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Merry Restraining Order (12/13/98)
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Here we thought that Apple's legal department would have its hands completely full with the $1.1 billion Imatec lawsuit, the Mac customers suing Apple for dropping free lifetime customer support, the various suits filed as fallout from the ending of the First Era of Mac Cloning, etc. As it turns out, they're apparently a very organized and productive little bunch, because Apple's lawyers still found time to take legal action against unauthorized Mac resellers, also known as "grey marketers." According to a MacWEEK article, Apple hasn't forgotten about those guys, and they're enlisting the help of the courts to keep unauthorized Mac sales at a minimum.
It seems that Apple has just filed injunctions in federal court barring several of the larger grey marketers from their arguably-shady activities. Basically, grey marketers make their money by purchasing Apple equipment from other resellers, often overseas, and then selling the products at a profit. The easiest and most common method of doing this was by buying Macs that were meant for sale overseas and then selling them in the U.S.A. at prices lower than authorized resellers were able to offer. Customers who buy grey-market equipment occasionally find themselves with, for example, a Swedish keyboard or the like. And getting service on grey-market stuff can be next to impossible, since Apple records show that the equipment is supposed to be in Belgium, or wherever.
We don't particularly want to get into an argument about whether or not the grey marketers have the right to do what they do-- many people feel strongly one way or the other, and we're not denying that several grey market resellers offer not just low prices, but good, solid service and support. The fact of the matter is, though, that Apple intends to do whatever they can to make sure that their customers get the quality buying experience they deserve (no cracks about Best Buy, now-- that wouldn't be nice). This latest move shows that they haven't let the matter drop since they stepped up their anti-grey-market activities last June...
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SceneLink (1213)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 12/13/98 episode: December 13, 1998: We don't usually feature death-defying stunts on the show, but Apple insists on performing the Amazing Inventory Reduction of Death. Meanwhile, nothing says "Happy Holidays" like a court injunction, and you can forget about pocket contact managers, because the real future of PDAs is in Grand Theft Auto...
Other scenes from that episode: 1212: Treading a Thin Line (12/13/98) Once again, Apple's apparently cutting it really close with this whole "let's completely clean out our inventory before introducing new computers" scheme. The idea, of course, is to try to avoid the overstock problems of the past, where they'd be stuck with warehouses full of aging and unwanted Performas while customers clamored for the latest and greatest... 1214: Grand Theft Techno (12/13/98) Okay, so we weren't going to mention the whole "Palm Auto Theft" thing, even though it was a cute little tale. However, the story apparently has legs-- people keep mentioning it to us, and then it even showed up as a story in one of the local evening news shows...
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