What do you think of notorious "Meyer deal"?

What do you think of notorious "Meyer deal"?

 

????? ?????

 

I think this Meyer fellow probably has had some pretty rough days this past week. Let's just leave this poor fellow alone.

 

Very simple. It's just a question of ethics.

 

Kudos to Meyer.

Lenovo can still make money out of EPP but it is greedy and it wants to make more.

 

"Greedy?" What is the first lesson of capitalism 101?

 

The "Meyers Deal" was a Marketing ploy used by Lenovo to increase sales and Publicity...

 

I ended up canceling the EPP deal but still placed an order as I read about T61 for hours after ordering (I got it 2 minutes after it showed up on Slickdeals). I wanted a new laptop and no other brand sounded as good for the price as the T61.....I am going to wait as long as it takes......I will ask for faster shipping however.

 

Brian "Owes" me $2,155.00...

 

Meyer's deal was awesome, and I hope (and predict) it goes through without a hitch. Back in my undergrdaute days, slickdeals and fatwallet were my hobbies.

It was fun double dipping on rebates/coupons/promotions, pricematching products to death, and getting expensive items for very little (or negative) money. These "slick deals" as I call them, are normal and people have been taking advantage of them for a very long time.

I wanna point out that mall stores such as Footlocker and Champs regularly publish 30% off coupons for "friends and family." Staples regularly do their 12% "friends and family" also. Thousands of "non-friends and family" consumers have printed and use their coupons, just like hundrededs of people who do not know Meyer have used his EPP code. Virtually the same thing (Except for if Meyer got in trouble for it then I feel bad for him).

As for the ethics, I guess it might be less ethical than buying a laptop from bestbuy straight out. But, its more ethical than shop lifting a laptop from a store. Ethics is a grey gradient, and where you draw the line for what you deem acceptable is up to you.

 

mtruo001.....I am totally with you on slickdeals and fatwallet stuff....it is great and addicting

I guess I don't care about the ethical aspect of this deal (I am assuming that no child is going hungry because of additional saving).....but my concern was with warranty issue and having a 5.1+ pound of paper weight because of the conflict on warranty.

 

Very poor options in the poll. All three options are loaded.

First option - nobody is taking over his identity. Using his EPP discount isn't a claim to be him; its a claim to be his friend or family or for that matter whoever he wants to give it to.

Second option - "Save money whatever it takes" I don't many people would do "Whatever it takes" if that included taking someones life. Or in this case, I really doubt many would go through with it if they thought the guy would lose his job. However, most people including myself would do it if I knew that all that would happen is his supervisor said "Hey don't give out your EPP code to strangers anymore." ...end of discussion. I could live with that and I'm sure he wouldn't lose any sleep over it either.

Third Option - Well this is just the paranoid schizophrenic option.

How about a poll that says "Would you use someone's EPP discount without actually knowing the person?"

Answer "yes" or "no"

Just a thought if you are looking for more valid results from a poll.

 

I second this opinion. Are you studying philosophy or law? Good reasoning.

 

Excellent, Mr stallen, excellent my good Man...

 

Hey guys, what happened with your sense of humour?

 

There is NOTHING funny about breaking the "rules and regulations",
setforth by multi-nationals to gain every bit of profit, often to the detriment of the "Peasant/working-class", and to eek out maximum
profit for their shareholders with no regard whatsoever for Mankind, and it is their responsibility to milk/bilk us until we are dryed-up and choking...

And who said we don't have a sense of humor, anyway...

 

I would suggest "Would you use someone's EPP discount without actually knowing whether that person would want you to use it?"

See, I would answer "perhaps" to your question and "no" to mine. A lot of people thought the Meyer thing could have been a promotion. I could imagine receiving promotions from people at IBM, people I don't know. I receive promotions from Dell all the time because I own a Dell. If I receive something directly from a source I trust and have no reason to think anything shady is going on, then why should I say no?

 

I think it's totally understandable that people would be out to save as much money as possible.

I myself however probably wouldn't do it, hindsight aside. The "Employee Purchase Plan" title is pretty self-explanatory as to whom it is intended for. The thing that really gets me though, however is all of the wishful thinking surrounding the deal -- speculation that "no one will be checking" or "no one will get caught", "so and so did it", and even the suggestion that it's all a sales ploy on Lenovo's part.

Amidst rumors that all "Meyer deal" orders are going to be cancelled, it seems like people just kind of got swept up in it all and didn't really give much credence to the idea that this wasn't how it was intended to work.

 

Mhmm...yeesssssss....so is the "Shareholder Purchase Plan." OH WAIT, Lenovo didn't have a problem with non-shareholders using the extra discount in April!!! OMG EPP isn't self-explanatory anymore!!!!

 

Perhaps that's because the Shareholder Purchase Plan is only tied to a code, and not individual shareholders as the EPP is tied to individual employees. I doubt it would be enforced if it's already been made deliberately hard to track just who is or isn't a shareholder.

Also, I can only assume that since the EPP is 15% and not 5% like the SPP, they care just a little bit more about how it's being used.

 

I definitely agree that your explanation is one that is logical and makes the most sense. Nevertheless, in America, you live and die by the fine print. I'm not about to make assumptions unsubstantiated by specific written contracts, especially if those assumptions are to my disadvantage.

 

Thanks. I'm actually in the medical field. Currently taking a grad statistics course and we just happen to be talking about surveys/polls and validity... yadda yadda. My schooling has involved a lot of research and you tend to learn what source of information you should believe and what sources you should question. I'm not exactly an expert, but since you sorta asked.

I don't wanna sound like a jerk though. I suppose the poll was mostly just in fun. I don't think he is planning a big research project off of this poll.

 

How much would you save off this deal?

 

This "deal" ran for about three weeks and no doubt hundreds of orders were placed using that EPP information. Either IBM is so screwed up that they didn't catch what was going on or this was a planned offering to gauge the impact of forum (unorthodox) ways of communicating a sale. I have to assume that it was the latter. A pilot study.

 

No way, because he is a genuine real employee. I looked him up in internal IBM blue pages.

Plus, why would IBM cooperate with a Lenovo "pilot study" by exposing an IBM employee. It'd have to be a fake Lenovo employee instead.

 

hmm..
i've never think of the third option

 

As pointed out, the first choice isn't exactly correct but is the closest one to reality.

Taking advantage of an offer for which you need to lie to comply with is ethically wrong. No amount of spin can get around it. So while you may try and justify it, the fact, is those who use someone else's name and serial number without that persons permission are, at the very least, ethically challenged.

Is it a crime, fraud, etc? I don't know the fine print, but in my mind it's lying and fraudulent. Sure it's a big company and for some reason, small people think stealing from a big company is okay. But stealing is stealing.

 

Dell is infamous for doing this sort of viral marketing for years and years now.

 

you guys kill me.....do you think it is beyond IBM/Lenovo's abilities or they FORGOT to put an Order Stop on the EPP site for Employee's ID #'s for when they reach their yearly Family/Friends limit....my god.....I guarantee you that was the first order of business when implementing the EPP site....geeeezzzz.....

they let this happen.......

 

Capital is a form of stealing. It’s a method in which wealth is unequally apportioned. It simply deprives the laborers of the true value of their efforts. This allows the maintenance of an upper class that does little more than overpaid managerial work. Do you really believe an executive deserves to make several figures more than a laborer? Perhaps, the burden of thought justifies this? Hmm, Should we offer the new car in pink? Many people would believe a company in effect steals from the masses. That is why people who could be considered traditionally moral have no qualms attempting to get the best of a company. I happen to be a content petty bourgeoisie, but that is a reasonable argument. Morality? What is morality besides what we make of it?

 

Adam Smith says that if you see two businessmen talking, they're probably plotting something for the ill of the consumer/society.

The real first lesson of Capitalism 101 is that large corporations are bad, small market economies are good.

Regretfully, people are taught otherwise, and the ideas of a 400 year dead philosopher/economist are lost on most of those who read him.

/pseudo-intellectual rant

 

Let's change some wording here

 

I have to bring this up.
This 'notorious' EPP code still works. It is unbelievable that Lenovo just let it happen for so long a time if it is not a ploy.

Let's face it. Lenovo extracts so much from the cheap labor, and it can settle for a smaller profit to quicken the cash flow.

 

Most laptops are manufactured in China/Taiwan, including Apple products. I'm not sure why you're pointing out Lenovo in particular. You're doing it probably because it's a Chinese company.

http://ask.metafilter.com/83164/Nonchinese-macbook

 

No. I didn't mean that.

I am suspecting that Lenovo is no longer a Chinese company. Tell me if I am wrong.