I went into a (Premium, I believe) Apple Authorised Reseller in Thailand yesterday, to order a BTO Mac mini. It's a company purchase, and because our company's bank is ass-backwards, it's easier to deal with a company that will accept a direct bank transfer, which Apple online, does not.
We asked about a new Mac mini, he confirmed we meant the new model, and then went to a locked cabinet. We immediately said, no, we want to customise it - he said that's fine, went to a demo mac, brought up the online store page for the Mini, and basically had me pick the options we wanted (easier than trying to translate verbally to Thai I guess), and then went away.
He came back and said, "If we place this order today, it won't be available until the middle of January, Apple has given all its assembly staff a holiday. If you came in yesterday it would have been OK." I was, to say the least, surprised. When we asked why the Apple store online says it's just as few days ETA for delivery or pickup (at the new Apple offical store), he then said that those orders somehow aren't subject to the same "holiday".
So - this is clearly an excuse, right? My best guess, is that as a reseller/service centre, they try to make a little "cream" on sales like this, by doing the memory upgrades themselves, but like the rest of us, they can't get their hands on 32GB SO-DIMMs at the moment (I want 64GB. I don't much care how, but I'm not willing to wait for it to become available for a DIY, and it's not cost effective to e.g get 32GB factory and then upgrade later, because then I'm stuck with two SO-DIMMs i have no use for.
Does anyone know the details of how Apple handles BTOs for resellers? Because they're not able to buy bulk lots, do they just end up paying close to retail for them (and thus its almost 0 profit by the time they factor in their staff's time to process the sale etc)?
I couldn't ask them any of this because my Thai is very basic (bordering on non-existent really) and at the time, while it was clear they were giving us an excuse, it didn't even occur to me that it may be because of memory availability. Asking someone to translate a question when you're still trying to come up with the question in a clear way yourself (besides just "wtf, do you think I'm stupid?") is not really practical.
We asked about a new Mac mini, he confirmed we meant the new model, and then went to a locked cabinet. We immediately said, no, we want to customise it - he said that's fine, went to a demo mac, brought up the online store page for the Mini, and basically had me pick the options we wanted (easier than trying to translate verbally to Thai I guess), and then went away.
He came back and said, "If we place this order today, it won't be available until the middle of January, Apple has given all its assembly staff a holiday. If you came in yesterday it would have been OK." I was, to say the least, surprised. When we asked why the Apple store online says it's just as few days ETA for delivery or pickup (at the new Apple offical store), he then said that those orders somehow aren't subject to the same "holiday".
So - this is clearly an excuse, right? My best guess, is that as a reseller/service centre, they try to make a little "cream" on sales like this, by doing the memory upgrades themselves, but like the rest of us, they can't get their hands on 32GB SO-DIMMs at the moment (I want 64GB. I don't much care how, but I'm not willing to wait for it to become available for a DIY, and it's not cost effective to e.g get 32GB factory and then upgrade later, because then I'm stuck with two SO-DIMMs i have no use for.
Does anyone know the details of how Apple handles BTOs for resellers? Because they're not able to buy bulk lots, do they just end up paying close to retail for them (and thus its almost 0 profit by the time they factor in their staff's time to process the sale etc)?
I couldn't ask them any of this because my Thai is very basic (bordering on non-existent really) and at the time, while it was clear they were giving us an excuse, it didn't even occur to me that it may be because of memory availability. Asking someone to translate a question when you're still trying to come up with the question in a clear way yourself (besides just "wtf, do you think I'm stupid?") is not really practical.