The sleep out has begun outside Apple’s flagship store on Sydney’s George Street for the highly anticipated Australian launch of its new iPhone 7 tomorrow.
However, many of the people in the queue aren’t even Apple fans, rather they’re cash-strapped students who are being paid as much as $200 to mind the spot for office workers in the CBD.
Business Insider Australia is reporting that Apple fans are using the Aussie site Airtasker (that enables people to outsource boring, everyday tasks) to find students to wait in the queue for them overnight. (Airasker takes $30 of the $200, apparently).
And what if a person needs a food or toilet break? Well, its up to the office worker to come down and take his/her real place in the queue.
According to Apple’s own site, the basic 32GB iPhone 7 model will cost Aussies $868, while the 256GB phone will set you back $1135.
Airtasker’s marketing vice president Simon Reynolds called the “cash for queuing” scheme one of the most “inventive” uses of the site ever.
Reynolds told Business Insider: “It may be an indicator on the popularity of the new iPhone, but we’ve noticed that people are posting jobs to queue for the iPhone earlier than previous years. Most are requesting the popular Jet Black version of the phone, which you can only gain early access to by queueing.”
When people last queued for Apple’s iPhone 6 the rate was only $150.
