As a family, we own thousands of dollars worth of Apple products (including two imacs, 3 iphones, 1 powerbook, and countless ipods), so we’re what you should consider “heavy users” and mac devotees. Yesterday my daughter cracked the screen on her iPhone, so I immediately made a genius bar appointment because I know how great the service is. She went there and it was simply a 2 minute operation to replace the screen. For which we were charged $199! $199?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? The entire phone cost that when we bought it nearly 2 years ago. I know Apple doesn’t discount and they adamantly maintain higher price points, but this strikes me as highway robbery. It’s outrageous, actually. It’s a small sheet of glazed glass that takes 2 minutes to swap out. What’s the margin on that — 90%?. I can deal with paying a bit more for design and quality, but this is way over the top. I can even deal with a little penance for clumsiness and breakage — but $199 for this? HIGHWAY ROBBERY. Now that the Palm Pre is a worthy competitor, this kind of gouging is going to make me rethink my allegiance once our contract is up.

My oppinion: Selling subsidiced iPhones for 199 $ makes the people think the device is worth this price but the actual real price is much higher. This confuses customers and eventually makes them angry as this case proves.