Lexus recall brings iPod nano windfall
Posted by Lab Rat
Macenstein reader I Drive a Hyundai sent in a posting he came across on the Club Lexus forums stating that some people who purchased the IS250 AWD model last month, but were forced to wait for delivery due to a recall, have received 2GB iPod nanos as gifts “for being a valued member of the Lexus family�.
This is great news for all the poor and disadvantaged Lexus owners who cannot afford nanos.
From the Forums:
“I bought my IS250AWD last month. Because of a recall, my pick up date was postponed one week (I got a loaner car – ES330 at that time).
Anyways, I just got home and see a package; I received a letter from Lexus as well as 2GB iPod Nano and XtremeMac Aux. cable – all in appreciation of my time and understanding as well as for being a valued member of the Lexus family (although this is my first Lexus). How cool is that??? Wow…â€?
According to the forum others have had similar experiences.
Now if only Apple would start sending Lexus’s to all those who’ve had their Macs delayed!
It’s also great news for those that actually appreciate superb customer service! Lexus should be commended for doing that.
Wow, I guess that makes up for the $7,000 in value the new owners are going to lose by simply driving a new lexus off the lot.
I feel so sorry for those poor, inconvenienced Lexus owners. If they can afford a Lexus, then they can afford to buy thier own iPod nano. Meanwhile us poor folk who drive Toyotas or even Hyundais will have to just “look through the store window” in envy of those things we cannot afford, but the rich just get handed to them.
Well, technically a Lexus IS a Toyota, so their aren’t as cool as they think they are.
they must really be worried if they’re handing out free nanos. did they rig the cars to support ipods through the stock radio too?
Man, look at all these envious people! I drive a Toyota, but even I know that those who buy a Lexus are paying a premium above the real value of their cars. Let them have the nano, without bunch of winers saying the rich are getting richer.
Envy is a pathetic, self-sabotaging emotion. Those who have the means to afford a Lexus have obviously embraced the tenets of hard-work, ambition, focus, and dedication. Those who are envious would serve themselves, and our economy, better by emulating those gauranteed success traits.
Are you missing the point? Brilliant move on the part of Lexus. Happy customers + free iPod = returning customers. Who benefits from this on a second level? Apple does by increasing the user base of the iPod. Perhaps it converts a few thousand windows users to mac users once they experience how easy the interface is. We (all mac users) win because the user base increases.
Stop complaining about the privileges that come with financial well being. If you don’t like your situation work harder to improve it. Invest your savings. Work 2 jobs. Do whatever it takes. By the way – I do not drive a Lexus – I drive a 3 year old Ford truck. I can afford one but I have chosen to invest in my business and my retirement. I still have a G3 iPod – it works fine. One day I will splurge and get a new iPod. Until then I am happy to see businesses using the iPod as a premium or a perk.
I wonder if the iPods were engraved? That would be cool.
Great point Charlie. Take it from someone who uses both Windows and Macs… the Mac is the “Lexus” of the personal computing world, considering the superior quality and the fact that Macs tend to be more expensive.
I wonder if Alex feels bad for those “poor folks” who can’t really afford a Mac? I mean heck, if you can afford a Mac, surely you can afford a Lexus… 😉
@Pity: “… Those who have the means to afford a Lexus have obviously embraced the tenets of hard-work, ambition, focus, and dedication.”
No. MAYBE they have, but definitely not “obviously”.
Besides, I have never seen anyone getting truly rich from hard work alone.
@Rid Spam: I detect a bit of cynicism in your response. You’re right, hard work alone won’t get you rich. That’s why, as I said, hard work coupled with ambition, focus, and dedication is the correct recipe. Instead of doubting it, give it a disciplined a try. You may surprise yourself with the result.
This is why I’ve chosen this silly “Offering Pity” screen name. I sincerely feel bad for those that envy, or even vilify, the rich when they could really serve themselves far better by analyzing how the rich became successful. Contrary to the self-defeating myth, less than 10% of them were “just born thay way.”
CHARLIE…i just bought a lexus is250 awd..and i received a ipod nano because of the recall..and yes..the back is engraved with “lexus” and the lexus symbol 🙂
and i have a lexus (my first) because i worked extremely hard to get it 🙂
i think its pretty cool what lexus did to keep its customer happy
Pity, I am doing pretty fine, thank you. I am not RICH, but I really can’t complain. And while hard work, ambition, focus and dedication was certainly an important part to get me where I am, so was luck and knowing the right people. There are many who got insanely rich by bullying, taking advantage of the unsuspecting or the weak, even outright cheating. Some get caught (Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson); others don’t.
On the other hand, I know plenty of people, who worked very hard, ambitiously, focussed and dedicated all their life, but at the end it still didn’t amount to much more than an average middle-class life. My parents for example.
@Rid Spam: I think it’s more accurate to say that there were a relative FEW who got rich by bullying, cheating, and taking advantage of people; not “many” as you say. Those people are called criminals by the way. Are all the “rich” some how criminals in your view?
Anyone who manages to live an average “middle-class” life in the United States of America can pat themselves on the back for the achievement of being among the top 7% of the wealthiest people on the planet.
On the other hand, those that find themselves below the “poverty line” in this country can only boast being among the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the world.
I don’t want to argue numbers – “many” or “few” – since none of us has statistical proof to back them up.
I did not say nor imply that all rich people are criminals. I specifically mentioned luck and connections as important factors for one’s success. Also bullying and taking advantage of ppl, while ethically questionable, is not necessarily criminal.
Example: Someone buys QDOS for $50,000 from a young programmer named Tim Paterson. What the person didn’t tell Paterson was that he would turn around and resell it as MS-DOS to IBM. The dishonesty would later result in a law suit, which cost that person $1 million. But who cares? That person was Bill Gates and the shrewd move laid the foundation for BILLIONS of $ in personal wealth – making him THE icon of American business success. Criminal? Maybe, maybe not. The suit got settled after all. Ethical? I leave that up to anyone’s judgement. Dedicated, focussed, hard work? While I don’t want to judge Mr. Gates’ later work style, this jump start of his career certainly didn’t involve any of that.
To bring this discussion back to its origin. I’m sure many Lexus owners earned their car through honest and dedicated work. But I have issues with the attitude that poor people are somehow just too lazy to get rich. That anyone can get wealthy if you just work ambitiously, and hard enough.
Also, perhaps you could explain to the homeless people I saw sleeping on manholes in sub-freezing temperatures during a recent trip to Philadelphia how lucky they are to be among the wealthiest 10% on earth.
Finally, it seems like you assume my family is from the USA. That is wrong.
Rid Spam quote “Example: Someone buys QDOS for $50,000 from a young programmer named Tim Paterson. What the person didn’t tell Paterson was that he would turn around and resell it as MS-DOS to IBM”
and his mother was on the board of directors at IBM
“This is great news for all the poor and disadvantaged Lexus owners who cannot afford nanos.”
That’s fucking stupid. Oh I can’t afford a $200 nano, but I can afford a $40,000 car. Fucking douchebag.
@Pity — HAHA It amazes me how people can stand themselves after they use faulty statistics. This is why no one should ever use statistics in arguments, typically. You said that people below the poverty line in the U.S. are still among the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the world, blah blah blah blah, but you somehow failed to take into account cost of living, which must be taken into account anywhere and everywhere.
I think after you factor in COL numbers you’ll find that those people who can ill-afford more than a small, dull apartment that has electricity and running water 75% of the time in a good month are, despite their money when compared to the poor in the Third World, freakin’ poor.
O, and get over yourself. You come off as incredibly pompous and self-righteous. Pity is as ridiculous as envy.
Wow, John. You don’t understand the concept of sarcasm, do you.
MilesZS, spoken like someone who has never left America. Yeah COL is important and people can live surprisingly well on US$2 a day, but
if you head over to places like India you’ll see people (lots and lots of them) who live on the street, whose only source of water is the river, whose only clothes are the clothes on their back. An apartment, even with no electricity or running water, would be an incredible leap forward in their standard of living. Fact is the poorest % in America live far far better than many people in the world.
In regards to hard work, it’s an important component in success. As Kazuo Inamori put it, Success = Effort x Ability x Attitude. There’s a random variable (luck) which is also a factor but of course outside of our control.
As for the Gates example, he recognized the opportunity and made it happen whereas Paterson could have but didn’t. Hardly unethical.
We bought our lexus ES300 for 34,000 in 1997.
So far it has 260,000 miles on it, and it only has needed $1500 in non-warranty repair.
You do the math.
How old are some of you….the way you are bickering over the fact that some people have more money than you, I’d so no more than 15??
It is amazing how arrogant so many of you are, even the poor people have a chip on their shoulder on this site. Realize that where you are in life is only a matter of genetics and environment. You haven’t really done anything. You are the result of an equation. So get over yourselves.
This Lexus thing is simply an example of a company having good customer service and I applaud them. Even if it is stupid to buy a brand new car, I did… The really sad and shitty thing is that poor people don’t demand customer service from the places they shop. It might actually make the world a better place if Wal-Mart had decent customer service.
For rich people, try to realize that at least 50% of why you are where you are is because of who you knew and nothing more. The rest is mostly genetics. The remaining is a result of breeding. Sorry. But this should emphasize the point that you should be good to those who are good to you.
For poor people, realize that you can have what you want if you manage your money, use restraint and logic. You don’t have to work 2 jobs. Just be good skeptics, research things a little bit, look out for opportunity, and utilize patience and planning. You could try to save money by eating less often, then you’ll have a Video iPod and be 30 lbs thinner.
“Meanwhile us poor folk who drive Toyotas or even Hyundais will have to just ‘look through the store window’ in envy of those things we cannot afford, but the rich just get handed to them.”
Jesus, how do you even get up in the morning under the weight of your self pity.
@Aaron: Has your community college class taught you that emotion is defficult to convey through the text of a poor writer? Obviously not.
You know, you could just buy a Hyundai in the first place and not have to worry about all those pesky launch related recalls. Plus, with the money you saved, you could buy not only a real 60GB iPod but a Quad-Core PowerMac G5 to go with it. And you’d still come out with more cash in your pocket plus the 100,000 mile warranty simply can’t be beat.
@John: Perhaps you need to take a critical thinking class; I believe it’s obvious to everyone on earth except you that he was being VERY sarcastic.
Quit whining and do something productive instead of complaining about what other people have.
i bought an ipod but had to wait for some kind of recall. i’d say it took about 2 weeks to get my ipod. lord behold when i came home from work…. there was a lexus sitting on my doorstep!! with a letter from apple apologizing for the shipping delay. and it read… sorry for the delay. drive safely.
LOL..
That is funny. Lexus tries to make up for the inconvenience by inconveniencing them again by giving them an iPod.
@Devin…you’re missing the fact that you’d be driving a Hyundai…
MilesZS: “As for the Gates example, he recognized the opportunity and made it happen whereas Paterson could have but didn’t. Hardly unethical.”
Well, Gates did get sued for this stunt and ended up having to pay $1 million. That alone should show that it wasn’t as clear-cut as “recognizing an opportunity and make it happen.” There were, for example, disclosure issues, because Gates intentionally misled Paterson about his intentions with QDOS. And Paterson “could have but didn’t” do the same? I don’t think so. Gates’ mother was instrumental in making this deal happen, a huge advantage without which Paterson could not reach IBM:
http://prospectingprofessor.blogs.com/prospecting_professor/2005/12/bills_billions_.html
Maybe you don’t have any issues with such deals. Fine. That’s not the issue here. This example was merely to counter Pity’s attitude that dedicated, hard work alone can make you rich (“gauranteed [sic] success traits”) and that wealthy people “obviously embraced those tenets”. Paterson was the one who put in the hard work. Gates was the one who got rich from it – by having the right connections and being lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time.
And this was certainly not an isolated exception on people’s usual way to great wealth.
>We bought our lexus ES300 for 34,000 in 1997.
>
>So far it has 260,000 miles on it, and it only has needed $1500 in non->warranty repair.
>
>You do the math.
Funny, I bought a K2500HD Chevy pickup in ’97 for $21,800 which now has similar millage … and the only thing I’ve replace is the fuel pump. I have a hunting camp in the Adirondacks and I’ve driven that truck in conditions and terrain that would make most Lexus drivers faint.
A year later I bought a ’99 Toyota Corolla LX for $13,400 to get around town and so far it’s cost me nothing besides gas and oil.
My math works out better (c:
I find it interesting though reading these posts where the line between rich and poor is being drawn simply on opinion and/or the car you drive. It seems that if you’re frugal with your money you’re not living the “American Dream” and it’s because you’re a lazy bum with no ambition. For what it’s worth though, all my cars are paid for, my house is paid for, and I never carry a balance on my credit cards. A lot of people would call me poor since I don’t have a big screen TV or a boat or any or that. So be it.
“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” and there ain’t no such thing as a free iPod either.
The problem with this debate is both sides are partially right.
Having the right parents, knowing the right people and going to the right schools are a HUGE advantage. Those people may not have to work very hard and yet be put in positions of power and wealth (Bush for example). In general, they will start higher up in organizations and will rise faster than their non-connected peers.
But this is the way it is. This is the personal political structure that comes from human nature. People take care of their own (family and friends). It’s the same in communist countries (Cuba, North Korea, China, former USSR). Those countries are devoted to the idea of equality and yet the ruling class is super rich and the poor are super poor.
What the US offers you is relative freedom and more opportunity for class movement than any other country ever. Anyone who works hard in the US can be middle class and if you are frugal and plan well you can retire well. Many who work hard, get into good schools, and plan well will retire wealthy. Look at ‘the millionaire next door’ for a profile of the average ‘wealthy’ person.
Yes it’s frustrating that certain people are born into huge advantage but stop focusing on them and make something happen for yourself. Stop being self defeatist. You don’t need $100 billion to be happy, just enough to live comfortably without having to live paycheck to paycheck. This is very achievable in the US for people of even modest incomes. Most of the ‘losers’ I know have loser attitudes (and even they still live a decent middle class life).
MG
I agree with much of wht you said, Middleground, except this:
“What the US offers you is relative freedom and more opportunity for class movement than any other country ever.”
I know it is a widespread belief in the US, but unfortunately the “more than any country ever” part it can’t be confirmed with empirical data. There are some good papers on this topic on the Harvard University website, esp. by Prof Alesina:
http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/alesina/papers.html
Quoting from “Why the US does not have a European-Style Welfare state” p. 25-27 (The papers “Inequality and Happiness: Are European and Americans Different?” and “Preferences for Redistribution in the Land of Opportunities” are also a good read on the topic):
“Americans believe they live in a country with greater income mobility. According to the World Values Survey, 71 percent of Americans, but only 40 percent of Europeans, believe that the poor have a chance to escape from poverty.”
“Harder data on income mobility do not suggest such strong differences in mobility for the middle classes between the United States and Europe. For example, Peter Gottschalk and Enrico Spolaore construct a fifteen-year transition matrix by income quintile for the United States and Europe. This matrix shows the shares of the middle income quintile in 1984 who were in various income quintiles in 1999. The similarity observed between the United States and for instance Germany is striking”
“… there is no clear-cut evidence that the middle quintile in the United States has substantially more upward relative mobility than its German counterpart.”
Ok, point taken, but you are still saying that the US is at least equal to other western countries in class mobility which is better than ever in history.
And on a related point, it’s actually shocking just how little you have to do to survive in the US. You can do absolutely nothing in school and still get a $9/hr job at In-n-Out. For that total lack of ambition you can have:
$9/hr * 40 hours * 4.33 weeks/month = $1560/month
$1,560/month * 0.9 taxes = $1,404
rent: $500
car + insurance: $400
food + gas: $200
utilities: $100
extra: $203
Yeah those numbers don’t work everywhere and assume that you’re single and yeah it’s not going to be a glamorous life, but that’s with doing the bare minimum and it’s still a better life than most of mankind has known.
If you want more you have to contribute more. Everybody wants to get paid like a doctor without the 12 years of college+ education. 🙂
MG
Lexus wins customer satisfaction every year, just business as usual.
Lexus displayed the epitome of customer service and partnership building.
By giving customers the ipod, Lexus introduced a new generation to Apple’s product and future generations of products. Wouldn’t it be great if other companies/organizations caught on?
A Lexus is not a jumped up Toyota, and nothing could be further from the
truth. If you have not been to Japan and pin pointed where and how Lexus and Toyotas are built, then I am afraid you are just talking for the sake of
argument.
Lexus is completely separate from Toyota.Toyota have their own factories and Lexus has theirs. Much more stringent testing goes into a Lexus than a
Totota. The Toyota has evolved from the Trecel and Corolla upwards in terms of engine, suspension and brakes. Lexus has de-volved from Toyota’s Formula 1 Test Bed, the Engine, suspension and brakes all Formula 1. So there you have it!! Making bland statements are meaningless
and unless you have been to Japan and seen how things are actually done you cannot afford to talk!!!
Hi Lab Rat!
I am a Lexus owner of a LS400 and about to buy a 2000 ES300 for my wife. It has 59,000 miles and know that at 60,000 miles I should change the timing belt, at least this is my understanding. What else needs to happen at 60,000 miles so I can base this on my offer price of this car? Thanks.
Consider this:
If hard work, dedication, and focus are what it takes to be “successful”, then why is it that people in mid-upper management of any mid-size to Fortune 500 company get where they are by virtue of having gone to the “right” school, and knowing the “right” person to get their foot in the door?
Meanwhile, the guy/gal working for the very same company who does not have the “right” education, puts in his or her 40, 50, or 60 hours per week on an hourly scale, busts their but to meet the deadlines, quotas, and demands of management, only to find that when the economy dips they will be the first to get a pink slip.
And, when the “line” worker gets their pink slip after years of hard work, dedication, and focus, what happens to the mid-to-upper management folks? They either jump ship to the next company they can run into the ground with short-sighted, what-gains-can-we-make-next-quarter plans, or else they get fired and leave with lucrative severance packages (often several million, as in the case of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, most notably).
Oh… and who ends up paying the cost of all this? The line worker whose hard-earned wages go right back into the economy, buying the Fords, Toyotas, GE appliances, and Apple iPods, the profits from which fund everything for the buyers of luxury vehicles.
I have (and do) worked for Fortune 500 companies, I have been in both management and on the front lines. And I can tell you unequivocally, that “line” or “floor” workers are far and away much harder workers, generally with more knowledge of what it takes to make the company run than those in management.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where it generally takes money to make money. The very rare exceptions to this are the self-made entrepreneurs, but even here it is luck combined with inspiration and perspiration.