The apple wool in Pinduoduo has become a gray production

Even if it is not a student, you can go to Apple's wool at a discount of hundreds of to thousands of yuan in the cheap market price. And in reality, this has formed a complete gray industry chain. However, Apple is happy about this?

P If you want to buy any iPad, Mac, you can get it by hundreds to thousands of yuan cheaper than the normal market price.

The preferential education policies were originally Apple for college students, senior college graduates who were admitted to colleges and universities, and faculty in all grades. They could generally be 9-9.5 % off. Every year from July to September, Apple will also conduct "return to school promotion" worldwide, and will give additional gifts such as earphones on the basis of "education discounts".

Today, this preferential policy for a specific group has a complete gray industrial chain in reality. As long as you spend a few yuan or tens of yuan on Pinduoduo, you can easily bypass Apple's cumbersome qualification certification procedures and obtain discount prices.

How does this gray production operate? Does Apple Corporation know such a daring wool? Why are you happy?

Apple wool can be like this

Today, Apple's annual "Return to School Promotion" activity has not officially launched in China. However, according to previous years of experience, the iPadPro education preferential version is generally about 600 yuan cheaper than the original price. The MacBook Education preferential version is generally about 700-900 yuan cheaper. On this basis The RMB is a maximum of 1,800 yuan.

Moreover, this year should be the last time that Apple has given AIRPODS for activities. From next year, Apple will fully enter the era of vouchers.

For this reason, Xiao Wu has already started business in advance. "Store educational headphones, buy in mid -July, to pay 700." From June 27, he has sent more than ten news on Weibo, hoping to attract potential buyers.

On Weibo's "Apple Super Dialogue" page, many netizens are like Xiao Wu, and they are selling educational headphones, with the price between 650-700 yuan. "How can I pass Apple Education Certification", seeing that there are wool, some people also have the idea of ​​education qualification certification.

Since January 2022, Apple has released a more stringent certification system. After ordering the past order is randomly verified, the identity information is changed, and the review certification must be passed before the order is placed.

Many domestic users may have not heard of Unidays. This is a British discount website that can be used for free students from the world. After verification, students will get a discount code to enjoy the price discount of cooperative brands.

Unidays's certification system looks simple, as long as the EDU mailbox of colleges and universities can be verified. However, in China, most schools do not provide students with special education mailboxes, so they need to upload the front and back photos of the student ID for verification.

The biggest "threshold" of Unidays is the card. If there is not enough luck, you may doubt that you use 2G networks, the webpage is always in the circle, and the page cannot be opened at all.

With this more standardized authentication process, it seems to improve the difficulty of fraud in the gray industry, but this is not the case.

Lu Yan Finance searched for "Apple Education Concession Certification" on Pinduoduo, and found that many shops provided UniDays certification services. A "Jiabo Online Game Specialty Store", in the store introduction, reads "Can't enter Unidays, you can solve the problem that you are not a student."

The shop provides two options for certification products. One is that 10 yuan can purchase Apple's official website for one -time certification, and 20 yuan can obtain a one -year qualification certification. After the payment was successful, the other party asked to provide an unregistered UNIDAYS mailbox, which sent a password and operating process.

The next operation is relatively simple. First click "UNIDAYS for verification", and then click "Already passed the Unidays verification", and then enter the password provided by the email and the other party to complete the education preferential certification.

Lu Yan Finance has noticed that 340 people have participated in the product list.

This gray production is very "mature"

According to Apple's official information, if you want to buy a product of education discounts, you can use three ways: first, mentioned in the previous article, buy it directly in the Apple Education Store; the other is to take the student ID and ID card to the Apple Online Store; The third is in Tmall or Jingdong's official Apple store.

On e -commerce platforms, the preferential strength has been passed by education preferential certification. Moreover, users only need to learn the certification of Xinxin.com, and the operation steps will be much simpler. Relatively speaking, offline fraud is more difficult, and the online authentication of e -commerce platforms has also become the hardest hit area for gray production.

Taking Jingdong as an example, after selecting related educational preferential products, the "immediately authentication" port will appear below. The method is to submit the verification code of Xuexin.com. You only need to log in to the Xuexin file and click online verification report to obtain.

In other words, as long as the verification code of Xuexin.com can pass the verification, and for the student group, it is simply to get the verification code.

Some students turned this into "a business." More than one students in the school revealed that they can sell Apple Education for preferential qualifications. Among them, a student showed the page of the e -commerce platform that had passed the preferential educational concession, and he was planning to buy an iPad Air. "You can place an order directly with my account, and then you will pay it and send it to you directly," he said.

"I can only think of this method of transaction at present, and you can also propose a way to feel more secure." Perhaps he is worried that the trust relationship has not been established. He further added. In his circle of friends, there are graduation photos that have just taken.

Students are qualified to sell preferentially, just buying and selling at one time. Some people have made it a stable and long -term trading than this "bigger business". Still on Pinduoduo, there are shops that specialize in selling the verification code of Xuexin.

"There must be no violations of the rules, just like you have a relative to help you change", one of the shops said. The page shows that 108 items have been sold in the shop.

Because education discounts are aimed at specific groups, the discounts are strong, and in order to avoid being sacrifice, Apple has formulated a purchase restriction strategy. Like a computer and laptop, two units per account of each academic year, and Mac mini can only be purchased every school year.

So, where does the above 108 quantities of Xuexin.com verification code come from?

"Some students gave it, and some were bought from others." The above -mentioned shop customer service responded like this.

Compared with JD.com's verification method, Tmall has one more link, that is, you need to go to Alipay for certification before you can buy it at Apple shops. Relatively speaking, the certification needs to be provided a lot, or maybe because of this, Lu Yan Finance found that the sellers in Pinduoduo provided "a certain Dong certification". At present Shop.

Apple is happy with wool?

For such obvious vulnerabilities and such a large -scale "wool", it is impossible for Apple to not know, but why have no substantial restrictions so far?

The answer is that they need to use this to drive sales.

In recent years, Apple has obviously regressed in innovation capabilities. Domestic manufacturers have tried their best to launch new functions and hardware configurations, and higher "hardware cost -effective" to challenge Apple's dominant position.

However, compared with competitive products, Apple has worked hard for many years: a significant feature of "Apple brand = high -end" is that its price is relatively stable.

Based on this, Apple's discount promotion will cause consumers to be enthusiastic. On the night of the 618 event this year, iPhone13 rushed to the first position of Weibo Search, because the price was cheap, the iPhone13 memory was 128GB, the lowest hand price was 4799 yuan.

However, frequent discount sales are easy to guide users, not quality, and eventually weaken Apple's brand premium.

Education preferential policies seem to be facing students and teachers, but in fact, they also open a "back door" for consumers who pay attention to discounts. For this part of consumers, aiming at Apple Education Concessions, you can obtain certification through channels such as Pinduoduo, and buy cheaper Apple products in the method of "wool".

This is actually a secret price for all groups. Although it is "wool", it can not only directly increase sales, but also maintain high -end brand effects. Apple does a stable business without compensation. Therefore, from the deep inside, Apple may not really want to ban this behavior. At least from the actual performance, at this stage Apple is acquiescence to some extent.

Just like Stephen Izweig's "Broken Queen": "All the gifts presented by fate have already been secretly marked the price." What consumers want are the discounts of hundreds of dollars, and Apple gets it It is a real user.

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