Apple Sued By Belgian Consumer Association For Not Applying EU Warranty Laws

An anonymous reader writes "Following the recent Italian case, Apple is now being sued by the Belgian consumer association 'Test-Achats' (french/dutch website) for not applying the EU consumer protection laws by only giving a one-year warranty on its products. At the same time, Apple is not only refusing to give the mandatory two-year warranty but is also selling the additional year of warranty with its Applecare products. If the consumer association wins its case, Apple could be forced to refund Applecare contracts to its Belgian customers while providing the additional year of warranty for free."

Comments

Summary is bullshit flamebait

[Udo Schmitz]

You may be surprised that a summary on /. is less than correct ... OK I'll leave the snark out.

Repeat after me: *There is NO “mandatory 2 years warranty” in the European Union*

What there is, is a “Maengelhaftung”, which is usually translated to “Liability for defects”. This is to be granted by the *seller* of a consumer good to a consumer. It is valid for 2 years from the date of purchase. Any defect showing in the first 6 months is assumed to be a manufacturing error, burden of proof of the opposite is with the seller, for the remaining 18 months the customer has to proof that the defect was already present at time of purchase.

As Apple sells its products in its own stores in europe (online included) it adheres to EU law, if Apple products are sold through a third party, the consumer has to deal with that third party.

Apple grants a voluntary 1 year warranty. This actually strengthens the purchasers position, because the above mentioned “burden of proof” now lies with Apple for the first *12* months. No consumer advocacy group in Europe has a problem with this.

But Apple additionally sells “Apple Care” contracts, which extend Apples warranty to three years. If you read closely this far, you'll notice that this is a much better protection for the consumer than the mandatory “Liability for defects” the EU imposes and absolutely doesn't touch this EU Directive. Regardless of any voluntary or sold warranty the EU Directive still stands.

Now, what the european consumer advocacy groups say is that Apple misleads the already (through the “Liability for defects” EU Directive) fine protected consumer into believing they wouldn't be protected after 12 months without buying Apple Care. If people are very stupid, and often they are, this could very well be the case.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31999L0044:EN:HTML

European Warranty

[ovande]

Some explanation about the 2 year warranty in Europe. This was a 1999 EC directive ( (Directive 1999/44/EC) . From 2005 it became law in a lot of European countries. Initially this directive was to curb cheap imports from Asia. Manufacturers - like Apple and others - were not targets. In fact , retailers are solely responsible for all warranty repairs. Now comes the tricky bit: in lot's of cases retailers were not covered for the second year warranty by their suppliers. That why they forced the unnecessary Applecare upon their clients. But now : If you buy an Apple product online they become a retailer , so they had to comply with the EC directive. Which they did not. The headline is somewhat misleading. It's not only Belgium. There are 10 other countries involved.

Re:So wait . . .

[AmiMoJo]

Generally speaking in most EU countries the law is restorative, i.e. it aims to put things back as they would otherwise have been. Hence there is usually not a punitive fine unless the regulator imposes, which I'd say is a distinct possibility in this case.

Also we usually don't have to apply for this type of refund, it will be automatic.