Well (hopefully), now he'll be remembered as "the guy that ruined education discounts so he could buy an audi and have a free education"... Talk about over-privileged...
I think it's actually quite clever, with very little downside, either morally or ethically.
The worst that happens is that they configure the education program so you can only buy one system a year (or some other such limitation) - which seems eminently reasonable for an education program.
As long as Apple was willing to sell unlimited numbers of Macintoshes in the bookstore for a discount, not sure why a clever and hard working person _wouldn't_ engage in a little arbitrage.
This is the kind of behavior you quite often see in successful startup founders, btw.
Except you are prioritizing your own short-term gain over the long-term benefit to a larger group of people. Apple would have figured it out very quickly and would have taken steps to regain control of their pricing.
It is a program that provides financial benefit to poor students in exchange for a moral obligation. I see it as being more akin to stealing from a charity rather than a savvy or smart business opportunity. Being entrepreneurial is about providing a product or service to people, but not doing it at the cost to all others. It takes zero imagination to take advantage of a goodwill initiative, all it requires is a lack of moral compass.
I was a super-poor student from a low income family and I relied on both educational discounts and financing to get access to my own computer - so to know now that the program was screwed with by guys who were not exactly starving students really pisses me off.
easy there bro. There were already restrictions on education purchases when I did this. I worked with the bookstore director directly to buy in volume. It was all in the open.
Volpe|14 years ago
softbuilder|14 years ago
Are education discounts ruined now? I haven't been in a college store in a while.
ghshephard|14 years ago
The worst that happens is that they configure the education program so you can only buy one system a year (or some other such limitation) - which seems eminently reasonable for an education program.
As long as Apple was willing to sell unlimited numbers of Macintoshes in the bookstore for a discount, not sure why a clever and hard working person _wouldn't_ engage in a little arbitrage.
This is the kind of behavior you quite often see in successful startup founders, btw.
nikcub|14 years ago
It is a program that provides financial benefit to poor students in exchange for a moral obligation. I see it as being more akin to stealing from a charity rather than a savvy or smart business opportunity. Being entrepreneurial is about providing a product or service to people, but not doing it at the cost to all others. It takes zero imagination to take advantage of a goodwill initiative, all it requires is a lack of moral compass.
I was a super-poor student from a low income family and I relied on both educational discounts and financing to get access to my own computer - so to know now that the program was screwed with by guys who were not exactly starving students really pisses me off.
a4agarwal|14 years ago