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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."
To be fair, consumer laws in the US are pretty poor and there's very little government intervention even when US companies deliberately and systematically break the law.
But this was not in the US, it was in Italy and like much of the the rest of the world, there are laws in Italy to protect consumers from dodgy goods.
US: society equals corporations and the laws reflect that
EU: society equals citizens and the laws reflect that.
elsewhere? Depends on how badly the government has been screwed by corporations (IMF, World Bank, etc...) already.
I'm not speaking as to the quality of the plan, obviously some are better than others; I'm just saying from a business standpoint they make a lot of money. This is why Best Buy, Apple, pretty much any major electronics retailer are so aggressive pushing them whenever you buy something that is even covered by one. You can't buy cables at Best Buy without someone trying to sell you a $3 replacement plan. Hell, even Home Depot pushes replacement plans on stuff now, doesn't matter what it is, doesn't matter who even makes it...
The "shady" part comes in when the business pushes plans to cover things that are already covered by law, not to mention other considerations (I know many credit cards have certain consumer protections if you use them to purchase a product, for instance). Curious as to how this will play out in Italy, but here in the States there is nothing illegal about taking advantage of a person's ignorance to their own rights as consumers. Ethically questionable, definitely, but not illegal. It's not their job to educate you as to what your rights are.
Personally, when I worked for a company that dealt with these things, I was always honest and open about the benefits to the customer, and if there wasn't one (customer taking product out of the country where it's not covered anyway, for instance) I wouldn't try to push it on them...which is probably why I didn't last long in that particular job nor had particularly impressive commissions. Nothing against those who subscribe to "the hard sell", but I just couldn't bring myself to capitalize on customer ignorance like that.
Italy can have a law that says "everything made by anyone must have a lifetime warranty" or they can have nice toys like Apple ipods. Italy can't have both -- Apple (and everyone else) would simply not sell there.
Some Western European countries do have reclamation laws similar to "lifetime warranty", where if a product fails within a period shorter than what should be expected for the type of product, without it being the fault of the user, the seller is at fault and has to provide repairs or replacements.
Even if the warranty is two years, if a fence or roof fails after ten years, the buyer can get it fixed or replaced, because a fence or roof is reasonably supposed to last longer than ten years. Similar for other products - it may be reasonable to expect a TV to last for at least five years, so when it breaks after four, the buyer may have reclamation rights, even if the warranty has expired.
While the warranty covers production defects, the reclamation rights cover items that may not have any defects, but still fail due to a bad design that the customer could have no reasonable way of knowing existed.
That doesn't stop companies from selling products in these countries, but it does mean that they charge more, to cover extra parts inventories and/or replacements.
I had a five year old washing machine repaired at no cost to me, because it had rusted. As a washer could be expected to last for more than five years and quite often be wet on the inside, this was not in any way the buyer's (my) fault.