Responding to economic reality, Best Buy has begun selling refurbished iPhone 3Gs with a $50 discount, the electronics giant announced Tuesday.
A refurbished 8GB iPhone 3G returned a month after purchase will cost Apple fans $149, rather than $199 when bought new. A refurbished 16 GB Apple handset is priced at $249, rather than the original $299.
Owners of first-generation iPhones can also use the offer to upgrade to faster 3G versions, Best Buy told Reuters.
Although Best Buy denied it was responding to recent iPhone discounts by competitors, discount chain Wal-Mart sells the 8GB iPhone 3G for $197 and the 16GB model for $297 — slightly below Apple’s suggested retail price.
AT&T has also begun selling refurbished iPhones online.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
