genius bar scalpers

To make an appointment at a Genius Bar, Apple’s in-store tech support, you just hop on line, tell them your issue and make an appointment. In China, though, people are taking advantage of this system and making it more difficult – and more expensive – for people to get Genius Bar appointments. Apparently, using a bunch of email addresses, scalpers book up every Genius Bar appointment at Apple stores and sell the appointments. Read more to see how much they sell the appointments for.

Tat Wza

Scalpers make their money buy buying up all of the available tickets to an event – usually sporting events and concerts – and jacking up the prices. These scalpers don’t even need to lay out any money up front. For 10 yuan – a little more than $1.50, which is a considerable amount of money in a country where $580 is the average monthly income – you can buy a Genius Bar appointment. Instead of making an appointment to get your iPhone, iPad, iPod or Macbook fixed for free, you have to contact a scalper advertising appointments, at which point you’ll be contacted with times they have available to sell to you. Let’s hope this doesn’t catch on stateside.

Via 9to5Mac.