Apple iRate over employee iPhone hijinks
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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last several months, you’re likely all to familiar with the iPhone and all the hype surrounding it. What you may not know is that when the phone was released, Apple, in all it’s glory, pledged to give a free iPhone to all it’s employees who had been with the company for over one year. Well, it now appears that some 800 employees, who had received that free iPhone, took it upon themselves to cash in their $100 rebate for said phone. And Apple is pissed.
I still remember watching the live text feed from apple’s keynote when Steve Jobs announced the price drop for the iPhone. I remember the feeling of being crushed by a company I love. I expected a $100 price cut by the christmas season and I was happy to have paid that as an “early adopter tax”, however having the price drop twice that in the first 60 days was unthinkable.
In the end (a few days later), Apple heard the cry of it’s customers and decided to offer a $100 rebate to all customers who had purchased the phone before a specific date. Though I was excited about the rebate, I was also a little concerned. Unfortunately, I had purchased the smaller 4GB iPhone and had not saved the receipt, so I was somewhat scared that I might not receive my rebate. To my surprise, apple created a very easy method for claiming your rebate. You simply logged into their website, entered in your phone number, entered in the code from a text message the site sent you, and then printed out your $100 gift card. It was so simple, but apparently too simple.
Apparently, several enterprising Apple employees (as many as 800) decided they’d take it upon themselves to use their iPhones to claim the rebate also. Well, considering Apple gifted those phones to them (free of charge), claiming the rebate is tantamount to stealing from the company. So, as you might have guess, Apple has canned 800 employees. As well they should have.
I guess everyone is always trying to find a way to game the system, but it’s sad to think that this many people would take advantage of a company that was generous enough to give all it’s long term employees a free phone. I’ll be honest, I’d love to work for Apple. And I’m sure that in doing so, I could steal programs and whatnot from the computers in the store just by plugging in my iPod on my lunch break. But am I? No, of course not. You should have some sort of loyalty towards the company you work for. Especially one that treats it’s employees as generously as Apple had in this case.
The simple fact is that those employees got what was coming to them. Now, as they sit behind the desks at their new position as a member of the Geek Squad, they can think back to when they were once Apple Geniuses.
posted by Christopher Schnese
