Andy is *not* not a scalper.

Andy, the guy that wrote the blog posting linked here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1286391 detailing how he was banned from buying ipads 'for life' is not a scalper*.

That's my conclusion after emailing with him and trying to get to the bottom of how much money he charged his foreign buddies for buying the ipads in the US and then shipping them internationally.

If you figure that the people that advertise the ipads on 'ebay' charge $650 for an ipad before shipping, insuring and taxes and Andy charged $630 for that same ipad with shipping, insuring and taxes already included he could not have made more than a trifle on the sales, probably just enough to cover his gas money and the time it took him. The numbers simply aren't there to justify labeling him as a scalper. He's simply a hardworking guy that decided that his overseas buddies could have their ipad if they reimbursed his costs.

What bothers me about the whole episode is that Apple apparently had several options to avoid this from happening:

- they could have informed him before coming to the store that his order was cancelled

- they could have priced the ipad in such a way that this would not have happened

- they could have simply allowed people to buy as many of them as they wanted,
releasing them all over the world in one go, instead of 'hollywood' style one
region after another.

Stonewalling on his legitimate question how many ipads he was allowed to buy is really rude, after all, if there is a rule and you've crossed it, it would be nice to know what that rule actually is. (if only so you can avoid crossing it the next time).

By creating a scarcity in the market Apple also created the conditions that make people pay well over the list price of the product in order to get their hands on one. For instance, for a European software developer that wants to write software for the ipad (and that wants to test on the actual device) this would be the only way, and they would certainly not worry about paying a premium to get their hands on one possibly months ahead of their competition.

I don't think companies should keep records on who buys their goods, and I don't think companies should try to micro manage what happens with those goods once they're paid for and leave the store. And 'lifetime limits' on a product, what a nonsense, after all, if a producer of a good can sell more to a single customer that's normally considered a great thing rather than something to punish your customers for.

What if you're unlucky, and your ipad gets stolen a few times or if you have a large family? Such arbitrary rules create very strange market conditions.

In the end, it shouldn't affect Andy too much, there are *way* too many loopholes in Apples scheme that they have a very hard time enforcing their policy effectively. Have a friend buy your ipads, pay cash, and so on. So all this does is portray apple as a company that wishes to control their products and who buys them (or is even permitted to buy them!). Not a healthy development.

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* a scalper is apparently someone that buys something in short supply but priced low in volume to sell it at a significant mark up. I had to ask what it meant because in the HN thread that word was used to describe the behaviour and I had never heard of it before.