Companies Are Cracking Down on College Discounts for Non-Students
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Here's your money briefing for Tuesday, August 13th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. For people in school with a tight budget, getting a student discount can mean less money coming out of their pocket. But some still try to get the discount after they graduate, and companies are starting to crack down.
They tap into more than 200,000 data sources, including university registrars and other kinds of verification data to verify if someone is actually a student or not. And for sometimes a company might require someone to submit, you know, using facial recognition or IP address to verify their identity.
We'll talk to Wall Street Journal reporter Munshi Sun about high-tech efforts to restrict student discounts to students. after the break.
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Many companies are tightening the rules around who is eligible for a student discount. Wall Street Journal reporter Munshi Sun joins me. Munshi, what are examples of student discounts that some popular services offer?
So we've seen many streaming services such as Apple, Amazon Prime, Spotify offering student discounts. For example, at Apple, you can get educational pricing on their hardware such as laptops and also discounts on AppleCare+. They also give students about $5.99 per month deal for their Apple Music and Apple TV+, which is about 70% off their usual prices of the two services combined. We have also seen Amazon giving pretty much half the price to their students or younger people of their Amazon Prime service.
Why do companies offer those discounts in the first place?
Companies realize this is a great opportunity to start building a relationship with the customers who might be, you know, a lifelong relationship for them. The companies we talked to, they have stats showing that most of the streaming services working with some verification company was able to retain more than 90% of their student customers even after they graduate from school and having to pay full price.
But you're right that some students are trying to get discounts even after they graduate. How are they doing that?
Like the old way, sometimes you just show a certain ID that you maybe still have from college, or sometimes you can just show them an email address. A lot of places, they will just simply check, take a look at your certain ID or the email you might have from a school. And then many other places might just operate on their system. For example, for Apple, if you're shopping for their educational pricing on their hardware, they will check some certain ID in the store, but they don't really verify online.
Why are some companies cracking down on customers trying to get the discount?
The savings you get from all the discounts combined can be huge. We've calculated you can maybe save up to hundreds of dollars a year. And obviously, it's very lucrative for people who are just trying to save some money from And many people who are into their 20s who might have graduated from college a few years ago, and for whatever reason, maybe it's student debt or inflation, they're just hanging on to the student ID looking to get some extra savings.
Is there an age limit on eligibility for a student discount?
Usually companies require some kind of enrollment in school, such as college or grad school. But some companies like Amazon has extended the discount to just younger people, for people who are under the age of 25.
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