As Rachel Clun writes in the June 19, 2018 Sydney Morning Herald, Apple US has been find for making false or misleading representations to Australian consumers about their consumer rights. Note that $9 million Australian is equal to $6.6 million USD.
‘Apple has been fined $9 million by the Federal Court for telling some Australian iPad and iPhone owners they could not have devices fixed as they had been previously repaired by a third party. The court action was started by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) after it received complaints about ‘error 53’, which disabled some Apple devices after an operating system update was downloaded. “[The customers said] they were being refused a remedy of any kind by Apple on the basis that their device had had unauthorised repairs, and those repairs could be as minor as just having a cracked screen replaced on an iPhone or iPad, which all of us need to do from time to time,” ACCC Commissioner Sarah Court said. “So these consumers were being told, ‘because you’ve had this third party repair, you are not entitled to any remedy’.” Ms Court said that is not the case under Australian Consumer Law. ” Customers and consumers are free to have screens and other repairs done on their devices by third-party repairers, so long as that repair doesn’t damage the underlying system of the phone,” she said.’
ACCC has found that 5000 consumers may have been affected by the company’s false or misleading statements.
This outcome is surely encouraging for those who advocate for the consumer ‘Right to Repair’ here in the US. To learn more about the ‘right to repair,’ see https://illini-gadget-garage.istc.illinois.edu/proposed-right-to-repair-legislation-in-illinois/ and https://repair.org/association/.
