People all over the world mail their broken iPhones to microsoldering specialist Jessa Jones. Aided by powerful microscopes and precision soldering irons, experts like Jessa pluck tiny chips off logic boards, swap them for new ones, and resurrect devices over which Apple’s Genius Bar would say a eulogy.
Jessa can fix practically anything. But these days, she spends most of her time fixing just one thing. Because every single month, more and more iPhone 6 and (especially) 6 Plus devices show up at her shop, iPad Rehab, with the same problem: a gray, flickering bar at the top of the display and an unresponsive touchscreen.
Fascinating story. Remember, in the EU, you have a 2 year EU-wide warranty on your iPhone, no matter what Apple (or anyone else, for that matter) might tell you. If you are affected by this issue, Apple is legally obliged to either fix it, or replace your phone with a new one.
When a defect is demonstrated to be originally in a product, it gets unlimited warranty under EU law. Such a short lived component is a defect, indeed, and could probably be eligible to such a warranty.
It’s actually 12 months warranty from Apple (international) and 12 months warranty from the seller in Europe (that is local).
I guess there are still countries where only 12 months warranty only applies and you don’t even have access to Apple Care package.
Apple may say the warranty is 12 months, but in the EU there is such a thing as the natural life span of the product, which for phones would definitely be more than 2 years. So if one bought the phone from Apple, they have to repair, replace, or refund the product in question, regardless of warranty/extra insurance. (good luck getting it, though)
Already from the macbook days, Apple is rather famous for succeeding in outwaiting people on this.
Edited 2016-09-06 16:30 UTC
If the refund is tied to the market value of the device when the payment is finally realized, then any company will try to postpone the date as most as they can, what would be a shame, of course.
Is this what happens in Europe ?
First, half of europe is not part of the EU, secondly it is hard to speak for a decentralized cluster of 750-800 million people on what happens on their continent.
But up here in northern sweden at least, the warranty guarantees for anything is regulated by country law and not EU law so you would have to spend and extreme amount of cash to pass through the hierarchy of courts tingsrätt,länsrätt,hovrätt,supreme court,eu court of appeals, and then you finally reach a court that can overrule the country laws on warranty and it would have costed you millions of USD/EUR or tens of millions of SEK to reach that far up, which is even then extremely unlikely. The EU is a beurocratic mess and always has been. The EU parliament likes to create new laws all the time (several per day in fact) only to not enforce them until the parliamentarians themselves can steal more cash from either corporations or the taxpayers of the individual member countries.
Sweedish laws are basically the same, as the consumer protection laws are harmonised to a certain level.
You also don’t necessarily have to spend that money, as your consumer protection agency generally has enough power to get the cases on your side.
There is also a thing called res adjudicata – which means that once this case gets through to the topmost court in EU, it’s decision on the matter is applicable via the lowest court in your own country.
No, if the company are not living up to their part of the bargain – delivering a working product, the sale can go back, and they will have to pay the original amount in return for getting the broken item back.
Not in Denmark. The seller of an item, is obligated to try and fix the item in question, three times. On the forth time, you will recieve a brand new item of the same model. If that is not avaliable (discontinued), they are obligated to give you a replacement item that has the same price as the one you bought in the first place. Or give you something that do not cost less than you initially paid for the original item. And they can not give you something that are inferiour. In other words, you can potentially get something that are better. The reason being, that you have bought something that can do something or has a certain set of features, and they can not buy you off with something that are missing what you bought in the first place. This is for anything bought. Refrigurators, radios, smartphones, televisions, computers, freezers, door bells, and anything else you can think of. Ohhh…. And by the way. You have the first 14 days, under full money back guarantee, when seal/package has not been broken.
The EU warranty law mandates 2 year warranty by the seller and not by the manufacturer.
The manufacturer is off the hook except in cases of safety issues (e.g. exploding batteries).
The seller may or may not be able to get something back from Apple depending on their contracts, worst case will have to eat the loss.
Only you bought the iPhone at an Apple Store, then Apple will have warranty obligations.
Safety issues and design/manufacturing flaws. The latter has unlimited warranty (as long as the product was expected to last if it wasn’t flawed).
That`s why I don`t sell Apple and HP ProBook(and trying to avoid HP printers).
That’s how it works in Italy: the seller is responsible not the manufacturer.
That’s how should work everywhere. Distribution chain should also perform as guaranty chain. Always replacement policy within guaranty period. Repaired or Refurbished going back as Promotional, Lower guaranty items.
There is a philosophy behind this strategy. Forces Factories [and Planning teams] to review their messes.
Besides, Commercial Ecosystem [critically important to any Economy] retain their Customer loyalty.
Far in the future, this two way chain could also perform as a very efficient recycling ecosystem.
Too much stupidly idealist? No, that’s exactly how my car battery guaranty works. I’m offered full replacement -no questions asked- first year. Two next years the offer is a delayed repair or an immediate, gradually depreciative replacement bonus.
And They ALWAYS recycle my battery. I’m using recycled Pb, God knows how many times.
“Really, having a client to return to store (or worst, a far away service shop) before 2 software upgrades, is detrimental to Trademark Name.”
Again, not aiming the heat to Samsung only.
http://www.osnews.com/thread?633827
“…We’ve already achieved almost 90 percent of the maximum battery life theoretically possible from the lithium-ion battery, according to Lynden Archer, a materials scientist at Cornell University, so manufacturers are pushing the limits more and more to eke out only a little bit more energy. “There’s been a bit of an arms race where every manufacturer of a smartphone wants to get the highest battery life,†he says. “This trend in the field is producing more and more of a tendency for overcharging so all these models of failure are becoming more commonplace.—
http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/8/12841342/why-do-phone-batteries-ex…
The Apple engineers must be losing their abilities if the phones can still be repaired instead of being replaced[/sarc]
I suggest they coat the entire logic board in a thick layer of epoxy resin to prevent any repairs.
unclefester,
Haha, +1 from me for this humorous twist on the dark sides of engineering
Don’t laugh. Apple have a deliberate plan to make their devices extremely difficult to repair. I suspect they will eventually make repairs totally impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
unclefester,
I was laughing at the way you framed it. Looking back over the years you can see many examples of planned obsolescence at Apple (and elsewhere), sadly it’s a real thing engineers do to increase profits and it creates an enormous amount of e-waste.
We probably need regulation to internalize the costs of cleaning up the environmental messes caused by this waste.
Why bother? The big companies will just buy their way out of these supposed regulations and it’ll get added to our taxes instead. When will you come to grips with the fact that the system is fundamentally broken? No amount of laws or regulations you get in there will do the least bit of good where they are supposed to, and their side effects are much worse than the problem they were supposed to fix.
darknexus,
And this reasoning is exactly why every aspect of the law needs to be so precisely defined. If you want to claim that laws are needed to define what’s acceptable, then you don’t get to turn around and say we shouldn’t make laws defining what’s acceptable… I hope you see the conflict here.
Are you crazy? Adding extra resin costs money. It would cut into their profits.
From now on [OUR devices]â„¢ are more resistant to ‘bending’ and ‘tampering’. Worth the cost.
With this form of ‘priesthood’ merchandising. And they doesn’t listen to Us.
Will make my best effort to stay at more foundational issues.