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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."
Apple and the Italian government deserve each other.
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...
Where was this concerned Italian government when MTV sent over the Jersey Shore cast?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
That is corporate ethics at it's absolute worst. You can be sure that it's likely Apple in Italy knew of the situation and was milking it if they got a fine like that... :(
I wonder if the fine even approaches the profits they made abusing the laws like that.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
F*uck Apple.
Sent from my Macbook Pro
Apple's profits from selling the additional warranties in the entire country of Italy is almost certainly more than the fine, so it was a good business decision for them to flout local law if this is all they're going to face.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
They always try and get me to spend money on a 1 year warranty for tools, laptop, etc... I read the package to them and ask "The manufacturer has me covered for 2 years, what does your warranty get me that I don't have." Answer: "We handle all the problems with calling them..". Neat.
When a company does this to a product, force them to provide a lifetime warranty on that product. They will be much more careful.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Technical Support" from Apple is like going to church. You get told things like "because that's the way it is" and when you press, you never get the "why" part of it. I learned long ago about the compatibility between Apple and business -- there is none by the standards I have come to expect in the PC world. There is no "next business day, on site, accidental damage" support from Apple. When I learned that, I could never again take them seriously where business was concerned.
An AppleCare plan offers much more protection than just one more year warranty.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The abstract is at least as misleading as Apple's warranty terms, it seems. The mandated two year warranty has nothing to do with a manufacturer's warranty. The two year mandated warranty
a) covers only faults that where present at the time of the sale.
b) has to be given by the seller of the product, independent from any manufacturer (how the seller gets back to the manufacturer for cover is up to them).
Only if Apple is the seller of the items (e.g. through the Apple Stores), it has to adhere to the rules. And then the terms of business or the advertising for the extended warranty must not be misleading about the coverage the buyer is entitled to anyway.
Apple is being fined because Italy feels that Apple doesn't make it explicitly clear to Italians that Apple abides with Italian consumer codes that in Italy, Apple warranties last 2 years instead of their standard 1 year. Italy feels that some consumers may have purchased AppleCare when they didn't need to purchase it. AppleCare increases the coverage terms and time period. On the English version it seems clear but since I don't read Italianvery well, I don't know if it is clear on the Italian version. Also I don't know if Apple has recently changed their pages.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
DIRECTIVE 1999/44/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL
of 25 May 1999
on certain aspects of the sale of consumer goods and associated guarantees
THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, and in particular Article 95 thereof,
Having regard to the proposal from the Commission(1),
Having regard to the opinion of the Economic and Social Committee(2),
Acting in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 251 of the Treaty in the light of the joint text approved by the Conciliation Committee on 18 May 1999(3),
(1) Whereas Article 153(1) and (3) of the Treaty provides that the Community should contribute to the achievement of a high level of consumer protection by the measures it adopts pursuant to Article 95 thereof;
(2) Whereas the internal market comprises an area without internal frontiers in which the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital is guaranteed; whereas free movement of goods concerns not only transactions by persons acting in the course of a business but also transactions by private individuals; whereas it implies that consumers resident in one Member State should be free to purchase goods in the territory of another Member State on the basis of a uniform minimum set of fair rules governing the sale of consumer goods;
(3) Whereas the laws of the Member States concerning the sale of consumer goods are somewhat disparate, with the result that national consumer goods markets differ from one another and that competition between sellers may be distorted;
(4) Whereas consumers who are keen to benefit from the large market by purchasing goods in Member States other than their State of residence play a fundamental role in the completion of the internal market; whereas the artificial reconstruction of frontiers and the compartmentalisation of markets should be prevented; whereas the opportunities available to consumers have been greatly broadened by new communication technologies which allow ready access to distribution systems in other Member States or in third countries; whereas, in the absence of minimum harmonisation of the rules governing the sale of consumer goods, the development of the sale of goods through the medium of new distance communication technologies risks being impeded;
(5) Whereas the creation of a common set of minimum rules of consumer law, valid no matter where goods are purchased within the Community, will strengthen consumer confidence and enable consumers to make the most of the internal market;
(6) Whereas the main difficulties encountered by consumers and the main source of disputes with sellers concern the non-conformity of goods with the contract; whereas it is therefore appropriate to approximate national legislation governing the sale of consumer goods in this respect, without however impinging on provisions and principles of national law relating to contractual and non-contractual liability;
(7) Whereas the goods must, above all, conform with the contractual specifications; whereas the principle of conformity with the contract may be considered as common to the different national legal traditions; whereas in certain national legal traditions it may not be possible to rely solely on this principle to ensure a minimum level of protection for the consumer; whereas under such legal traditions, in particular, additional national provisions may be useful to ensure that the consumer is protected in cases where the parties have agreed no specific contractual terms or where the parties have concluded contractual terms or agreements which directly or indirectly waive or restrict the rights of the consumer and which, to the extent that these rights result from this Directive, are not binding on the consumer;
(8) Whereas, in order to facilitate the application of the principle of conformity with the contract, it is useful to introduce a rebuttable presumption of conformity with the contract c
Antitrust Authority: We will fine them... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
Apple Customer: Don't you think we should ask for *more* than a million dollars? A million dollars isn't exactly a lot of money these days. Apple alone made over 25 billion dollars last year!
Antitrust Authority: Really? That's a lot of money.
[pause]
Antitrust Authority: Okay then, we will fine them... One... Point Two... MILLION DOLLARS!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Okay, the only possible explanation is you are a troll.
Not usually, but I needed to see if it's even possible to dent my excellent karma. I'd like a fresh start in 2012.
With the exception of the United Kingdom and possibly Germany, Europe is in deep trouble. And that is by using many different metrics.
I happen to see it with different eyes. I see the UK as being in trouble next (after Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy) since they are the only country in the EU that plays on both sides.
Consider borrowing costs. The rate the United States pays to borrow just recently (yesterday) inched above 2% for the first time in a month. Romania (one of the better-off EU members) borrows money at 6% interest.
Romania either had visionaries for it's executive (and honestly, I can't see the sailor and his crew as visionaries), or it just made the right bet in 2009 by accident. That being said, it used it's loans mostly to increase the reserves of the central bank in order to increase confidence, as opposed to using them to stimulate the governmental spending in infrastructure projects or others. How they got that part mostly right is beyond me, but I guess good things happen to undeserving politicians.
As an aside, the current rate of return on investments is compelling me to make some decisions that are very good for the local economy: I am paying to do some work on my home. The market is still volatile, there is no action on the treasuries, and a jumbo certificate of deposit only pays 1%. Literally the best thing I can do with my money is pay a professional to perform some efficiency-related home improvements to improve the value of my home.
Investing in real estate is always a smart thing to do after the bubble bursts. It pays off to invest in construction when builders don't have enough projects to feed their employees. An apartment in Central Park in Bucharest that was €230.000 now goes for half that and with a second parking place. The old blocs of flats in Victoriei Square are moving from targeting small business offices to residential and there are a lot of examples like that.
The Euro is certainly at a crossroads, but I am not as enthusiastic as you are about it. Let me be clear that I am not going to dance in the street if it collapses: The Euro is so big that its collapse will be felt worldwide.
I wouldn't be so dramatic. Except for the Brits, all the other EU countries would loose too much if the Euro went bust. They are taking their time coming up with the fixes for two reasons:
1) not to put too much pressure on the population (given the social impact in Greece as an example).
2) This uncharted territory for the EU and especially uncharted territory for a currency that is not (yet) tied together by a fiscal and executive union. They want to take it slow to make sure that there are no unintended consequences.
If the Euro does however break up, make sure that all your banknotes have an X in the serial number. The Bundesbank will only exchange the ones with an X to Deutsche Mark.
My point about the EU not being in as much danger as the US comes from comparing the industry. Sure, they have Apple and Google, but it's hard to compare the other aspects of the industry:
a) Airbus kicks Boeing arse bigtime (1378 orders vs 778 orders)
b) The car industry can't even be compared (heck the small italian Fiat actually is buying Chrysler)
c) EU infrastructure is doing a lot better. Better and newer highways in most of the EU (except for the newly joined). The US hasn't touched it's highway infrastructure from the 50s. The EU has a better, much faster, ever-growing train infrastructure (you just can't compare the two). And fortunately, in the EU we still have public transport.
d) Furthermore, the value of the debt is not even the real problem. The problem is the prospects of the debt. The US debt is
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever ones.