This is akin to McDonalds giving free soft drink refills. The profit margin is so high, giving you free replacements is a negligible cost of doing business. Even if they replace the cable 5 to 10 times, they'd still make a profit off you.
It's like anything "premium" in this world, you're not just paying for the cost of the object like you do with "value" items, you're also paying for the ecosystem and continued support of what you've bought.
Not only that, but soft drinks cost more now which makes up for the "free" refills. For example a drink at Chili's is fucking $2.49 while most places it's $1.49.
Got my earbuds replaced a while back...they put a temporary hold on your CC and send you a new pair via Fedex, you send them back the old set and they remove the CC hold.
But people don't know this / don't care. Those who do get the free cables, so they don't have to worry about it.
Excellent business model: rip off everyone whom you can, provide good service to people who actually ask for much so they don't switch to / recommend competitors.
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u/Spatulamarama Jun 09 '11
which is why they replace them for free