iPhone 5 Confusion

After Wednesday’s announcement of the hotly-anticipated (and widely leaked) iPhone 5, pre-orders opened today on the Apple Store websites around the world.

Despite saying that I wasn’t going to buy one, I have indeed caved and bought one – but only because I know I can sell my 4S for a substantial chunk of the cost of the 5, thus making it an almost-free upgrade. A no brainer really.

But whilst placing my order on the Apple site, I found myself getting very confused about just what was going to be included in my package. Let’s see what Apple says on the “What’s in the box?” section of the iPhone product page:

Hmm… OK, no Lightning to 30-pin adapter. That’s potentially a dealbreaker for me, as I use my iPhone in many different places and charging it from my car stereo etc. is quite important to me, and these all currently have the 30-pin dock connectors. It’s not a massive problem though, I can work around it.

But, wait! What’s this? After adding the iPhone to my basket, I was greeted by the “choose your accessories” section where you can bump up the price with lots of pointlessly expensive accessories. Included in the list is the Lightning to 30-pin adapter – but read the first sentence of the description:

Yes, apparently my iPhone purchase already includes a Lightning to 30-pin adapter. Which of course begs the question as to why it doesn’t show up in the “What’s in the box?” section above.

Also, pay attention to the price for adding an additional adapter to your order. £30 extra. I wasn’t expecting that, as I’d heard on the grapevine they were only £25.

Still, if it includes one adapter I’m happy, so in my basket it goes.

It’s here that I also get presented with some “Recommended for You” products. One of which is the Lightning to 30-pin adapter. However, these ones must be slightly inferior to the ones listed above, as these are at the £25 price that they should be:

UPDATE: It’s been pointed out to me that the price discrepancy here is because one price includes VAT, and the other doesn’t. So that explains it, but still doesn’t make it acceptable in my opinion. Surely it’s a basic thing to have prices displayed consistently across a site? At the very least, I’m sure there’s some e-commerce regulation in the UK that dictates prices should be clearly marked as including/excluding VAT.

UPDATE UPDATE: Further research shows that it isn’t a VAT issue – there are two separate products. The £25.00 adapter is literally just that, an adapter in a single unit. The £30.00 adapter is seemingly a cable (note the presence of “(0.2m)” in the description above, and the picture below:

This seems very uncharacteristic of Apple, their attention to detail is normally so anal it boggles my mind that these little things could slip through the net.

I’m also really curious as to whether my purchase will actually include the adapter it says it will…

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2 Comments

  1. Kit

    Quite confusing, I agree! Shall probably wait another year when this new connector furore has died down… as if any Apple-related arguments ever die…!

  2. Shem

    It should be awesome – it has an extra row of icons, and it has a new connector. Does Apple innovation know no bounds?

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