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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."
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.
Given that the article mentions : ... and TellOnApple is a smear campaign by those self-same ex-resellers you're probably dead on the money ...
The lawyers are also already representing several aggrieved current and former Apple-authorized resellers who have sued the company in separate actions.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
I'm one of the people who had one of those bad iBooks.
Not only did they repair it for me, but when there were problems with the repair which caused the iBook to go back and forth between here and Cupertino one time too many, they decided (without me even asking) that enough was enough, and simply exchanged it for the G4 iBook which I'm typing this on right now.
Best. Warranty. Service. Ever.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.