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Apple stopped sales in Turkey after the lira crashed 15% in a day
- hellbannedguy 5y agoI just figured Apple's markup is so high, a 50% drop would still produce a profit.
- sharmin123 5y agoFacebook Hacked? 7 Things You Need To Do Right Now!: https://www.hackerslist.co/facebook-hacked-7-things-you-need-to-do-right-now/ https://www.hackerslist.co/facebook-hacked-7-things-you-need...
- bserge 5y agoWhy don't they just sell in Euro/USD? That's what people did a few decades ago a bit further north, when the local currency wasn't trusted (even if it was rather stable). But yeah, inflation in Eastern Europe is pretty bad, and if you voted for a bunch of dumb assholes who don't care about you or the nation, you're multifucked.
- pmontra 5y agoIs like to hear about this from somebody living in Turkey but maybe shop prices must be in Lira. I don't even know if in my country it's mandatory for physical shops to display prices in Euro or if a price could be only in Dollars.
- rvense 5y agoCertainly in my country you have to accept our own currency. Cash is mandatory too, although that's just a matter of a years.
- School-Cotton 5y agoEven if you have to quote prices in lira, could they internally model the price in euros or dollars and adjust the lira price multiple times a day if necessary? I’ve heard that this is what most shopkeepers did during the hyperinflation in Yugoslavia (with German marks as the reference currency).
- mrighele 5y agoI don't know about shop prices, but it used to be possible to make contracts in EUR or USD, especially when loans in those currencies were involved. For example if a company would build a shopping center using loans in EUR, and then would rent the shops in EUR. This practice has been banned, I think at the time of the previous currency crisis (2018) and now prices must be in local currency
- ulzeraj 5y agoProbably some forced course laws that demands prices be defined in local currency. If you ever lived in countries with irresponsible central banks like Brazil or Argentina you'll notice there are often laws to dissuade you from using the crappy local currency.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y agoSoeme of developers in Ukraine are paid in USD or EUR for this reason.
- blfr 5y agoHow did Turkey find its way to Eastern Europe?
- guythedudebro 5y agoThrough Greece and the Balkans
- cheschire 5y agoIt bridges Europe and Asia and geographically considered a part of both, according to wiki.
- davidw 5y agoIt shares land borders with Bulgaria and Greece.
- csomar 5y agoHalf of their "capital" is in Europe. They used to own some of the E.E. countries before the Ottoman fell.
- mistrial9 5y agoyou are thinking about the Ottoman times here?
- davedx 5y agoI worked for an e-commerce site that sold cars in Turkey in Euros. Sometime in 2018 I think it was, Erdogan made a new law that said everything had to be traded in Lira.
- AdrianB1 5y agoThere are ways to go around. Last year I bought a car (not in Turkey, but very close) and the price was in EURO converted to local currency at the rate of the last payment. I ordered with a downpayment and I got it 3 months later (supply chain slowness) and I paid in local currency the converted price of that day. The car was not sold in EURO, but the price was linked to it.
- lostlogin 5y ago> pretty bad, and if you voted for a bunch of dumb assholes who don't care about you or the nation, you're multifucked. The vote tally and the resulting leader are not necessarily related in these places.
- tsimionescu 5y agoWhere in Eastern Europe do you think elections were stolen by invalid vote counting?
- lostlogin 5y agoBelarus, Russia, Turkey, Romania. There is a list under ‘Europe’ here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversial_elections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversial_electi...
- Keyframe 5y agoSame reason you cannot pay in euros in US. Lira is a legal tender. Company can peg prices internally to a spot rate to whatever, but if exchange turns to fast volatility, what else can you do?
- AdrianB1 5y agoThere is no law preventing one to sell in Euro in US and there is no law mandating a seller to accept USD as payment. "Legal tender" does not mean what most people think.
- Keyframe 5y agoThat's quite a fantasy there.
- haneefmubarak 5y agoYou have to ultimately pay taxes in USD and have to accept settlement for debts in USD, but otherwise you're free to accept anything else you'd like, really.
- Keyframe 5y agoThat's quite a difference than compared to most, if not all, european countries. There are certain exceptions for outside.of borders payments, but even then local and legal currency has to be accounted. Retail no way.
- tsimionescu 5y agoA supermarket could refuse to sell you something unless you pay in Mario coins, but I beleive a restaurant is forced to accept your dollars to settle the bill you incurred for the food, and can't insist you pay your bill in Fallout Bottlecaps. Is this right?
- AdrianB1 5y ago
- Kognito 5y agoThis is a few days out of date now. Sales have already resumed with prices adjusted accordingly.
- rdtwo 5y agoHow long did it take them? Could you have gone in bought a ton of stock at old prices and gotten at least some of your 15% back? Apple stuff resells pretty well
- kadoban 5y agoIf you knew in advance that it was going to crash, there's better ways to profit more directly. If you didn't, seems unlikely you'd be ready to capitalize. Besides, not sure how it works in Turkey, but most places at least: retailers can cancel orders for little to no reason, if you bought a bunch of crap right before such an event, I bet they'd cancel it.
- mrtksn 5y agoApple apparently canceled some orders, the social media was full of people complaining about it however the laws don't allow you to cancel orders just like that(when you order something the company and the customers are obligated to sign purchasing agreements that provides ether party with rights and obligations) and many people were quite motivated to sue Apple. Some contacted Apple and the official response was that the cancellations are due to unrelated reasons. Turkish consumer protection laws are not bad, there are arbitration tribunals and consumer courts that quickly and cheaply resolve that kind of disputes. People use these all the time. My brother snapped an iPad Air for the equivalent of 450$ and is expecting the delivery anytime now.
- mrtksn 5y agoThe USD$ went from 9.50 to 12.50 in a month and I believe the last adjustment they did was at 8.5. Apple had 2 days of no online sales but the sales in the shops continued until the inventory depleted. I was also going to grab a Macbook Pro when the price dropped below the US price but I wasn't decisive enough and missed the opportunity. I bet a lot of people bought MacBooks just to re-sell. An interesting detail, in Turkey they are allowed to sell laptops with only Turkish keyboard layouts due to some law on protecting the language. Only German and Arabic layouts are excepted due to some trade agreements. On the iPhones, the Turkish prices are never good due to very high taxation(about half of the price is tax). Turkey even pioneered the IMEI registration process where you can't use foreign device for longer than a few month in Turkey. If you like to bring a device from abroad, you need to register the device and pay a hefty registration fee and you can do it only once in two years. Officially, the registration is to prevent terrorist from using the devices as burners. The fee was 10 liras at the beginning but now it's over 2000.
- jeffbee 5y agoThe Turkish lira has been plunging vs. the US dollar for 14 years straight. It has fallen by 90% in dollar terms. All foreign retailers must be constantly readjusting prices, right?
- bohemian99 5y agoThey probably just readjust their currency hedges
- dsp 5y ago> They probably just readjust their currency hedges How would you propose that work? Hedging currency risk against unsold product isn’t a hedge, it’s a directional bet.
- csomar 5y agoI think it's a combination of the speed/magnitude this time. The TRY has been plunging for a good amount time now but it has been doing that regularly and with smaller adjustments. Having a 15% single day crash seems to have caught lots of people off-guard.
- dreamcompiler 5y agoI still have a 500,000 TL note from Turkey's hyperinflation days in the early 2000s. Back then it was just about enough to buy a loaf of bread. Looks like those days are coming back.
- gbuk2013 5y agoI have a 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar note, which apparently would buy 2 eggs at the time of issue. It’s actually increased 10x in value since I bought it on ebay though. :)
- shalmanese 5y agoOr maybe the US dollar has just deflated 10x in value against the only reliable store of value: used 100 trillion Zimbabwean notes on ebay.
- xhkkffbf 5y agoIf they priced them in Bitcoin.....
- sethd 5y ago…they would be repricing them almost weekly.
- rvense 5y ago*hourly
- whatever1 5y agoNo phone would be sold because transactions take hours.
- savant_penguin 5y agoMaybe they should sell it in Bitcoin and automatically trade for dollars
- div72 5y agoThe Central Bank of Turkey prohibited usage of cryptocurrencies as a payment method back in April.
- qeternity 5y agoRight, because although the Lira is the most volatile currency, a 15% one day move is a black swan. For bitcoin, it happens every couple of months.
- samstave 5y agowhat do you think btc's 'black swan' will be?
- ComodoHacker 5y agoStability?
- ChrisClark 5y agoChina will ban it for the 17th time? (kinda sarcasm, kinda not)
- qeternity 5y agoIt doesn't matter. Bitcoin's normal price discovery is volatile to the degree that only black swans are in fiat currencies.
- JanisL 5y agoIts not a real black swan because it's so painfully obvious to anyone who's looked at it in depth but the demise of Tether will have an enormous impact on BTC.
- Jensson 5y ago
- CSDude 5y agoWe were just starting a startup, and bought all computers, monitors, chairs, desks etc. when $/TL was around 8.5. Now one dollar is 12.5 TL. At least our rent for 140m2 is around 1000$ in a very good spot.
- throwaway4good 5y agoIs the cost of living (food, rent, price of a coffee at a bar ...) in lira going up at the same pace? Or is the inflation only felt in imported goods suchs computers, gasoline ...
- johaugum 5y agoOstensibly, goods imported and bought with USD will have their prices inflated, while locally produced goods and services should remain more or less unchanged. This also means that exported goods are effectively cheaper for international buyers, so export volume goes up.
- umeshunni 5y ago> while locally produced goods and services should remain more or less unchanged. What usually happens is that since oil is denominated in USD, the price of fuel and transportation rises when a currency weakens and that increases the price of locally produced goods as well.
- mastax 5y agoThis is felt especially acutely because most Turkish debt is denominated in foreign currency (~70%) and the vast majority of trade is as well (I remember 85% but can't find a source). So inflation is felt immediately.
- mrtksn 5y ago> This also means that exported goods are effectively cheaper for international buyers, so export volume goes up. That's Erdogan's theory. However in reality nothing stays cheap because anything Turkey produces has large component of imports, be it energy, parts or machinery etc. because the country is not a petrostate. The only thing that can stay cheap is the labour but that labour can stay cheap only if it sees huge drop in life quality since the stuff the people consume(petrol, cars, electronics etc.) see huge price increases. You simply can't keep the wedge of a worker at 5000 when the iPhone prices increase from 7000 to 11000, car prices jump from 200K to 300K and gas from 6 to 9.
- Zenst 5y agoQuestion is - if/when the lira rises 15% (#1), will Apple respond as timely to adjust prices cheaper? Mindful that companies are quick to point to a reason to increase prices yet when that same reason goes the other way, not so quick (if ever) to adjust down. Is Black Friday sales a thing in Turkey? As can imagine many who would of banked to buy then, only to get hit with the polar opposite in this instance. #1 - (maybe in a day with things settling out, dunno about specific reasons for the crash but mindful the whole Omicron dram and market magnification/snowball effect could be factor here as been so with some share prices past few days).
- greendesk 5y agoThat is a big ‘if’. If the currency changes rapidly, it will have effects across the supply chain. On sales during Black Friday / Black Weekend / Cyber Monday - this type of sales become common across multiple countries, including Turkey. But not nearly as famous.
- qsort 5y agoI mean, it's not Apple's fault Turkey's currency is unstable. Why would it be their responsibility to take the exchange risk? I wouldn't be surprised if in response to future events like this they stopped accepting payments denominated in TRY altogether.
- reaperducer 5y agoIt's been a few years since I was in Turkey, but at the time, most stores took Euros. And street vendors even preferred it. However, whether Apple is allowed to use Euros for the retail prices in store or not may be a legal matter. There are plenty of countries where it's illegal not to price and sell in the government's preferred currency.
- trentearl 5y agoI’ve lived in turkey for 3 years and I’ve only seen this with expensive imported bicycles.
- hourislate 5y agoHyper inflation drives people to buy goods that can be resold later for more. This happened in CCCP while it was falling apart. People would show up with all their money every morning at their local stores, buying whatever was available no matter what it was. They could resell it later for more money (effort to preserve the value of the currency they held). Apple products are a safe bet as they typically hold on to their value well, are small and convenient to hang onto (refrigerators are more difficult), and can be sold abroad, etc.
- eterm 5y agoIt's very odd to write CCCP in an otherwise english paragraph in latin alphabet. YOu would be better understood to write USSR or better just write Soviet Union. (For those unfamiliar, CCCP is SSSR in cyrillic alphabet).
- joshgachnang 5y agoAh thank you! I was thinking China but that's CCP. I was wondering if I was missing something from history.
- harpiaharpyja 5y agoIf you stop to think about it yes it is pretty odd, but enough people do this that I don't have to think twice when I see it. You'd definitely wouldn't see it in formal writing, but informally it's not uncommon. A quirk of cross-cultural transmission maybe?
- colechristensen 5y agoI think it's more often subtle morality/superiority signaling by calling an entity by a different name. Think Republicans referring to the "Democrat party" instead of the "Democratic" or people using "CCP" instead of "China".
- MrMorden 5y ago
- crate_barre 5y agoSo, is Turkey and Venezuela the two major countries that are actively going through a currency crisis? What are they doing that’s so different from everyone else? Drop interest rates, print more money. I don’t know what Erdogan’s plan is, but unless they find strong export partners, devaluing the currency isn’t going to work out. We expect everything coming out of Turkey to be cheaper now, but who’s buying (importing)?.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago>What are they doing that’s so different from everyone else? Drop interest rates, print more money. Having an even more dysfunctional government with leaders that cannot be trusted. Currency is only worth as much as the people using it can produce desired goods/services.
- adam_arthur 5y agoErdogan has been pushing for lower rates despite high inflation. Also believe he fired a few of the central bank chiefs.
- dekhn 5y agoUm. Please go do a little research about Venezuela's situation before proposing a simple, wrong solution. They have badly mismanaged their financial and political situation for a long time and are not equipped to make the necessary changes to remedy this (whether the answer be "print more money"). If you'd like to know more about their situation, I recommend reading "The Prize" and "The Quest". Much of the root of their problems come from nationalizing their oil industry and subsidizing local oil, although that's not the entire explanation.
- pengaru 5y agoThrough this lens "supply chain problems" starts looking like a rather convenient scapegoat for preventing consumers from purchasing your wares before their currency becomes realized as worth less and your prices go up accordingly. This is effectively what's happened with my inability to buy an IKEA table for months... it was constantly out of stock, and it's still out of stock, but its price has increased 15% from when I first attempted buying.
- ivalm 5y agoExcept it is the other way around, currency becomes worth less because people are willing to exchange more of it for the same item (eg ikea table). Demand -> inflation.
- masa331 5y agoI have a solution for you. Buy a table somewhere else
- colechristensen 5y agoWell there was an incredible increase in the price of wood for a while there (futures tripled normal prices for a while there) from both the supply and demand side (not to mention labor and shipping concerns). If you're Ikea you can either double your prices or severely limit production. You say "convenient scapegoat", but I think people were going to be mad about something regardless of how Ikea responded.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoIf the US is experiencing 7% inflation, does that mean the lira is a net -22% relative to the dollar?
- LatteLazy 5y agoNot in one day. And it would be 22% compared to something with a more fixed value (like gold). Value is stable, the USD fell 7% and the lira another 15% for 22% total. Looks like the lira is down 31% compared to my own currency (gbp) so far in 2021.
- gandalfian 5y agoCheapest Netflix country often. Must now be even better. UK scroungers often use a VPN to switch their payments to the Turkish Netflix while watching in the UK. Makes it half price.
- alienalp 5y agoCost of my 200gb LTE subscription come down to 17$. And its most expensive operator.
- seddin 5y agoTurkey might soon become a great place to remote work from.
- trymas 5y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29339576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29339576