Most consumers understand the price early adapters pay to have the shiniest toy on the block: you throw a couple hundred extra away so you can lord your gear over friends, family, co-workers, associates and the poor, and when the next big shiny toy comes along, the once novel piece of technology sinks down to actual market value. That’s why most sensible shoppers declare they’re going to wait “until the price comes down.” It’s a truism that this will occur. Progress demands it.
So to no one’s surprise but their own, Apple’s technosnobbish clique was outraged when Apple slashed the price of the iPhone from $599 to $399. Because it was so soon after the product’s debut – and because Apple’s hardcore base has such an outrageous sense of entitlement – they whined, and Steve Jobs coddled them, refunding the difference and giving them $100 in Apple Store credit.
For Dongmei Li of Queens, New York, however, the reduction in price was a slap in the face. She’d barely had time to establish her superiority through the next quarter when Apple made it easier for the hoi polloi to get their grubby hands on it. She did what any self-respecting Apple aficionado would do: she refused the refund and sued the company for $1 million.
Here the idea of a mutant strand of entitlement reappears: the basis for her suit is that if/when she decided to resell her iPhone, she would make less money. Even though the company would have comped her, and sweetened the deal with credit. Because of this, she thinks Apple will owe her $999,601 after she sells at the new price. If Li wins the lawsuit, she plans on suing the makers of a can of dented tomato soup she bought for $1.25 last week for $100,000. After all, there was a chance she was going to resell it.
