pictures on vacation and then sending them back. They can still keep the pictures, so the camera lost its value for them.
    • LanceH 6y ago
      If I were to wager as to the single most common type of fraud of this type, I would guess it is women "buying" a dress with the intent to wear it once and return it. This is also why the terms on rental cars can get very specific.
      • rchaud 6y ago
        I don't blame them, it is shocking how much dresses cost. As a man, a well-tailored suit will last me a decade, waistline permitting. Nobody will ever say, 'Uh, you're wearing that suit AGAIN?' The rest of the time a simple blazer and button down shirt will do the job.
        • LanceH 6y ago
          I mentioned it because it seems the most socially acceptable and common example of this kind of behavior. Now that I think of it, the "eat the steak then complain" tactic is probably the most common that's in this ballpark. Personally, I do judge the people I've seen do this. They are self-centered and all did it for social reasons. If someone did it for a job interview I might understand, but invariably it was to have something they didn't want to pay for.
    • 908B64B197 6y ago
      They know a lot of places will let you rent right? With bulletproof insurance and the right accessories.
      • alpaca128 6y ago
        They also know free is cheaper than rent.
  • wolfretcrap 6y ago
    >Why would people want to have an iPhone for only a week? Indian culture is about display of wealth. Wealthy individuals are respected and get access to inner clubs while the people who don't have much don't get invited anywhere. College students might want to leave a good impression at a party and might get an iPhone so people start taking them seriously. Similarly, a guy might get an iPhone so his date considers him important. iPhone is status symbol in India because not everyone can afford it. I can certainly and easily afford it but I am still using android because I don't feel the need of uncessarry attention
    • akamhy 6y ago
      ^ Indian culture Every culture
      • wolfretcrap 6y ago
        Not really in some cultures talking about money and displaying wealth is not considered good and people look down on this behaviour.
        • Krasnol 6y ago
          Germany is such culture and it still happens with accessories and clothing. Apple is at the centre of this. You see people who obviously can't afford it with those (probably) fake AirPods all over the place. Sometimes they're not even connected. It's THE "look at me, I can afford it" electronics brand display for the middle and lower class.
  • akamhy 6y ago
    YouTube product reviews! People try to copy MKBHD, but as they don't get free products from Apple unlike Marques they buy them for a week.
    • asadlionpk 6y ago
      I feel most non-MKBHD reviewers do this everywhere else too.
• sillysaurusx 6y ago
  I disagree with categorizing this as abuse. The company was offering a refund policy. The customers were using it. My friend Kevin used to test out different GPUs when he was writing a game engine. He'd buy one, install it on his computer, run the engine, then return it a few days later. They often had a 10% restocking fee. Was he abusing policy? It's the same sort of logic banks use to justify "identity theft." Ah yes, it's the fault of the customer, not the banks' poor verification methods. That said, it's true that when large amounts of people do a thing, you'll have to adjust policy. But it's not their fault for taking advantage of policies they're legally allowed to use, and that the company freely offers.
  • cblackthornekc 6y ago
    Yes? That is abusing the policy. Sounds like he was trying to start a business and wanted to do QA. Then you need to pay for that. This is clearly unethical, but maybe not illegal.
    • sillysaurusx 6y ago
      He often did pay for that. That's the point of the 10% restocking fee.
      • selykg 6y ago
        Your friend was treating a return policy as a rental policy. I don't think that's in the spirit of a return policy.
        • ramraj07 6y ago
          Are we going to blame people for not buying WinRaR licenses next? These are businesses, they offer the policy for a variety of reasons, I am free to use them within the terms; it sounds a bit out there to categorise returning a product in a “no questions asked return” policy as unethical unless I actively sabotaged the product or did anything other than use it and give it back.
• sergiotapia 6y ago
  I totally believe this. Here in the states Costco's refund policy is like magic. If you buy something that is horrible, you can return it hassle free. I buy almost exclusively from costco just because of this policy. Zero stress. But something like this would not work in Bolivia (where I'm from), people would abuse the shit out of it. within a week the policy would be gone, no doubt.
  • Cerium 6y ago
    One of my friends works at Costco. He says that before the holidays they sell a lot of furniture and after the holidays they see a lot of furniture returns.
    • egeozcan 6y ago
      But wouldn't that be expected? More people buying (because they think they need it, as they're going to cook a lot), would mean, even if the return percentage is the same, more people returning. Add to that the people who realize what a waste of an investment that was after the holiday spree is over, you can explain it a bit more. But of course, it's impossible to tell surely without data. Going back to gut feelings: Does he see suspicious behavior? Weird reasons for returning?
      • Cerium 6y ago
        He does not work the returns desk, he is primarily a forklift driver. I find it interesting to hear about the seasonal variations though. A couple random things - the first stack of shelves that face the front of the store are managed to give a good impression. They always keep those shelves full of pallets and try to have a lot of only a few items to give a clean look. If the warehouse has empty space they try to keep it so you can't see from the center of the store.
      • nucleardog 6y ago
        The Costco I worked at had a lady that came in every holiday season and bought over $10k of holiday decorations. Like clockwork she'd be back in January to return it all, nearly all of it having been opened and used. She'd been doing this for almost a decade by the time I started working there. It's gonna be impossible to concretely discern intent from the data you could get, but it's pretty obvious there's _some_ abuse. The only question is where you draw the line on abuse and how much. January at our store was a rush of returns of opened and used Christmas decorations because "I decided I don't want it anymore." Often times from people that had done the same thing year after year. We'll never know what those people really intended when they bought it in the fall, but you'd have to be pretty damn charitable to assume the best of intent in all the cases. Especially when it was people doing it multiple years in a row.
• juancb 6y ago
  So what's the story behind the return abuse in India?
  • gambiting 6y ago
    I suspect it's the same story I heard in Poland - it's basically impossible to buy insurance against loss of mobile phone, because apparently people abused it too much. You can still get insurance against theft or damage, but not for loss. It was just too easy for people to say "yeah, I lost the phone, please send a new one thanks". But I mean, those policies exist elsewhere, so I don't know what specifically makes Polish customers more prone to abusing those policies. I suspect it's the relative cost of a phone vs income.
    • alex_smart 6y ago
      I can't speak for Poland, but for India the primary reason such services can't exist is - culture. India is basically a "low trust society". People in general have a mindset of "scarcity" and at every stage of their lives they try to micro-optimize for what's the best for them at that time. In the absence of good institutions, this often means that we get stuck in shitty Nash equilibria which have terrible, terrible outcomes for everyone involved, but are difficult to get out of. It is not that everyone in India has no morals or behaves terribly. But the number of people who do are enough to spoil trust-based models that work in other countries by making them too expensive. From a business point of view, the obvious question is - how do you create a circle of "trustworthy" people? If you could create such a circle, you could offer them special services (better return policies, lower rates for insurance and credit etc) to encourage them to consume more without worrying so much about abuse. This is one of the most exciting business problems in India and solving it is worth at least worth 10 billion dollars and that is probably an underestimate. There is one company already that claims to have solving this problem as their primary long-term vision - Cred and that company is currently valued at > $2 billion even though currently their revenues are weak and any connection to the long term trust problem quite distant.
      • lovestodonothin 6y ago
• tumblewit 6y ago
  Remember Apple sells its refurbished products. Yes it costs them (and as sales increase they also get more returns) to refurbish and sell them back but not accepting returns or refunds is a completely anti-consumer and not a customer friendly policy for a company that claims is all about the customer.
  • ballenf 6y ago
    If they claimed to take returns but always found an excuse not to take them, I'd call that anti-consumer. Maybe Apple could just give a discount if you give up your return option at the point of sale.
  • threatofrain 6y ago
    If Apple can’t effectively administrate their nice plans and the consequence is that a few abusers ruin it for everyone, then it’s better for customers to not have it. Too bad.
• mrits 6y ago
  20 years ago in the US I had friends in college that would shop for clearance items at places like Office Depot and return them to Walmart for full price (no receipt needed). In one situation there was like a $20 ancient keyboard that Walmart still had in their system for ~$100.
• wolfretcrap 6y ago
  It's not as bad in US and reason is purely economics of fraud. Very large fraction of US population is paid $30 an hour compared to Indian population which makes scamming not worth the trouble I live in India and I've worked in the US I know Indians just have too much time at their hand, so even schemes which take a lot of your time with little payoff are worth it here. And the reason people don't use their time to achieve something more productive like starting companies etc...is because government procedures are very hard to understand, and you get penalties left and right, even starting a micro industry like machining shop is hard, power is not available continuously even at top industrial zones in India, fixed cost of electricity connection is high in industrial area and government is very insensitive to business owners so only very large and the ones close to policies are able to navigate. The biggest problem isn't even market in India which has lot of demand, it's the costs you didn't plan for which seem low on surface the deeper you dig, the costs just keep increasing untill you are left with nothing and in debt so starting a business isn't very popular here and people limit the size of their success to not get in trouble.
  • aurizon 6y ago
    India has had trouble shaking the socialist mud off it's boots. Back in the late 40's and 50's huge numbers of bureaucratic make-work jobs were created. A thicket of state and local permits and rules have crippled India to this day. There are few large scale Korean Chaebols - instead there is a frenzy of small shops. Now all these bureacrats and small shops are a force to be reckoned with as the rationalize production millions of people would be turfed out of their feather-beds and made to work. Ask any man from India - India will only prosper in the Chinese way if they change.
    • divtiwari 6y ago
      Although you are being downvoted, as an Indian I completely agree with your comment!! Sadly it will never happen :(
      • aurizon 6y ago
        Yes, thanks for the moral support. The greed and corruption endemic in India is what held it back (after the UK holding it back was done, the Indians well showed they could self exploit to this day)
• wolfretcrap 6y ago
  >Same goes for the country's biggest online retailers, both Amazon and Flipkart also switched to a replacement-only policy in India. On Amazon India you can still get refund based on your history with them. Basically trusted customers still get the "refund" option in their account. Just new customers and the suspecious one aren't given that often by default
• sperrholz 6y ago
  > people were abusing it a lot Why frame it so negatively? You could as well say "people saw that Apple was ripe for disruption".
  • NikolaNovak 6y ago
    That may well be the most hacker news / silicon valley comment ever... I don't even want to know if it's /s or not! :)
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • tedunangst 6y ago
    Well, why are people upset Apple doesn't allow returns anymore? Maybe the people returning the items were ripe for disruption.
  • threatofrain 6y ago
    It's a framing from the perspective of other customers who are paying for things, but are now losing out.
• gumby 6y ago
  > With many buying latest smartphones, and returning them after a week after trying them "[1] That alone is not only OK but was recommended recently in the USA. Specifically, during COVID the Apple retail shops were shut so you couldn't compare devices when shopping. I bought my GF a regular and max sized iPhone and she took a week to decide which one she wanted. We sent the other one back and had a refund before the credit card bill was even due, so as far as my bank account was concerned I really did only pay for one. In normal times we would have been unlikely to have bothered with this (although with something as personal as a phone...) I can imagine that this only scales to a certain percentage of transactions though.
• ragazzina 6y ago
  It's really strange to see that on HN when a company is paying only the taxes it legally has to, it's called "business acumen", but when a person is extracting all the value it can from a policy, it's "abusing the policy". I wonder if the same people hold both the opinions.
  • tedunangst 6y ago
    Seems like reporting a phone as lost without losing it would be the equivalent of lying about income, which is generally recognized as tax fraud, not business acumen.
  • vkou 6y ago
    This is a very astute observation. There seems to be an assumption that only people, but not organizations can act in bad faith - and that deceiving the government is a virtue.
  • kelnos 6y ago
    Not entirely disagreeing with you, but if we want to stop companies from avoiding tax, we should change the tax code. Apple has gone and done the analog of that; they've changed the returns code. I don't see anything wrong with what Apple has done here, and if the US decided to tighten up the tax code, I wouldn't see anything wrong with that either. To your actual point, I think it's about intent and spirit. The holes in the tax code were put there intentionally, to benefit businesses. We may not like it, but that's how it is. Businesses aren't violating the letter or even the spirit of the law when they avail themselves of it. On the contrary, Apple sets their return policy based on a balance between good customer service and an estimate of how much that customer service will cost them to provide. They likely estimate this cost based on what they think is reasonable customer behavior. In this case they mis-estimated: apparently Indians don't behave within what they consider to be the spirit of that policy. Another way of looking at it: the US government estimates tax revenue knowing that those loopholes exist, and is fine with the result. There are no budget-related surprises. Apple's estimates for the cost of returns in India was a large underestimation, so they're fixing their problem. Maybe it's an overreaction to think about this as "returns abuse", but I don't see these two things as being the same.
• gentleman11 6y ago
  How is this scamming or abuse? There is a return window that people are taking advantage of whose purpose it to let unsure people decide whether they want the device or not. People are using this promise at face value and then being called abusers and scammers
  • CogitoCogito 6y ago
    Yeah I'm having understanding how this is a scam too. Are they rebuying the same phone a week later? If not, they are using the system as intended.
    • thitcanh 6y ago
      I think the answer is not “not” It’s abuse because people buy it with the intent to return it. Buying it and then honestly changing your mind is fine, but Amazon probably determined that wasn’t the case here.
• bigbillheck 6y ago
  > With many buying latest smartphones, and returning them after a week after trying them Lots of products should have a return window this long or longer.
• inapis 6y ago
  Starting this year, you can get AppleCare+ which covers accidental damage in India. The normal AppleCare is discontinued.