Official distributor of Apple products in South Africa, Core Group, has quietly reduced the maximum amount of money customers can get when trading in an old iPhone.
Core announced the trade-in deal shortly after Apple unveiled the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, saying that South Africans will be able to get up to R5,000 when they trade their old iPhones in for a new one.
Trade-in values varied from R1,500 (iPhone 4) to R5,000 (iPhone 5s) originally, but these have now been reduced by between 12% and 25%.
Core was asked why it reduced the trade-in values, but the distributor and retail chain owner did not respond to requests for comment.
The table below summarises the changes Core quietly made to its maximum trade-in values.
| iPhone model | Original trade-in value | New trade-in value | Change |
| iPhone 5s | R5,000 | R4,400 | -12% |
| iPhone 5c | R4,000 | R3,000 | -25% |
| iPhone 5 | R4,000 | R3,000 | -25% |
| iPhone 4s | R2,500 | R2,000 | -20% |
| iPhone 4 | R1,500 | R1,300 | -13% |
iPhone owners are eligible for the promotion whether they take out a new contract, upgrade, or renew their existing contract, or buy a new iPhone at any iStore in South Africa.
New contracts, renewals, and upgrades will receive the cash by EFT. For a cash purchase, the value will be discounted from the price of the new iPhone.
If you are due for an upgrade on your iPhone anytime before 28 February 2015, Core said that all you have to do to obtain your cash back voucher is to register at www.myistore.co.za.
Update: Responding to our queries, a spokesperson for Core Group said that they did encourage people to download the cashback voucher as soon as possible in a recent media alert, as the number of vouchers available at the higher values were limited.
“We have had an incredible response to date with tens of thousands of vouchers downloaded,” the media alert stated. “As a result, only a limited number of vouchers [were] still available at the current high lock-in values.”
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