Class Action Lawsuit Grows Over iPhone 6 Plus 'Touch Disease' (vice.com)
Nearly 10,000 people have joined a class action lawsuit against Apple over the screen-freezing "touch disease" afflicting many iPhone Six Plus phones. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes Motherboard:
Lawyers who filed a class action lawsuit against the company in California earlier this fall have signed on three additional law firms to support their case, and an additional class action lawsuit related to the issue has been filed against Apple in Utah... Apple will not perform logic board-level repairs for consumers, which require soldering and reseating of millimeter-size components. This means the only Apple-sanctioned "fix" for a touch diseased phone is to buy a new one... Apple has been replacing touch diseased iPhone 6 Pluses with $329 refurbished ones, some of which are showing symptoms of touch disease within days or weeks of being replaced.
Despite contacting Apple five separate times, the reporter has yet to receive any official response, although "I have gotten hundreds of emails from consumers who have had to buy new phones to replace their broken iPhone 6 Pluses."
Despite contacting Apple five separate times, the reporter has yet to receive any official response, although "I have gotten hundreds of emails from consumers who have had to buy new phones to replace their broken iPhone 6 Pluses."
Steve Jobs must be rolling over in his iGrave
Samsung has courage to issue massive recall. Apple has courage to remove headphone jack.
My wife and I both bought the 6+ when it came out.
I'm on my 9th replacement unit. She's on her 7th.
Every time we need to get our phones replaced, it takes about 1-2 days of messing around at the Apple store to make it happen. We've tried to get new phones (like, boxed units), but they won't do it. We always have to wait for a refurbished replacement. This is somewhat strange because I had a lemon MBP several years ago and after the third repair they just gave me a brand new machine. I know others who have had similar experiences with other Apple equipment- but not on the 6+. They simply flat out refuse to give us new phones.
Furthermore, the quality of the refurbished units is below average to say the least. Some of mine have had scratches/dings/dents on the chassis (I take good care of my equipment, when I had to give them my original 6+ it was literally in NIB condition, so I think it's fair for me to expect a replacement device in equivalent condition). Others have had marks across the LCD screen. One had an intermittent headphones connector (good thing that's no longer a problem on the iPhone 7), one had an intermittent lightning connector, and yet another had a touch ID sensor that wouldn't work 100% of the time. Every time I get a new device, there appears to be more things wrong with it and the quality of the device OOTB seems to be lower than the one before it.
It's pretty much a cluster fuck, and I'm wondering why we dropped over $1K/pop on a "premium" device only to be treated this way.
We're both at the point where we just want reliable working hardware. We no longer care what that is, our brand loyalty towards Apple has been eroded over the years and the iPhone 6+ issues are just the icing on the cake.
My current iPhone 6+ is already flaking out again (WiFi is intermittent, it keeps acting like airplane mode is enabled but it's not), I don't doubt it'll be long before I have to take it in again. Her iPhone is already showing signs of display corruption. We've both agreed that the next time we get them replaced, they're both going on Craigslist and we'll be switching to Android or some other hardware that we can at least depend on for 2-3 years of reliable service.
Neither of us care about slimmer phones. We'd both happily pay upwards of $2K for a device that lasts a good 4-5 years with a battery that lasts more than a day of hard use. It's sad that Apple doesn't seem interested in taking our money, but there's not much we can do about that except to vote with our wallets, which is precisely what we'll be doing from now on.
The Maine Implied Warranty is the little known law that protects Maine consumers from being sold seriously defective items. It can be an Unfair Trade Practice to refuse to honor the Maine Implied Warranty Law within four years of sale. The basic test for possible implied warranty violations is as follows: The item is seriously defective, The consumer did not damage the item, The item is still within its useful life and is not simply worn out.
No class action needed.