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Class-Action Suit Filed Against Apple
AC writes "A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Apple. The plaintiffs allege that Apple failed to fully honor service contracts and warranties, didn't get repair and service businesses properly licensed, stole trade secrets from its own resellers, and sold used computer equipment as new."
Are there already legit complaints or are they just looking for people to tell on Apple?
How is this different, from, say, Mattel making small doll stores pay more for Barbies than Wal-Mart or Target, resulting in the big chains being able to sell the dolls for less than the independent doll stores are paying Mattel? I mean, neither practice seems particularly nice, but if one is legal shouldn't the other be?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Too bad none of these resellers hit on a formula to grow Mac market share. They never figured out ways to attract new customers. Isn't that the business of sales?
There are two suits, one brought on behalf of customers, the other on the behalf of the resellers. Although the two cases are related since the consumers case is based around products bought from resellers.
These are big issues, especially for all the apple zealots out there who think apple is a "kinder gentler company."
"The plaintiffs allege that Apple failed to fully honor service contracts and warranties, didn't get repair and service businesses properly licensed, stole trade secrets from its own resellers, and sold used computer equipment as new."
I other words some lawyer's trophy wife wants a new yacht.
There's probably enough reason for a class action for the iBook logic board issues alone. My first iBook's logic board died before the extension pogram was introduced and Apple refused to fix it without $750 ,so I had to get rid of it. My second iBook, which I still have but don't use often, craps out every six months or so, and my third iBook (and yet I learn nothing) died four times in the first six months I had it. I called them on the third time and told them I wanted a new machine that was outside the defective serial number range, and they said I had to wait for it to die one more time. I figured I could wait a few weeks, and sure enough, two weeks after they fixed it yet again, the logic board failed. I got a brand new g4 model out of it, but that was after a total of three years, as many machines, and a total of 8 logic boards.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a total fanboy, and I want to go down on Steve Jobs just as much as any other fanboy, but after the way Apple has treated large portions of their customer base recently, they deserve whatever it is they've got coming.
This too, will end.
What is it that keeps you coming back for all that abuse? Is it like a personal challenge? One experience like that, with a PC retailer, was all it took to get me building my own.
To an extent Apple have created some problems like this for themselves in recent times, but this article just reads like the usual typical American nonsense:
/. seems to be populated with a lot of articles like this giving the firm impression that Americans will do anything to exploit money with all sorts of feeble excuses. Wasn't Bush supposed to be making legislation to make frivilous class action suits harder to press. I don't like Bush, and my sympathises are generally always with the underdog and the individual rather than big business but it does some like the whole situation has become a complete joke in the US. But then I guess with class action lawsuits, they are not about individuals but about groups of so called 'victims' looking to invent spurious reasons to 'legally' steal money from someone else.
"If someone is more successful than me, it is their fault and I will sue them"
In fact
Of course Apple isn't perfect like I say, but I have a hard time believing in this basis of this issue.
$750 for a repair is false.
The standard out of warranty repair cost for an iBook is ~$300. the only way they'd charge more is if they saw signs of a spill or abuse or drop (cracked case or internal components for example).
Before you go badmouthing a company, make sure you're giving all the facts and not just trying to garner pity.
It seems like the resellers are pissed about the apple owned stores. I don't know if charging their own stores less is against the law but if it is, thats nuts. They own the store and the product. Well you be the judge.
TellOnApple.org suggests Apple shareholders demand Apple Computer answer these questions at its upcoming shareholders meeting on April 22, 2004 in Cupertino, California:
1. Is Apple Computer the subject of any governmental probes or criminal investigations?
2. Do the company owned retail stores pay the same price for Apple products as independent Apple resellers when purchasing the same products directly from Apple?
3. Do the uncovered invoices show what the company owned retail stores actually pay for Apple products? Do the company owned retail stores actually pay $2.70 for Apple Care Extended Warranties while most resellers pay approximately $118 to $244 for the same product?
4. Are the company owned retail stores actually profitable if they paid the same price for Apple products as independent Apple resellers?
5. Is Apple misleading shareholders as to the company owned retail stores profitability?
6. Apple has always stated that there was a level playing field between the company owned retail stores and the independent Apple resellers. How does Apple explain the pricing, promotions, and allocation discrepancies between the two?
7. Have Apple sales at the independent Apple resellers increased or decreased year over year? If they have decreased, is Apple simply moving sales from the independent Apple resellers to Apple direct?
8. Five down, 95 to go was Apple's main reason for opening the company owned retail stores. "Apple has about 5 percent market share," Jobs said in 2001. He noted that most of the other 95 percent of computer buyers "don't even consider us." Why has Apple's marketshare decreased instead of growing? And what benefit is there to Apple to eliminate the independent Apple resellers?
9. Has Apple ever intended to put the independent Apple resellers out of business? Would this bring any benefit to Apple or Apple's customers? Is there a future for independent Apple resellers?
10. When Apple first opened its retail stores, it publicly recognized that working with its existing lineup of independent resellers would be a priority. Why has this changed?
11. In Apple's ethics document posted on their website, Apple states, "In some cases, the law may also view our resellers as our competitors when we are actually competing for the same types of customers in the marketplace." Why is Apple competing against their independent resellers? Why is Apple offering special prices to consumers, which can be lower than the independent resellers cost?
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
If this is for customers, why does it read like it's focused entirely on reseller's problems? While I understand that there are people who have been unlucky with Apple products in the past (such as the G4 MDD problems, iBook logic board problems, etc.), they seem like one of the best companies when it comes to actually repairing and fixing things under warranty. And the reseller gripes leave out an important element -- the Apple stores offer similar prices yet a much better shopping environment. The people there know their stuff, there's very little pressure to buy, and they're happy just letting you use the computers or chat tech with them if they're not super-busy. Nearly every "boutique style" computer reseller takes the opposite approach. I've never been in a small-time reseller that actually felt like I'd want to spend time there and talk to the people, whether they sell Apple or PC products. I know that's just anecdotal, but the Apple stores offer up stiff competition for even PC resellers, let alone Apple resellers. I think the real question is whether the companies like Small Dog and MacMall are really feeling a hit in their business. AFAIK, they're not part of these lawsuits.
Wow... Where's the part where Apple allegedly eats alive little babies and is responsible for causing all STDs?
I want to go down on Steve Jobs just as much as any other fanboy
I didn't need that mental image!
This Article might be interesting... apparently there is some trouble with the lawyers in the case...
The named plaintiff in the suit was an attorney with one of the firms.
Like anyone can even know that
"Apple Computer had estimated that if it was found liable, each consumer would be entitled to only $8. "
Commodore did something similar to it's resellers back in the day. We were selling Amiga 500's just fine, until they decided to sell huge quantities to the Mail-Order guys. I remember reading a magazine ad and realizing that people were getting Amiga's from the mail-order houses for LESS than I was as a reseller. It was just wrong.
Never thought about a class action suit tho.
Nipok Nek
Why choose white shoes?
Frankly, I could not care less. RTFA, this is not about customers, it's all about the resellers. As a customer, I want to buy products as cheaply as possible and without delays. I do _not_ care where I buy them from.
...
I don't see why there is all the fuss about some tiny resellers closing shop because of Apple's opening of its own retail stores. Apple is a publicly traded company, for God's sake, they have much more of an obligation towards their stockholders than towards their whiny resellers. You tend to make more money for your shareholders when there are fewer people taking a cut.
I understand that it's something of a tragedy for those directly involved, but for customers it is more or less irrelevant. Apple is far to insignificant (market-share wise) to warrant all this attention. Go and buy a Windows PC if you don't like their practices. A company with low single-digit market-share should be legally free to open shops and undercut their resellers as much as they want, all those resellers are free to sell a myriad of other hardware and software products.
Morally, it's questionable of course, but these lawsuits? Please
How could a class action suit cover stole trade secrets from its own resellers amongst those other claims?
They are from different points of view. The rest are from a end consumer point of view and this would need to be claimed from a reseller point of view.
Apple only opened their own stores in the first place because the dealers were doing a lousy job! If the dealers were adequate, would Apple spend the hundreds of millions of dollars that it took to launch a whole new retail chain?
Some dealers did a good job and they're still in business today. Others, like MacAdam and Elite Computers, were dingy, slipshod operations with a very poor record of customer satisfaction.
I have been using personal computers of one sort or another since I was sixteen; I'm forty two now. Thats right, I started with the TRS80 Model I from RadioShack :)
Since the death of CP/M, I've been a diehard PC user, and not always a happy one. The absence of an assembler and linker in the OS was a harbinger of dark times for those of us who were assembler programmers when windows finally rolled out in a (questionably) useable form.
Late in '94 I found the Internet, or maybe it found me. Within a month I had wiped windows from my box and replaced it with linux (slackware on a 0.98 kernel if you're interested).
As of one year and eight days ago I became the owner of a refurb dual proc 1.25GHz G4.
I can tell you that I am in love with this machine, and I can tell you that while the design of the hardware certainly plays into it, cosmetics are not my first requirement; it's all because of OS/X. This OS is what linux wants to grow up to be. And the spit and polish represented by Aqua/Cocoa/Carbon are at the core of the benefits of OS/X.
As a result of my experiences with OS/X I have made the switch from linux to FreeBSD on my server; and I have to say, as I work FreeBSD on an old wintel box and OS/X on the Mac, the differences are quite apparent; FreeBSD ala Apple and FreeBSD ala carte are very different beasts, the Mac being far simpler and easier both to use and to administer.
The reason I've gone through all this preamble is to qualify my next statement: until about the time of the advent of Panther, which I consider to be first release of OS/X refined enough for general use, Apple simply had it mostly wrong. The insistence on a price point that alone made them a nich market product, the insistence on hardware and operating system software that were not only proprietary but closed, is so backward that were it not for all the substance of it, it would be not unlike the emporor's new clothes.
Sometime recently though Big Steve drank the right cup of electric coolaid. The iPod is a device of sheer genius. Not in its design, its implementation or its pricepoint; these features had all been clearly defined by the market place well in advance of Apple's offering. No, the real power of the iPod for Apple is as a marketing device, where it has introduced literally millions of PC users who would never have considered buying an Apple product to the company, just in time to push the Mac Mini under their noses. This has the potential to be a one-two punch for the WinTel world that should have them all shaking in their boots.
If I haven't made myself clear, I'm really impressed with Apple these days, their products are solid, their support is solid, and they seem to have finally gotten the company on track to become the major force in the market that it should have been all along.
Maybe it has something to do with Big Steve returning home to roost.
Anyway, given the success to date since the advent of OS/X, and the consistently right moves made since with the iPod, iTunes, and potentially the Mac Mini, its a no-brainer that the litigious in the world will spare no opportunity to haul them into court for whatever they can get for it.
All I can say is, go Apple, go Steve, keep up the good work, and don't leave us in the lurch this time.
Peace
ReallyTweakin
Death Dances Only With The Living
isn't it? not that it wasn't before.
I can't speak to other mac stores around the country, only to one in the western suburbs of Chicago that I used to work at. And I can't even speak about how it's been in the last couple years after the last close friend of mine left.
But the Apple stores don't fix broken macs (they ship them out) and we did. And we did substantial onsite work including network and crossplatform stuff that I'm fairly sure they didn't do. And we were a lot bigger than any of the local Apple stores. And I believe we were the top regional training center for Apple training. In short, we had a lot of local expertise in house that Apple only had at their national centers.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
I wish them well. As one who has followed Apple for decades and seen the desperation moves it has made in recent years, I say it's high time they were taken to task. The end does not justify the means, even if the end includes highly valued stock options.
Didnt we already go through this sillyness with the infinite lifetime support agreements?
these certainly are not the same thing... what makes them worthy of a suit ? I've had apple repair all my stuff that breaks.. I'm not quite sure what their problem is.
I find it extremely ironic that tellonapple.org is using a .Mac account to host it's videos...
e at er11.html -- http://tellonapple.org/quicktime6.php
http://homepage.mac.com/macadamservice/iMovieTh
And moreover, the video is absolutely ridiculous
Apple is trying to pass off old parts as new, starting warranties from the time they ship to the reseller rather then when the customer buys it, not reimbursing the reseller for parts under warranties, and trying to direct reseller customers to their own Apple stores.
Is there any evidence to support these claims?
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
I agree, it's nearly the same position VW was in just after they came out with the new Beatle. During the 80's and most of the 90's they'd have some very serious declined and had stopped their dealership design standards for a host of reasons. Well as the became a more high profile car maker again they now had all these dealerships that looked like they should be selling Yugos or something. Of course dealerships are extremely expensive properties but their working with them to improve and modernize. They have also reinstated design standards for new dealership, and set a number standards ALL dealerships must follow including standard modern VW signs, uniforms for the techs., ect.
Apple in many ways was very similar position, most of the resellers I've been to were in small strip stores and looked like a place you'd go to buy a $200.00 used computer. 70% of them were rude, pushie, uninterested, or just jerks. I'll bet Apple looked into trying to work with their resellers like VW is with their dealerships but realized that -
1) Most resellers didn't have the capital to improve their stores to the level Apple needed
2) Apple still would be at the mercy of resellers customer service policies
3) Resellers may carry more than one line and have the potential to steer customers to other computer options.
Plus VW has built in ways to control their customer service experience that I'm not sure Apple could implement and would probablly be so costly as to make them beyond impossible at Apple product price/profit points unless we all want a 20% increase of end price of Apple's product line.
I really don't believe apple had any choice but open stores of their own. As far as I'm concerned the resellers need to get with the program and realize where Apple is today. No one wants to buy a iMac in a place that looks like a Goodwill computer donation site ( which is what the local resellers reminds me of). Please remember Gateways stores and what a flop they were profit wise, Apple took an awe inspiring risk opening their own stores (ya its worked will but it could have bombed and lost millions/bllions?).
One last point and then I'll let this topic go - REMEMBER COMPUSA, BEST BUY, & CIRCUT CITY - these stores are nice open clean places with the kind of store fronts Apple needed/needs, you'd think they'd have been doing OK with Apple but as most of you should know they've been a total flop with everything but the iPod. It coming down to steering, poor associate knowledge of products, poor product placement, and the fact apple isn't the very profitable for them. Only one still sells apple's computer line in all of their stores, COMPUSA. I could write a small novel about what's wrong with COMPUSA handling of Apple products. I won't bore you with the whole thing but the main points would be -
1)Steering
2)Product Placement
3)Steerin
4)Staff Knowledge
5)Steering
6)Customer Service
7)Steering
8)Lack of Advertizing
9)Steering
10)Staff lazy lack of interest and vacant gaze.
I could write alot more about this and if you guys are interested just post but I don't want to bore you all if no one cares about the business end of why Apple had no choice but to open their own stores.
Please excuse my spelling, I don't know how to get a spell checker to work with this and I've misplaced the dictionary.
In regard to the prior suit by the Apple-authorized resellers:
If Apple is truly engaging in unlawful (or unfair) business practices, or broken a contract, such as underpricing their product sales to their stores, then the the resellers may have a claim.
But is that really the only problem?
There was previously an Apple-authorized reseller near my home. The store went out of business three or four years ago. Prior to that, I shopped there on occasion but generally found that there prices were much higher than what I would find online. Most of what I bought there was used components or inexpensive items that weren't worth the shipping costs (if bought online). Part of the reason I shopped there is that I philosophically believe it is a could idea to spend money with locally-owned retailers. In doing so, I expect that some prices might be higher, but they have to be reasonable.
A couple of days ago I stopped in an Apple-owned retail store. Standing at the entrance, the store reminded me of a museum, and I entered quietly, slightly in awe at all the well lit hardware (a.k.a art) on display. A dozen or so employees were working, all dressed in black. It was 10 or 15 minutes before one of them approached me. I must admit that I was not in a hurry. I'm definitely an Apple-geek, and I felt like I had came home to my people. Next time I'll wear a black shirt.
I was interested in buying a mini and a couple of unrelated accessories - none of which they had in-stock. After the employee checked to make sure that there was no returns that were available, he went off to do other things. He made no attempt to ask me if I was interested in anything else or to show me any possible options. While I was there I noticed little or no effort to sell anything, and the other non-employees seemed like they were mostly browsing.
The store is located in a very fancy, very expensive mall. The rent is likely well in excess of $10,000 a month. Factor in the wages of a dozen or so employees and other expenses, and that's a fair amount of sales each month, just to cover expenses.
However, if a significant purpose of the store is to provide a mundane-world presence for Apple, then the cost of the store can largely be marked up to advertising or customer service expense. And that's a bookkeeping line item that a locally-owned retailer could not absorb.
The playing field may not be level, but isn't that at least partly due to the different businesses models.
I'd like it to be in Apple's best interest to support resellers, and I think that they would have to in order to significantly expand their market share. But whether or not Apple caters to them, seems to me to be mainly a business decision. It's only a legal one if Apple is shown to be in violation of a contractual agreement with the Apple-authorized resellers.
1) Introduce new products available instantly on your own store to fanatic consumers who will buy anything and everything you make
2) screw your long-time resellers
3) ???
4) LAWSUIT
From my perspective, I haven't really felt any impact as a consumer. The "resellers" are losing the mark-up but the savings are helping the consumer base. I think class-action might not have much if it's only a few vendors complaining. If they can argue that Apple's practices hurt the consumer, then they'll have more teeth. But, otherwise, that's pretty much the way the business cookie crumbles.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
God knows I LOVE my Mac, but resellers complaining about Apple stealing their ideas is like a hooker crying about the color of bed sheets. When you've got Olaf the thunder stud dumping STD's across your face, you've got bigger problems to conted with.
Apple's resellers need to stop wasting time in the court room and start selling some fruit. Apple's got less than 5% market share, and I can't hardly wave at people with PC's.
Maybe the law firm got millions of dollars, but they pay their junior lawyers $80k per yer to work 80 hours per week. And they probably had a few lawyers work for 6 months on the case, plus the secretaries and researchers.
Is the $300 better than nothing? Is the millions of dollars that the housing developers had to pay a good deterrant not to do shoddy work again? What would you rather have? No legal system? No possibilty for disputes?
My other first post is car post.
Also, law firms need to subscribe to the legal research services like Lexis. That costs money. They also need to pay their rent. That costs money too. And as one of the other posters said, the lawyers are taking a gamble on a class action suit. They might lose the case and get nothing but still have to pay their rent, services, lawyers, secretaries, et cetera.
My other first post is car post.
No complaints from me.
Sent in my 3 year old ibook 600 for repairs under the 'logic board repair program' for the first time. God knows, my warranty expired 2 years ago. I understand this problem was an "epidemic" but still, a component that fails on a laptop after 3 years of being banged around in a backpack and taken everywhere?
Tech on the phone agreed my problem (LCD display had vertical lines and funkiness, while external monitor looked fine.. LCD worked fine the last time I used it, which was 3 days ago, and it hadn't been so much as physically touched, the screen just went bad sometime in the 2 days that it was hooked to the monitor but not using the LCD).
Got it back in 5 days, next day am shipping twice.
Repaired for free.
Wasn't the logic board, they just replaced the screen at no charge even though it hasn't been covered for 2 years.
Thanks, Apple!