Is it OK to buy things with a student discount and resell them?

A question about : Is it OK to buy things with a student discount and resell them?

This week's MoneySaver who wants advice asks... I used my student discount at the Apple store and got 15% off a new MacBook, plus a three-year warranty that usually you’d pay Ј199 for. I then sold it unopened on eBay and pocketed the profit. The way I see it, as soon as an item is my own I can do with it as I wish - the buyer is still be paying less and I make a little too. But some people I knew thought this was an abuse of the student discount, was it?

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Best answers:

• There is most likely something in the terms and conditions of the student discount prohibiting this, so in that sense yes, it's an abuse. Other than that I can't see an issue, buying at one price and selling at a higher one is the basis of most businesses after all!
• Think if it is a one off then fine no problem, but I don't think Apple would let anyone buy anything with a student discount more often, for example one MacBook a month.
  Anything else is business, buying cheap- selling for a profit- as above
• What you are doing is not illegal but what if lots of students done the same as you and Apple withdrew the offer, meaning students wanting or needing to take advantage of this offer couldn't? What you are doing is certainly against the spirit of the offer.
• If the terms of the offer say that you can't do this, then there's a risk that the supplier will come back to you for compensation (probably to repay the discount, plus expenses/costs). In practice, where you buy a physical product (goods), they're generally yours to do with as you wish. The warranty, on the other hand, might be personal to you, and not transferable.
  If you get 15% discount and sell on eBay, I don't see how you're making much profit. Firstly, the buyer will expect to pay below the 'full' price if they're buying from an individual rather than a retailer (as they have no Sale of Goods Act rights of satisfactory quality). I'd expect to pay at least 10%, probably more like 20%, below the normal price. Then you have to pay 10% commission to eBay and over 3% extra if you use PayPal. Doesn't sound like the greatest money-making scheme to me!
  Occasionally a discount is rare enough and deep enough to be worth trying this sort of thing. However, it's a lot of trouble -- and if you start doing it regularly you might find yourself liable to tax on the profits too, as it becomes a business activity rather than a one-off attempt to game the system.
• im sure a lot of the so called moral questions are made up to get people talking on here
  15% discount at the apple store is highly unlikely and as already posted hardly any profit in it when you take out ebay fees etc
• No problem at all with it (unless explicitly prohibited as part of a contract).
  If they had that much of a problem with it, then they shouldn't be offering it as a discount. They're obviously still making a profit - they're just using the offer to entice more sales from a selected market (do people really think the discount is Apple doing you a favour or something?).
  Would it be wrong if Tesco did one of their crazy buy one get two free deals, and you bought a ton and sold for a profit down the boot sale? Not at all - just because they sell to retail rather than wholesalers, doesn't mean they're not a legitimate supplier.
• But if you sold it and the buyer found it faulty in say 9 months time, because they didn't buy it originally, the warranty wouldn't be worth a light.....
  They wouldn't have an original proof of purchase.
• It's fine as long as you don't advertise what you are doing on a well known, popular website, perhaps even have it included in an email which goes out to over a million people, which could draw attention to the fact the discount is being abused and result in it being pulled.
  From a tax perspective, if you are buying things for the purpose of selling them then you should be declaring it on your tax return, although if it's an occasional one-off it's probably not worth bothering.
• There's absolutely nothing wrong in doing this. Apple offer to sell goods to you at a certain price, you sell to the public for a higher price. That's how all businesses work.
  It would be illegal (as far as I'm aware) for a company selling you something to put conditions on what you do with your own property (so long as you don't infringe intellectual property rights). So you would be well within your rights to buy a hundred laptops and sell them all on eBay.
  The only "complications" are that, if you did this as a "one off" private sale, the buyer wouldn't get a warranty... And if you did this as a business, you would have to register for tax, become liable for faults under the Sale of Goods Act, and would have to negotiate/register with Apple if your customers are to receive the normal warranty.
  Once again, I don't see how simply buying and selling goods could be seen as illegal or "against the spirit" of some kind of offer! This is how all shops work.
• Yes, go for it, what can they do? Ban you from purchasing....
• One thing to think about is your tax liability. If you were to do this often, it would constitute a trade and therefore you would be liable to be taxed on it.
  I know this is thinking outside of the box, but just getting a student discount doesn't mean you are a student, and being a student doesn't prevent you from earning over your personal allowance (last year I had a very lucrative part-time job that paid me Ј1000-Ј1500 a month while being a full-time student - the joys of online marketing - and those figures are 1000 or 1500, rather than estimating comission, i got a payrise in the last two months)
  So, not answering your question, but the taxman may have an issue!