Is Strictly Apple a SCAM?

- The other day, I found out about Strictly Apple.

Look at this.

- [Narrator] This mom is doing

some early school shopping.

- New computers, cool. - So she went to our website

and shop the clearance section

for these two MacBook Airs, - MacBooks, classic.

- [Narrator] And she got both of these MacBook Airs

for less than $500 combined.

And because- - Okay, so less than 500.

That actually is reasonable

'cause those are the older school MacBook Airs.

You can find those things for two, 300 bucks all day long.

- [Narrator] And she said if she's treating her kids,

she's treating herself to a new-

- What do you mean, "She said"?

You got an order, and you're fulfilling it.

This person, this mom who ordered stuff

from your site also gave you her life story?

- [Narrator] And the best part

about it is she used our financing option-

- Whoa, whoa, whoa!

If she financed, okay, hold on, hold on.

So let me make sure I'm wrapping my head around this.

So this is a Short that Strictly Apple made.

372,000 likes on a story

about how a mom bought two MacBooks for her children

and pair of AirPods Max,

which probably cost more than both laptops combined,

and then told the whole story about how she financed it too.

That sounds sus.

Let's actually go and check out Strictly Apple,

and see exactly how legit they are 'cause honestly,

you make a Short like this, I'm coming for you.

(keyboard clacking)

Why does Plug Tech show up when I type in,

oh, it's an ad.

Oh, my god.

So Plug Tech has maybe spent the last month

having a great time with my video

and trying to use that as further marketing.

Fair play.

But the fact that they are stealing the SEO

from Strictly Apple is kind of hilarious.

Okay, so we have Mac, iPad, iPhone,

Watch, Accessories, Bundles, Sell your device.

So I will tell you,

they're very much only an Apple company, it looks like.

Let's look at MacBook Air.

That's what they did in the Short.

Let's see what we've got.

So 2015 MacBook Air for 179 bucks.

That's actually a pretty decent deal.

Now they do give me a little bit of information

about what the condition of the device is.

So Clearance is the most affordable option.

"The condition of the device may have bumps,

scratches, and parts may have been replaced,

but it's still operational with one year warranty."

Used is normal wear and tear,

Open Box is pretty much brand new,

and Brand New Sealed is actually brand new sealed.

Oh, oh, here we go.

"We do accept returns for in-store credit

within 30 days of purchasing.

Please see our return policy from our info."

I would love to see this.

"We do not accept return," wait.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on.

Dude, it says, "We do not accept returns

or refunds on devices," but if I scroll down a little bit,

it says, "We'll notify you when we've returned

and inspect your return."

I want to give these guys the benefit

of the doubt, but the fact

that their refund policy says three different things

in two different places does not fill me with any confidence

that they are trustworthy.

Hold on a second.

iPhone 15 Pro Max in Used condition for $1,149?

You mean it's in Used condition,

and it's $50 less than a brand new one?

Huh? What?

While I can do Open Box for $10 less? (laughs)

How about bundles? You know what, I need a bundle.

I need some bundles. Bundle me up.

The iPhone bundle is two fast chargers.

Sorry, Plug Tech flashbacks intensified.

- You okay? (cast members laughing)

- Oh, my god.

(chargers thud)

So with that, my friends,

I'm going to place a substantial order with Strictly Apple

to see if I can, in fact,

outfit my children with some crappy old MacBooks

and buy myself some sweet headphones,

or whether or not I get scammed.

Well, we'll see how that goes.

We already cut the cameras

and I was just gonna check out with my cart.

They have the option to tip.

I can show my support for the team

by giving them a 5, 10, or 15% tip, which would be $267.

I don't think I've ever gotten a tip screen

for refurbished tech. (laughs)

- [Alex] Gone too far.

- Strictly Apple is really the gift

that keeps on giving, man.

I'm having a great time here.

That's all, I'll see you in a couple weeks

when all this stuff shows up.

And so our Strictly Apple deals are here.

Now it was a little bit of a process to arrive.

So first and foremost, I wanted to outsmart them.

I don't want to order items

from a potentially shady company,

potentially shady company under the name Austin Evans,

just in case they're onto my number

and they seed me some high-quality items.

So instead, I purchased these

under the pseudonym Pierre Luigi.

So all these boxes say Pierre Luigi.

I did not use my official email address

and nothing like that.

You see this package also says Pierre Luigi.

When the UPS person came up to the door, they're like,

"Hey, I have packages for Mr. Luigi."

And I tried not to laugh.

Now it took about a week to arrive, that's fine.

But I never got an email confirmation.

And while I used a different email

that was associated with Mr. Luigi,

that email never got the confirmation.

And in fact, up until these boxes showed up,

I wasn't sure that anything had even be shipped.

I didn't have like my price, my receipt, nothing.

I'll give them a small benefit of the doubt,

but maybe I just mistyped my email or Luigi's email.

But not a great start for our Strictly Apple experience.

Okay, first item is...

(steady music)

- Happy Easter! (laughs) - And a little sticker.

Woo, this is delightful.

Oh my god, it's a HI-CHEW

and Toxic Waste Hazardously Sour Candy.

You know what? - Do you trust that?

- Who would poison Pierre Luigi?

He's done nothing wrong to anyone besides the style police.

I'm not gonna lie, I could be swayed by some candy.

If everyone just gave me some candy in the box,

I'd probably say nicer things.

Thank you, Strictly Apple. A good start, a good start.

All right, let's see what we got here.

So first of all, what I assume is an iPad.

It's nicely padded, I will say.

A little loose in here,

but they've done a lot of bubble wrap, so that's fine.

(steady music continues) (bubble wrap crinkling)

A lot of bubble wrap, all right.

This is our iPad ninth gen.

Okay, so ninth gen, 10.2 inch,

Wifi, 64 gigs, Space Gray, Open Box SL.

What are they calling open box here?

Is that the actual condition of it or is that just

what they call the label? - That is the condition of it.

So they have like different levels,

and that is the Open Box SL. - What's SL?

Do we know what SL stands for? Slightly lost.

So on the back, I mean that looks pretty brand new to me.

On the front, you know what?

That actually looks

like it may be essentially like new in box,

like maybe it literally was in an actual open box sort

of thing and they just wrapped it in this plastic

'cause that physically looks perfect.

How much did I pay for this iPad?

- [Alex] You paid $310.

- Oh, right.

So $20 less than this is brand new directly from Apple.

Okay, I'll set this up, we'll play around with it.

But at first glance, it seems to be,

they seem to have given me exactly what I had asked for

plus some candy, which always is a win in my book.

So I have spent some time with this iPad

and I have a few thoughts.

I actually have not used the base model ninth gen iPad

in quite a while.

This originally came out back in 2021.

And if you are gonna go into it with low expectations,

you know, using it as a basic iPad

and "Cocomelon" delivery device, it's totally fine.

But here's the thing, this iPad is old and feels old,

but the bigger issue is that this iPad is regularly on sale.

Right now, I found it on Best Buy for $250.

So I could get a brand new iPad from Best Buy

for $60 less than I got this open box one for.

So this is not necessarily a great start for Strictly Apple.

Next up, we have what I assume is our MacBook.

Again, very well-padded,

and that I'm gonna have to unwrap it for a minute.

2015 MacBook Air 11-inch.

It is an eight gig, 121,

I assume they mean 128 gig of storage, Core i5.

It's Sliver, so it's my favorite color, and it's Used.

Now if I remember right, they call this Clearance, right?

- [Alex] Yes, Clearance condition.

- Clearance condition.

- [Alex] And as a reminder, this is their lowest.

They claim it's their most affordable option.

The condition of this device may have bumps,

scratches, and parts may have been replaced. (chuckles)

- Well, it's certainly in clearance condition.

We've got a number of scratches,

which definitely you can kind of feel to the touch.

So we've got some around the Apple logo, over on this side,

and on this side as well.

Oh, it's bumpy. Oh my god, it's bumpy.

Look, someone dropped it. It's actually bumpy on the corner.

Yes, I was hoping I would get my bumpy MacBook.

They delivered! - (laughs) Oh, my god.

They were pretty clear that I was getting a bumpy MacBook,

so I'm not too upset.

Let's see, this is the real test,

what the inside looks like.

Well, the hinge is, what's wrong with the hinge?

These MacBooks had one touch open, didn't they,

one finger open, no? - It's probably

'cause it's bumpy on the corners.

It's holding on. - Oh, it's like stuck.

Wait, it's like sticky.

Oh, ew. Okay.

Oh. Well, that actually looks fine.

You know what? That screen actually looks pretty good.

There's one scratch here, so there's a scratch.

It's kinda hard to tell based on light,

but there's a relatively okay scratch on the bottom left.

But that's not terrible.

(Austin sniffing)

Smells clean, I actually think

that Strictly Apple did a pretty good job

of cleaning this up.

I feel okay about this MacBook.

Now how much did I pay

for this bumpy clearance-quality MacBook Air 11-inch?

- [Alex] This costs $180.

- So I guess the question here is not only just how good

of condition this is,

but how usable is a MacBook Air 2015

in the year of 2024?

'Cause it still feels nice, I still like this design.

Well, I mean I think the 11-inch form factor

was really nice, but how usable is this really?

So I'm trying to configure our MacBook Air,

and I've immediately run into a problem.

"Pasco County Schools can automatically

configure your computer."

It is set up with remote management.

Did some kid like not return his MacBook and sell it on,

and Strictly Apple bought it without checking

if it was locked to a school system?

Can I even like fix this?

I actually legitimately don't think I can fix this.

I think it's actually gonna just be locked down

to some school IT system somewhere.

This is not going well. (laughs)

So let's try this again, shall we?

So after I had the problem with the MacBook,

I hit up Strictly Apple's customer service,

and I said, "Hey, I would like to return

or exchange or whatever."

And so they said, "No problem."

We had to go back and forth on email a few times,

but eventually, they gave me a return label.

I shipped the MacBook back to them,

and now I have theoretically my MacBook that has been fixed.

That was what the email made it seem

like they were going to do.

So let's see. You know, it's sealed.

I can definitely just pull the MacBook right out.

In fact, I'm not gonna cut the tape.

I'm just gonna pull the MacBook out.

Now just in case there are shenanigans afoot,

I took a photo of the serial number

so we can double check that it is

in fact the same MacBook or not.

The number's almost the same.

This one ends in GFWM, but mine ended in GFWK.

So they actually gave me a different MacBook.

Yeah, the screen's a little dirty, a couple scratches.

It's not, I would say it's roughly in the same condition.

Oh, I think it's working. Yeah, it's letting me go through.

Okay, so getting into macOS here,

we do have it running Monterey,

which I think is the most recent version of macOS

that this could run.

Shows it's a 2015 model, Core i5,

but it does have the eight gigs of ram.

If I check storage, it is, yep, 128 gigs.

So this is the correct device

that I should have gotten from the beginning.

Considering that this is in Clearance condition,

I think I'm okay with it.

It's definitely beat up, It's definitely not perfect,

and the process to get here was less than ideal,

but I guess I'll begrudgingly give a,

eh, that's all you get though.

All right, next up,

we have an iPhone.

Oh, this looks very different.

Okay, so we've got the iPhone nicely padded,

as well as USB-A to Lightning...

A USB-A to USB-C cable.

(Alex laughs)

Just a reminder, this is an iPhone 12, right?

Like, you know, the one with Lightning.

So it shows the battery health is 94%.

It doesn't say anything about the condition.

It just says C. What condition is this supposed to be in?

- [Alex] It is supposed to be in Used condition,

which is their second to lowest thing.

It's normal wear and tear.

Nothing that you wouldn't expect from a device that is used.

- Let's see our used iPhone 12, shall we?

Okay, that's a screen protector, right?

Look at how (quack) up that is. Can you see that?

Oh my god, that is one

of the most scratched screens I have ever seen.

That's normal wear and tear?

Yeah, if you drag this behind a truck on the freeway.

This, I am not exaggerating what I say,

this is the most scratched iPhone I've ever received

on any of our refurbished videos.

That's a really deep, no, that's a crack.

There's actually a crack in the glass there.

Good lord.

How much did I pay for my used iPhone 12?

- You paid $360. - Nope, nope.

(tense music)

- Just when you're feeling all right about a video.

Just when you're feeling, like you know what?

They bribed me with candy, Pierre Luigi's real happy,

then they spit on my mother's face.

Sorry, Mom. I'll defend your honor.

While aesthetically, it's in pretty rough shape,

but as far as I can tell, it is fully functional.

And with 94% battery life, it actually isn't too bad.

Typically, phones at this age are easily into the 80% range.

So I will give them props there.

So this is a little sample of the video on the iPhone 12.

As you can see, it looks pretty decent.

Now the iPhone 12 was a good generation

because not only did it introduce the flat sides,

but also has 5G, pretty decent cameras, great OLED display.

Like these phones are still very usable in 2024.

But the problem is,

is that Back Market sell the exact same phone for $100 less.

So you could get this for 260 instead of $360.

Look, I'm starting to feel a little bit bad

for Strictly Apple, I'm not gonna lie.

I don't mean to punch on them so badly,

but I'm struggling to stay positive here

because (sighs) I just,

I don't have anything good to say.

I'm afraid of what's next. (laughs)

Okay, so this item is in a UPS mailer.

So that's an interesting way of packaging it.

I expect this if I'm buying something from eBay.

Buying something from a reputable retailer,

and just like a UPS envelope is maybe not the greatest look.

But inside, we have AirPods Pro.

- [Alex] You called this the AirPods Pro.

- Wait, that's because they did say AirPods Pro.

It says AirPod Pro on it, I just read it.

I just Ron Burgundy'd it, I just Ron Burgundy'd it.

Oh no, the AirPods Max. - I thought you're

having a stroke. (Austin laughs)

- I'm a little afraid though

because based on the condition of the iPhone in Used shape,

these are things that are not only going

to go directly on my ears, but also very expensive.

So if these are gross and scratched and disgusting,

I'm gonna be real grumpy.

Let's take a look, I'll say though,

I've actually never seen the green AirPods Max in person.

They're very green.

- [Joanna] I like the color.

- [Austin] I do too. Oh, it smells bad.

- Oh, my god. - Oh!

Ew!

It just smells directly like someone's stinky-ass head.

There's no other way to describe it.

Oh dude, you can see look how dark the earcups are.

Do you see this?

Look, it's maybe a little hard to see on camera,

but like you can see how like they're dirty.

Oh, no! There's the earwax on the inside.

Oh, god. - Ew.

- How much did I pay for these used Stink Pros 9000?

- They were $460. - Oh!

- for Used condition. - Oh, so bad.

- On eBay, I'm seeing AirPods Max, used,

but obviously these are in Used condition, for 250 to $300.

And we paid $460 for these.

I bet the eBay ones don't smell as bad as these do.

So I'm gonna have to,

and I really hate that I have to say this, scrub,

deep clean, and find some way

of making these not disgusting.

And then I'll evaluate how bad of a deal I got.

So before I try to evaluate my AirPods Pros,

I'm going to bring in a pro to help me sanitize them.

Ken, you've cleaned some AirPods Maxes in your day, right?

- Yes, I actually have the white version of these,

and they stain like crazy.

No matter how clean you are,

they will just yellow at some point.

- Well, take a look at these.

- Were they originally green or?

- (laughs) They were originally green.

- Oh. (chuckles) (Austin laughs)

- You moved it, and it literally like wafted my direction.

- Oh, those look crusty, woo.

Bro. - Take 'em off, look inside.

(Ken coughs) (Austin laughs)

- Is that mold?

- I think it's earwax, I'm not sure.

It's not good, whatever it is.

(relaxing music)

- So this might be the most aggressive way of doing this,

but I wanna make sure

these are clean. - This is a case

for aggressive measures.

So after giving the headphones 24 hours to dry out,

they still smell bad.

So we're gonna do a Tide Pod this time.

Ken said that the Tide Pod works really well for-

- Yeah, they taste way better.

- We're gonna clean headphones for a while.

So we'll see you again tomorrow once they have been washed

and dried a second time.

It has been two days of washing, drying,

washing and drying these.

Matt, you're an unbiased nose. - So I have not seen

when they were dirty.

- Oh my god, it was so bad.

Why don't we start out with the simple one.

Evaluate the actual earcups.

(Matt sniffing) - You smell,

you sniff like a dog. (laughs)

- Trying to get the full effect.

Unoffensive.

- [Austin] Lovely, okay.

- Great. - Like actually

almost pleasant. - Next up, the headband.

This smelled like, well,

just tell us what you think about it now.

- Very Tide. I like it. - Yes, it is.

- Mm, again, not bad cleaning.

- [Austin] The earcups were the dirtiest.

- 'Kay, they're the smell is gone.

- No, actually it's gone. - Are we good?

- Is it really gone? - It's gone, yeah,

it's gone, it's gone.

- It's actually gone. Okay. - Yeah.

- So let's put this all together

and see if it actually wants to work.

How do I pair these AirPods?

- You just- - Oh, they're blinking.

- Do I just pull out a phone?

- [Matt] Yeah, you pull your phone and...

- Okay.

- Connect Pauly D's- - You are the worst

tech YouTuber ever. - Well, no, I don't know

if these have been reset or whatever,

if they're trying to be paired or what do I do to get-

- Did you not try these out before you did all this?

- No, they were still

actually terrible- - Why, what?

(Ken laughs) Wait, wait, wait.

So you didn't even test to see if they worked?

- No, no, no. - You put in two days of work.

- Yes.

Dude, when we opened the bag. It was so disgusting.

No one wanted to put this remotely near their faces.

- Then you, oh my god. - Joanna used gloves

to touch them for the B-roll.

- We actually could not use them without being

like a mile away. - Joanna uses gloves

to high five you two.

That's not saying much. (Ken laughs)

- Connect. - Cool, that's been spoofable

for a while.

- Okay. Oh, no!

"The owner of this item will be able to see its location.

You are connecting to an item that's paired

to someone else's Apple ID, R, blank, blank, blank, @gmail."

(phone thuds)

Goddamn it!

We did all that work, it's still been, oh!

- So it wasn't Pauly D, it was Ronnie.

- He just definitely got a notification saying

that Austin has paired his AirPods Max.

Goddamn it. - Now he knows

where our office is. - He actually 100%

has our current location. - Oh. (laughs)

- I'll get the storm shutters.

- He fished himself.

- He's gonna come back

for his damn AirPods. - Yeah!

You just did all the wrong things all back to back to back.

- I do think I just did a crime.

I'm pretty sure I just did a crime.

- Yeah, you are now.

We are accessories because we watched you do it.

- Okay, well, time to take these back apart

and throw them in the river

and we will move on. - No, what we do is we put 'em

on a bus going southbound.

(Ken laughs) Let them track it.

I feel like they're bleeding more than other Maxes.

- [Austin] No, he just listen to 'em really loud.

- [Matt] He does listen to headphones really loud.

- Well, it surely can't get any worse than this, right?

Now I definitely know what this item is,

and it's something that I have a very close attachment to.

This, my friends, is the one and only trash can...

"Daredevil" edit 10 from Showtime Networks.

- [Alex] (laughs) Asset tag.

- [Joanna] They didn't even take it off.

- Did this Mac Pro edit "Daredevil"?

So I think what happened here is

that someone pulled this straight outta the edit bay,

and shipped it off to some wholesale or whatever,

and eventually, Strictly Apple got their hands on it.

But this tape and this packaging has definitely been on here

for a like a number of years.

You only see super old tape literally like peel

up like this.

So we've got ourselves the Mac Pro,

and if we come around to the side,

they've added a sticker to it.

2013 Mac Pro, 64 gigs of RAM, one terabyte SSD,

i5, which clearly not Core i5, 12 core,

2.7 gigahertz processor, and D700 GPUs.

So I'm gonna crack it open.

The nice thing with Mac Pros is they're very easy to

(Mac Pro rattling)

open, they're really easy to open.

- [Alex] This was in Clearance condition,

their lowest condition item.

- Great, Clearance condition, AKA it doesn't come up,

which is fine-ish 'cause I mean I technically don't have

to open it, I just wanna see it, but good lord.

I don't know what this would've cost brand new.

I would not be surprised if it was close to $10,000.

It's probably like at least eight or nine grand

to essentially max out the Mac Pro, short of the SSD,

which I think, I mean the one terabyte was still huge for,

you know, over a decade ago.

Since I can't open this one, let me show you my Mac Pro.

This is my original 2013 Mac Pro.

As you can see, this one opens up very nicely,

and what you'll see is a very unique internal design.

So we actually had two individual graphics cards,

and this side right here was where the CPU went.

It was a cool design because essentially,

it used a single fan to sort of push all the air

through a thermal core.

How much do we pay for our Clearance condition,

Daredevil-spec Mac Pro?

- [Alex] $450.

- Less than the AirPods Max for a multiple thousands

of dollar Pro system straight out of the edit bay of Netflix

or wherever this came from.

So I'm gonna fire up this Strictly Apple Mac Pro,

and we'll see exactly what I can do with it

and if there's any Netflix proprietary information on it.

And if there is, you know where to find me.

My name is Pierre Luigi and my address is...

So we have been putting this Mac Pro to work.

Rio, is this 10-year-old Mac Pro just filling you

with delight as you edit this 4K 2024 footage?

- Oh, it really is. - Is it really good?

Yep, it's just great.

(Rio chuckles) - Sweet as butter?

- No. (laughs) - Okay.

So the setup here is that we've got the Mac Pro.

Now I did use OpenCore patcher to update

to the latest version macOS.

Technically, this Mac Pro is like one year out of date.

They just dropped support for it.

So I did do that, and we are using our server.

So we've got a Thunderbolt 2 to 10-gig ethernet adapter,

so we are running off of the network.

So you're working through the video

that you're watching right now.

How are we feeling?

- Well, I can almost not even watch it fully through

without it just lagging. - Is it that bad?

- [Rio] And then it started doing a weird glitch too,

which is just great.

- So this is not a usable setup.

At least it would be usable

if we were like gonna do a proxy workflow

or using like older cameras 'cause we shoot to like H.265,

which is a very compressed codec.

(sighs) I really wanted this to work.

- I also wanted it to work. It looks so cool.

- It's so cool, right?

So the Mac Pro, I'm not gonna give it a pass.

I mean, if you really need a system with like 64 gigs of RAM

and blah, blah, blah, like, okay.

But like it's no longer supported.

I love OpenCore patcher,

but especially with something like this,

which already had graphics issues right outta the box,

the fact that we are using old,

old drivers is not gonna help anything.

Look, I wanna like it,

I wanna say nice things about Strictly Apple.

Considering how much money I spent

on the items in this video,

the fact that I still feel bad about being mean

to Strictly Apple really should say something

about the quality and the prices.

I don't think there is one item from this entire video

that was actually good and worth it.

Like literally outta everything, nothing was a good item.

This might be the worst refurbished store we've ever shopped

on and that's saying something.

All right, do you wanna go back to like using a good system

and finish editing this video so people can watch it?

- Yes, please. - And I'll take the Mac Pro

and build a shrine to get the lost.

- Okay, with Oscar the Grouch?

- Yeah, he can stay in there.

He lives in the trash can where he belongs