Those who would love to have a new iPhone 12 unit have already heard by now about the case of a woman in China who ordered the most recent iPhone release from Apple, but instead of receiving the exact order, she got a box of apple-flavored yogurt.
A woman named Liu, from East China, had shared a video on Weibo that went viral on Friday. She expressed that her excitement of receiving a beautiful new iPhone 12 Pro Max has turned into a deep disappointment after a box of apple-flavored milk yogurt showed up instead as she opened the package.
Ordered from Apple’s Official Website
In the video, Liu said that on February 16, she purchased an iPhone 12 Pro Max (256G) worth 10,099 yuan (or US$1,563) on Apple’s official website and not from a third-party seller. Two days later, she received a package with a box containing the dismal apple-flavored yogurt drink.
The customer stated that her order was not delivered directly at her doorstep. Thus, she went to pick it up at a local warehouse where she lives.
As a response to the video, both Apple and Express Mail Service, the courier service company under China Post responsible for delivering the order, have launched an investigation on the incident. Apple and Express Mail Service claim that they delivered everything properly to their chosen location. However, something uneventful happened in between and she ended up with the apple drink instead of her iPhone 12 unit. The case was then handed over to the local police.
Case Solved
According to Global Times, a man surnamed Long was arrested by police on Sunday after he reportedly confessed that he was transporting cargo between Anhui and Shanghai from February 6 to 18. He found Liu’s parcel, opened it and stole the iPhone 12 Pro Max handset inside and replaced it with a box of yogurt drink while working on a temporary job.
iPhones are a Hot Commodity
A hot commodity in the world of tech, an iPhone unit getting stolen is a fairly common incident.
Back in November 2017, robbers hijacked a UPS truck carrying iPhone X handsets worth $370,000 while it was making its way to an Apple Store in San Francisco.
In another incident similar to the one that Liu experienced, a man in India ordered an iPhone 8 worth Rs55,000 ($760) from online shopping site Flipkart in 2018. He was shocked to receive a soap packed in an Apple box. Unlike Liu’s case, however, the man had ordered the phone from a third party seller and not from the official Apple website.
In November 2020, a delivery man named Tang who worked for a shopping platform named Meituan-Dianping in China was assigned to deliver an order of 14 iPhone 12 Pro Max units worth around $32,000. Instead of delivering the order as he was supposed to, he sold some of them and started to lead an extravagant lifestyle. He ultimately cancelled the order and did not return the remaining phones.
He opened four boxes. Each unit was worth about $2,300 but he disposed the first three for a lesser amount. He gave the first unit to a friend as a form of debt repayment, the second one was sold to a mobile phone dealer for 7,000 yuan ($1,080), and the third one he sold to a pawnshop worth 9,500 yuan ($1,450).
The fourth one he kept for personal use – a move that led him to be caught by authorities.
He bought expensive clothes and went on a lot of shopping sprees. He even hired a BMW car to get around. His happiness was short lived when he was caught by police. The three phones he sold and the one he kept were retrieved back while the remaining ten phones were seized from his house.
He was blacklisted from the courier industry and was sentenced to prison for his actions.