People looking to buy Apple’s new iPhone X Best Buy have one less option.
The retail giant has stopped selling unactivated versions of the smartphone—those that come without carrier contracts.
Best Buy had been charging customers who pre-ordered unactivated iPhone Xs an extra $100 on top of the $999 list price for the basic version and $1,099 for the version with more storage, prompting many people to complain on social media.
“Although there was clearly demand for the unactivated iPhone X, selling it that way cost more money, causing some confusion with our customers and noise in the media,” a Best Buy spokesperson told Coins2Day in a statement. “That’s why we decided a few days ago to only sell the phone the traditional way, through installment billing plans.”
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Best Buy (BBY)further elaborated in a blog post that it charged consumers an extra $100 “to reflect the fact that the phone carriers only pay us when a phone we’ve sold has been activated on their network.” Carriers typically pay retailers after they sell smartphones with accompanying contracts.
Best Buy aid that many customers wanted the option to buy unactivated iPhones because they may have broken their current phones or were buying them as part of a company plan and therefore didn’t need carrier contracts. Now, they won’t be able to.
“Thirty-six hours after we started taking pre-orders for the iPhone X, we faced a bit of a media storm because it looked like we were simply charging more money for an iPhone X, for no reason,” the company said in the blog post. “Naturally, because we care about how the consumer perceives us, we’ve stopped selling it that way.”
The iPhone X is currently available for pre-order. Shipments will start on Nov. 3.
