Apple Fined By Italy For Misleading Customers About Warranty Terms

beaverdownunder writes "An Italian watchdog has fined Apple 900,000 euros ($1.2m, £750,000) for failing to inform Italian shoppers of their legal right to two years of technical support, recognizing instead only a one-year standard warranty. This had led people to pay extra for Apple's own support service, AppleCare, which overlapped with the government-mandated guarantee."

Comments

Not surprised...

[AngryDeuce]

Service plans are probably the most profitable thing anybody sells. Just like rebates, odds are very very high that the person buying said plan won't ever use it, so it's pretty much free money a lot of the time...

Re:Not surprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you compare Apple Care with the Dell Next-Business-Day-Support, Apple Care is next to useless, at least in my experience. I've been asked to reinstall the OS even ofr trivial/obvious things (e.g. the soundcard being noisy even when muted, even during boot) - Dell ships a diagnostics tool inside the Bios and/or on CD, which you can go through even with a "technician" on the phone. Even if you managed to convince Apple that your Macbookpro is broken, you'll have to walk/drive it to a shop, and they'll take at least 14 days to fix it, if they manage fix it at all. With Dell, you can arrange for a technician to visit you the next day, or just have them send you the spare part in advance for easy to install things such as harddisks. This complete inability to support their own productts is really the traw that broke the camels back why I won't ever by another Apple product again.

Re:Not surprised...

[nahdude812]

Apple Care is better though

No, it's really not.

They have stores all over the world

Yeah, just like most big brand stores, but this is not very relevant because the store you bought an item at is presumably local to you, so who cares if they also have a location in East Jabyyp? Unless you regularly travel a lot, the chances of this being useful is pretty low.

if you are supported, they an tell you that

There's the problem. It's not like Apple Care is one of those cell phone insurance plans where it covers anything that can go wrong. Plenty of things can go wrong that they will be happy to tell you is not covered - even stuff that is not a wear-and-tear fault. Try to get a reasonably expensive part replaced, such as a video card, and they'll tell you how they found some dust in your chassis, so it overheated and it's your fault for not keeping it clean (nevermind that you can't open the chassis on most modern macs without voiding the warranty anyway). At least that's what they told me for my wife's 3 month old iMac.

Likewise my brother's 1 year old Macbook Pro had a recognized fault with its video card. It would sometimes just refuse to produce any video, sometimes to the built-in LCD, sometimes to the video out port, sometimes to both. Plenty of people with the same generation MBP had the same problem. He took it in to get it repaired, and was initially told it was covered since it was a known problem. When he went to pick it up a week later, they wanted $800 in parts in labor - even though he had been told it was going to be a covered repair. Their reason? The chassis had a scratch on it - seriously. They claimed this scratch (in an aluminum chassis) had caused the damage. They went ahead and made the repair without consulting him, and now refused to return his laptop until he coughed up the cash.

Also, if it's not this year's model, they're not going to have replacement parts on hand, and it's going to be 1-2 weeks before you can get that replacement part.

But it seems like a good idea for someone who isn't tech savvy and doesn't want to bother their friends for help

That's probably true. If you don't know how to use your computer, the Geniuses can tell you how to double click. Make sure to call ahead for an appointment, they're booked until next week, but they'll be happy to let you sit in their gallery store for 45 minutes after your appointment time while you have nothing else to do but decide if maybe buying a new one is a better path than being without a computer for two weeks while your old one is getting fixed on your own dime despite having an extended warranty.

Re:Apple got off lightly...

[TheRaven64]

It's pretty common with corporations - especially US corporations - in the EU. There are quite strong consumer protection laws that mean that a lot of 'extended warranties' are just promises to honour the terms required by law. They just offer the same service that they offer in the USA, where there are much weaker minimum standards.

Re:Perfect Match

[Anonymous Coward]

Tho years of guarantee on consumer goods is not just an Italian law, it is a European Union directive.

Re:Apple got off lightly...

[mwvdlee]

In the EU, companies still aren't people, so it's not bullying.

Re:AppleCare

[TheCarp]

Sure but thats not the point. If they had informed their customers of the 2 year warranty that they were entitled to by law, that would have informed their decision as to whether to go for the extra AppleCare or not. The thing is, they thought the choice was between AppleCare and a 1 year warranty.... but it wasn't. They were misinformed, by the same party who was profiting from decision, and thus had motive to mislead them.

Re:Perfect Match

[Nuskrad]

Actually, the UK implements this directive through the Sales of Goods Act, which gives a consumer redress against the retailer for up to 6 years if goods do not conform with the sales contract, or last a 'reasonable' length of time.