Filed under: Humor, Cult of Mac, iPhone
Shopper picks up iPhone AND $800US
Here's the story. This kid in Texas arrives at his local AT&T store at 6:00 AM on Friday the 29th to buy an iPhone. His effort pays off as he finds himself in 1st place.Almost 12 hours later, a woman shows up with $16,000US in cash. Mark - the 1st place squatter - sells her his spot for $800US. Her intention was to buy a slew of phones and sell them all on Ebay. Apparantly, she was unaware of the "1 per customer" rule, and left with a single phone that ended up costing her $1400 (before activation).
As for Mark, he eventually got a phone of his own plus a mountain of accessories. Why not, right?
The moral of the story: Some people are lucky, some people are dumb. We'll let you work out which is which.
Thanks, Marco!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Rob said 8:14PM on 7-05-2007
The greedy twit deserved to be out $1400.
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miguel said 8:35PM on 7-05-2007
today is my 51 b-day, and it made my day :-D
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punkassjim said 8:39PM on 7-05-2007
HAHAHAHAHA!!!! When I started seeing "free iphone" banner ads on myspace and the like, I suddenly wanted all of these opportunists to suffer.
Here's proof that at least one did. I mean, seriously, how can you not do any homework when you're hatching a scam? Wow.
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John Reynolds said 8:46PM on 7-05-2007
Hahaha! Thats great. If only there were more dumbasses out there just waiting to give away thier money to the honest youth of the nation!! XD
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dalasv said 9:14PM on 7-05-2007
Guess how old this story is? It shouldn't be hard, since we all know what day this happened on.
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joe said 9:19PM on 7-05-2007
Way to only be a week behind on the story. TUAW: Bringing you breaking news minutes before other news sites purge them from their databases.
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joe said 9:54PM on 7-05-2007
not to mention, she must have called the local news channel and told them her plan so they would follow her around and report on it....
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Chuck Heimberg said 10:39PM on 7-05-2007
Just watched a video of the newcast on this story over at iPod Hacks, the woman acually planned on buying $100,000 worth of iPhones. The young man who sold his spot to her was very well spoken and thought it was pretty funny that he got his phone for free. Kudos to Apple and ATT for making sure that the iPhone sales don't turn into an ebay fiasco.
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rogersmj said 11:08PM on 7-05-2007
Not only is this story almost 6 days old, but it contains incorrect information. All customers at Apple stores were limited to two phones, not one.
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JohnPQ said 11:09PM on 7-05-2007
I saw this on Digg like last week.
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Big Dave said 11:41PM on 7-05-2007
It's because they never check their tips box/form/whatever so they are always like a week late with stuff. See http://www.dbattery.com
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joe said 11:49PM on 7-05-2007
@rogersmj: If you HAD watched the video, you would know they were at an AT&T store, which limited customers to 1 phone per customer, and not at an Apple Store.
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justin said 12:30AM on 7-06-2007
she gets the dip sh*t award of the day
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Dina said 12:54AM on 7-06-2007
Lucky!
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basscadet said 2:34AM on 7-06-2007
has anyone bought even one of those overpriced 2000$ iphones on ebay?
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terssi said 5:33AM on 7-06-2007
1. Why all that cash? (because it looks better on tv)
2. That guy is an actor.
3. It's FOX news.
4. This story was staged, just like that "Guy Swipes Reporter's Mic During iPhone Liveshot"
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icruise said 6:51AM on 7-06-2007
I'll have to admit that it sounds a little fishy to me. Both the "kid" and the woman buying his place in line seemed a little "off" -- a little too polished. And even if the woman didn't know about the "one per customer" rule (which was not exactly a secret), did she really think AT&T was going to let her buy 25 phones? At my AT&T store, that would've been pretty close to their entire stock, and if someone had come in at the last minute and tried to buy them all after people had been waiting for 6-12 hours in line, there would have been a riot.
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IBall said 9:34AM on 7-06-2007
Clearly staged by Fox. Just for starters, the camera is already inside the store when they unlock the doors to let the first customer in. Fair and balanced.
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Zach said 10:11AM on 7-06-2007
Old news is so exciting!
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Tony said 11:09AM on 7-06-2007
@ rogersmj
Perhaps you should read the story more carefully. The kid arrived at his local AT&T store, not his local Apple store. AT&T stores only allowed you to purchase one phone per person.
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