This is the question I have as well. Seems like they would be breaking their agreement with Apple about being an authorized seller.

Lots of companies refuse to let their products be sold at a lower price in order to protect their prices. There was one software company in particular that wrote into the contract that you could not resell the software to 3rd party. You could only sell it back to the software company. This was specialty software, and licenses averaged around $40k per seat.

That latter part is to prevent resale, which is not related to retail price and manufacturer's wholesale price.

It depends on the buy back price for if this scheme benefits customers or not. Lets say I'm nabisco and I tell grocers that instead of putting my product on sale and potentially take a loss that I'll buy back that product. The risk of selling the product is on nabisco rather than the grocer and the grocer may stock more nabisco goods because of it. However, if the terms are not favorable then consumers should be more skeptical in agreeing to those terms depending on their risk tolerance. Extreme examples of this do often fall into anti-trust.

Just a short time ago, there was a thread where someone posted a link to the infamous story about Vlasic (IIRC) and the extremely cheap large bucket of pickles that Walmart (the retailer) forced Vlasic (the maker) to provide. The store mandated the maker. Not the other way around. So yes, sometimes the grocer does the telling.

It used to be quite easy to find used Apple products on Amazon. For example, I bought a used 2013 Macbook Pro with Applecare included at a decent discount. When it came time to replace it, similar options weren't available on Amazon, unfortunately.

There's a difference from selling used as an individual vs selling used as store. There are authorized used Mac sellers, but I'd imagine they'd be under the same Apple mandates on what is allowed. If some of these sellers on Amazon "fucked around and found out" what happens when you break an Apple contract, then whoops! A contract is there for a reason.

This doesn't seem to be talking about used sales, though.

Why unfortunate? There are great marketplaces like Backmarket.

Organized retail theft rings. Both the stuff you see on the evening news where a group grabs everything off the shelf at an Apple store and one off thefts from places like Best Buy.

The fact that Amazon willingly participated in this scheme is a strong indicator that they were getting a high volume of charge backs and returns that they had to eat because the devices were new in box but couldn't be activated.

Are you telling me Apple doesn't immediately ban those devices?

Isn't that why GP says they'd be getting returned to Amazon?

Some devices have their warranty expired, but not disabled per se.

Couldn't Apple just enable Activation Lock for the IMEI or serial numbers of the stolen devices? Maybe the retailers are not able to report the serial numbers / IMEIs of stolen devices back to Apple?

You can exploit currency differences to get a discount.

For example, in Australia Apple locks the exchange rate at certain points in order to maintain a consistent price. When the rate moves against say the USD you can import phones at a cheaper price.

Never seen it be as high as 20% though.

At the end of life of an apple item, Apple still hasn't discounted their price, but other sellers have started to do so. I got my airpods pro at more than 20% off of Apple price 3 weeks before the announcement of the airpod pro II