O2 Employees Abuse Employee iPhone Discount

by Eric March on June 1, 2008 at 11:55 pm

It must be nice to work for O2. Apparently, their employees were getting as much as 20% off the purchase of a new iPhone through their employee discount. Unfortunately, some employees at their London, England branches were abusing that discount, buying iPhones at their discounted price only to flip them later on eBay. Given the average selling price of 16GB iPhones, that likely netted them a good 40-50% profit.

It also netted them the stink-eye and some pink slips from O2, who discovered the scam when a London paper broke the story today. Although stuff like this is nothing new — who among the retail grunts of the world haven’t taken slightly inappropriate advantage of one’s employee discount? — O2 is taking a hard stance against it, ultimately firing about half a dozen employees on the spot, which may be signalling that mobile firms may not be putting up with such shenanigans anymore. 20 additional employees are also under investigation by the company for the same thing, so there may be another round of canning to come.

See, this is why we can’t have nice things.

(via Contractor UK)

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