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Apple Tries To Gag Owner of Exploding iPod
David Gerard writes "The Times in London reports that Apple attempted to silence a father and daughter with a gagging order after the child's iPod music player exploded and the family sought a refund from the company. Well, at least they're not Microsoft. Or something."
It's not a bug, it's a feature!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Customer service is a cost. But it also buys goodwill when done right.
It's sad that Apple has done this and marred their customer-centric aura. However, such settlement terms are really par for the course.
Well, at least they're not Microsoft. Or something.
It's as if a billion Fanboys all cried out at once.
The 11 year old wearing such heavy makeup (lipstick, mascara and other stuff I'm too manly to admit to knowing the names of) is far more worrying than the burnt out ipod she's holding
The Times has learnt that the company would offer the family a full refund only if they were willing to sign a settlement form. The proposed agreement left them open to legal action if they ever disclosed the terms of the settlement.
I don't see where it says they can't say the iPod exploded.
I do see where it says they can't disclose the terms of the settlement, which is absolutely normal and common as far as settlement language goes.
Was there something newsworthy here that I missed?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Why not publicly give the girl a refund and then reiterate the fact that this can happen with ANY Lithium Ion battery, and that the odds of it happening to you are about 1 in 11 million, and even less if you use a modicum of care. Instead they get to meet the Streisand effect, drawing huge amounts of attention to a COMPLETE non-issue, making themselves look like (Godwin alert) Nazis and making the minor tech failure seem like a huge catastrophic problem, surely hurting sales. It really blows my mind that a tech savvy company like Apple can still honestly think that it is possible to hide knowledge in this information age. iDiots...
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I've always thought Apple was just as greedy and immoral as Microsoft.
What has America got to do with this story? Several pointers as to why this is a UK story (and no, despite appearances to the contrary we're not part of the US yet):
1. Its a story from the Times - a major UK broadsheet newspaper.
2. He obtained the iPod at Argos which I believe is not present in the US.
3. He's from Liverpool - which, last time I looked, is in England in the context of this article.
4. Trading Standards Institute is the UK consumer protection board.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Really. Li-poly batteries in these applications have no housing except the housing of the device; they're a metallized plastic bag full of gelled chemistry goodness, basically. Crunch it the wrong way and you get an internal short and a runaway reaction, which produces a lot of gas - and the whole battery acts like one of those "popping bags" you can get at 7-11 and toystores.
The letter also stated that, in accepting the money, Mr Stanborough was to "agree that you will keep the terms and existence of this settlement agreement completely confidential", and that any breach of confidentiality "may result in Apple seeking injunctive relief, damages and legal costs against the defaulting persons or parties".
Gag?! Sensationalism ftw!
Where I come from we call that buying silence. Everyone tries for that stuff, if there wasn't Apple nobody would care.
The real story here is that we have an exploding iPod and pictures of the result.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
Moral: while it is cheaper, don't buy your iPod in Irak ...
Probably shouldn't buy an atlas or a globe there either.....
I don't think Apple can brush this one under the carpet. What if this were to have happend inside an airoplane at 30,000ft. No so much the explosion but the toxic, carcinogenic fumes would inevitably be curculated around the aircraft explosing 100+ passengers and those in direct contact with the ipod could suffer serious burns, eye damage, etc. To place a gag order on those effected as a messure to cover up the defect is pure negligence and would leave them open to possibly pay huge settlements for future incidents. Seems smarter to issue a warning / disclaimer than to leave yourself open. I doubt it would seriously effect sales, people would still buy them anyway.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Tell me again why Apple's not Evil ?
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Apple is known to be arrogant and have a 'screw they customer' policy in place for years. Now they are only extending that policy to refund a minuscule amount that wont even buy lunch to Steve jobs. Why on this earth will a company want the consumer to be silent for rest of the life for asking a refund of a defective piece ? Is there anything called consumer protection law in America ?
Apple does not build high quality hardware (by def, anyone with freq battery problems is not a high qual hardware company; can you imagine the outcry on /. if MS or Sony or anyone else pulled stunts like apple often does with hardware)
Apple does not build high quality software (come on guys - apple OS, for 99% of users 99% of the time is no better then MS, itunes ain't that great, etc etc)
Apple does do something really well
They figure out one thing a customer really wants and deliver it - and since it is the thing the customer really wants, the customer will put up with bad hardware and software
with the ipod, what people wanted is simplicty go to the store, give the guy some money, download the songs i want.
the ipod delivered that for the 90% of users who couldn't figure out bit torrent
when you understand all this, you understand apple
It is funny, Apple's previous marketing plan had also been to be the hip brand to the money hungry Microsoft. It seems Apple has become worse than Microsoft.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Second, and more importantly, it's pretty standard for a company to require non-disclosure when a settlement agreement is made. In fact, I'd wager that 99% of all settlement agreements made have a non-disclosure clause and the 1% that don't are made by people without a clue.
A settlement implies compensation, not a simple refund. They are legally obliged under consumer law in this case to give a full *no-strings* refund. If they had *also* offered compensation for the inconvience etc. *then* they would have been entitled to ask for non-disclosure in exchange.
Essentially they were trying to con the customer into signing an unnecessary non-disclosure in return for nothing at all, and hoping they were unfamiliar with consumer law.
This negates your entire argument, which smells badly of desparate fanboyism.
It's an appalling screw-up: when they explode, there isn't supposed to be any survivor, or evidence.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The people to call when this happens are Failure Analysis Associates, an engineering consultancy that analyzes engineering failures. They started with building structural failures, and they've branched out. They call themselves "The Exponent Group" now.
One of the things they do is battery failure investigation. These are the people your class action lawyer brings in to find out what really happened. Companies with a clue use this to fix their manufacturing processes. Whether or not Apple has a clue about this, or whether they just take whatever their China supplier gives them, remains to be determined in court.
Is it expected to explode violently when dropped?
No. There are tens of millions of iPods out there. Lots of people must drop them. If they were expected to explode when dropped, the streets would be littered with singed and blood-spattered white earbuds, and Apple would have had their asses sued off ages ago. However there is a possibility that anything with a lithium battery could explode violently if dropped, faulty or not.
If so are there warnings?
I'm sure that buried in amongst all the warnings about not playing music too loud, not crossing the road while listening to music, not inserting iPods in various bodily orifices, not eating iPods, not garrotting people with the headphone cord, not touching the live wires if the charger breaks, not hacking people to death with a machette (while listening to an iPod) there is something on the lines of "if iPod starts making a hissing noise and smoking, do not hold it up to your ear" - although the victim in this case seems to have worked that one out for himself.
That's kinda the problem with the zero-risk society.
If not, perhaps it was a defect?
Perhaps. Perhaps that was why Apple offered to give the guy a refund? The real question is, was it a systematic defect affecting all iPods - or is it just that Apple is a more tempting target for journalists and ambulance-chasers, and whenever some cheap no-brand kit goes kaboom it doesn't make the Times?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
So Apple has no clothes when it comes to its squeaky-clean fanboi image.
Wow, what a surprise!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."