Apple Inc is making it harder for touts to profit from buying iPhones in Hong Kong only to sell them on the black market in China.
From Tuesday, all products bought online from Apple in Hong Kong are ineligible for return or exchange unless they are defective, the company said on its Web site.
Apple’s previous policy allowed 14 days for products to be returned in the territory.
Every year after the release of new iPhones, vendors pop up on street corners in Hong Kong to hawk the new devices to those unable to secure their own supply.
The territory’s lower taxes and duties have long provided an incentive to buy there and resell to tourists or ship across the border to Chinese customers unwilling to wait for a local release.
Apple is expected to unveil new iPhone models later this year, with a hotly anticipated 10th anniversary edition that is said to include an overhauled look, people familiar with the matter have said.
The device is said to feature a new type of organic LED screen, curved glass and stainless steel materials, although supply constraints might mean it is not available until one or two months after the typical fall introduction.
Apple’s sales in the Greater China region, which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as China, fell 9.5 percent from a year earlier to US$8 billion in the most recent quarter.
The biggest decline came in Hong Kong, the company said.
When customers purchase in volume, such as buying four or more items of the same category, products must be returned within seven days of being received and go back to the store from which they were purchased.
The company’s earlier terms charged a 25 percent restocking fee per unit.
Apple declined to comment beyond its policy statement.
Separately, Apple sold C$2.5 billion (US$1.96 billion) of seven-year bonds in Canada to fund stock buybacks and dividends in the biggest single debt offering by a foreign issuer in Canadian dollars.
The company sold the senior unsecured bonds on Tuesday with a 2.513 percent coupon, priced to yield 81.4 basis points over the government benchmark, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
Apple had targeted a minimum size of C$1.5 billion at a spread of about 83 basis points, plus or minus three basis points, said people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified.
It was the first Canadian bond sale for Apple and the largest single-tranche deal in Canada’s Maple bond market, topping Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV’s C$2 billion two-part sale in May.
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