While the Covid-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the lives of people across the UK, the NHS remains a shining light of hope and bravery as nurses, doctors, paramedics and a veritable army of support staff risk their own safety to fight the killer virus.
In response to this unwavering commitment to public health, many companies are rewarding these men and women with discounts on new products as a small way of thanking them for their efforts. This has led some to ask whether Apple has such a programme in place? We take a look at how NHS workers can get a discount on Apple products.
Does Apple offer NHS discounts?
Apple does offer an NHS discount, but you might not notice it straight away. You won’t find any discounts listed directly on the Apple Store or when browsing in physical stores (whenever that happens again), but they are available.
We spoke to an Apple online sales representative, who confirmed that if you have an NHS ID you can simply produce it in physical stores to qualify for discounts, or mention it when buying over the phone. In the case of the latter you’ll need to email a photo of the ID to confirm you are indeed an employee of the health service.
Should you prefer to use Apple’s online store then you’ll need to talk to your HR department at the NHS who will be able to provide you with links and credentials to find the discounts at the Apple Store.
Alternatively, you could create a free account on Health Service Discounts and access the Apple Employee Purchase Programme site from there (you aren’t an Apple Employee, but you can tap into those same discounts).
As an employee of the NHS you’ll find lots of offers from other companies available on the Health Service Discounts site – at the time of writing it was quite a list.
You can also visit the NHS staff offers section of the official NHS site.
Plus, the Blue Light Card scheme, which costs £4.99 to join, also grants you access to discounts from not only Apple but also EE, Lenovo, Samsung, Starbucks, Cineworld and many others.
What are Apple’s NHS discounts?
Before you get your hopes up too high, it’s worth noting that you won’t be taking any short holidays on the money you save. Apple told us that the maximum discount is 10%, but on further investigation it seems that this isn’t the reduction you’ll get on the majority of products.
For example, when we asked about an iPad Pro 11in 128GB model, one that normally retails at £769, we found that the discounted price was £753.60. A saving of £15.40 or around 2%.
It was a similar story with the iPhone SE 64GB that saw its full retail price of £419 cut to £410.40, which again is around 2%.
The figures increase slightly when you move to the Mac, with the baseline 1.4GHz MacBook Pro 13in moving from £1,299 to £1,221.60. A saving of £77.40 that works out around 6%.
While savings (no matter how small) are always welcome, you might find more alluring prices if you check out our Best iPhone deals, Best iPad deals, Best MacBook Pro deals and MacBook Air deals roundups.
In the meantime, to the NHS staff across the UK, thanks from all at Macworld for the vital and difficult work you’re doing during these strange and dark days. You’re all amazing.
Via MACWORLD