Well this is getting interesting now. Vodafone New Zealand have now made available 35 iPhone 5′s to buy outright. But there is a catch. No matter how early you get to one of the midnight launch locations you are not guaranteed one. Instead the first 50 people at the stores will go into a draw to be able to buy one.
The allocation of the 35 handsets is split between the stores as follows:
2o in Auckland and 5 at the other 3 midnight launch locations in Wellington Christchurch and Dunedin.
The NZ telco’s have come under a bit of fire this week for not offering any buy outright iPhone 5′s for existing or prepay customers. Whilst this offer from Vodafone is less than ideal it’s much better than nothing.
Anything to add Telecom?
Will you be heading down to try and get one of these? let us know in the comments.
Unbelievable. So you go down, say you’ll buy it on whatever plan, then you get to go into the draw to be able to purchase the phone outright, but if you don’t get chosen, you have to buy it on contract.
Vodafone are unbelievable assholes. Unbelievable.
(Sprok has made 83 comments)
So basically they are offering an iPhone 5 outright only to those who have already purchased iPhone 5 on a 2 year contract? Ridiculous
(Hermes has made 8 comments)
This is crazy. I’m soo over vodafone at the moment (an existing customer who purchased a iPhone 4 on 24 month contract – that is now up). I hope the fair trade commission fine them another million dollars. Ive been watching closely what they would offer for this launch, and might have purchased if they did a deal that was even slightly similar to what I got 2 years ago. Ridiculous.
(dairy has made 1 comment)
How is it “much better than nothing”? We need to go down at midnight (there’s a chance that you need to be there at least 1-2 hours before in order to be the first 50 people out there), and we aren’t guaranteed to get one. In Wellington, they only allocate 5 iphone for this, that’s 1 out of 10!!! If we go to store the next day, there might be a little or a small chance that they would have leftover to sell outright, and that doesn’t need to go into a draw.
(pacharawit has made 57 comments)
Hermes wrote:
No. That is not the case. You don’t have to have a new or existing contract. Anybody can go into the draw. You just need to be one of the first 50 there and you go into the draw. If you get picked you can buy one. If you don’t get picked you can go home or buy one on contract.
Good luck if you choose to head down.
I was almost tempted to try my luck until I saw 2 blurry words at the top of that ticket “16 GB”….
(thepantman has made 2 comments)