

Apple gives in, two year warranty for Europe - danmaz74
https://plus.google.com/118292867302583509179/posts/fSep9V4n7aP

======
jujjine
I worked for a German retailer for a while and we had a lot of problems with
customers not understanding the difference between the warranty the
manufacturer gives and the "warranty" required by European law.

The first difference is who is liable. In the first case it is the
manufacturer, in the second case the seller of the product.

The second distinction is to when it applies. In the first case Apple will
repair anything that breaks during coverage, unless the damage is caused by
carelessness. In the second case the "warranty" only applies to what is alredy
broken when the seller gives you the device. Examples where this warranty does
not hold, is when your hard drive breaks after 8 month or some connections
ports stop working after 14 months although they once worked.

In summary the European warranty reduces to a protection for the customer,
that the seller doesn't deliver a broken product. So in principle a
manufacturer doesn't need to give any warranty at all, but the sellers would
not be comfortable with that as in the first 6 months, they have to prove to
the customer that the product was working at delivery, which is arguably
impossible.

The only case where the European law results in additional coverage for the
customer compared to the year apple gives, is when a defect was present at
delivery and the customer only noticed it after one year and is able to prove
that the defect was there at the beginning. I would like to see someone trying
to prove that there was a manufacturing defect causing a connection port to
disconnect from the motherboard after 14 month (or did you yank on that cord
to much?...).

~~~
dchest
This is either a badly written law or a very seller-friendly interpretation of
it. Surely, if a hard drives breaks after 14 months of use, it is either the
consumer's fault or a manufacturing defect.

The fact the liability is on seller shouldn't change the interpretation of
"breakage". At least in the Russian consumer protection law, you can go to the
seller instead of the manufacturer if your computer breaks, and it's up to the
seller what it does with it -- if you don't get it repaired in 45 days, the
seller must pay you the full price or send a replacement.

 _I would like to see someone trying to prove that there was a manufacturing
defect causing a connection port to disconnect from the motherboard after 14
month_

And that's why in some countries the burden of such proof is on the seller.

~~~
jujjine
Well I don't think the problem is about wether it's seller or customer
friendly but how the cost is distributed between the customers. If the
warranty is high, the additional support costs will added to the product
price, such that the support penalty is effectively shared between the
customers. On the other side, if the warranty period is short, the product
price will be lower, but a small number of customers must pay a lot to repair
their devices out of warranty. Then one needs to take into consideration that
there are many ways to break a device by being "sloppy" but not fall outside
warranty constrains. I try to be careful with the devices I own and in the
first case I would have to pay for the carelessness of other people and I
don't like that. On the other side high repair cost can be a large burden to
single individuals, which is when it is reasonable to share risks in the
community (see, e.g., medical costs).

This is why I guess the European law is basically about getting a working
device in the first place and not about how repair costs are being
distributed, which is non-obvious to decide.

------
ralfd
It doesn't change much, because two year warranty was the law in Europe
anyway.

~~~
Schlaefer
I don't see what changed at all. It still says 1 year for Apple's products
(which Apple gave before) and 2 years for products sold by Apple (which is the
law of land as it was yesterday).

~~~
kmfrk
It's part a matter of semantics and part Apple who are dodging the law:

Where I live, what the EU law provides is not called a "warranty"; we use
another word. Here, warranties are optional and _for the manufacturer_ ; if
you build sturdy products, you can have a life-time warranty programme, if you
want to. The warranty applies to _the manufacturer_.

What the EU provides is - in English - a "warranty" with a fixed period of,
say, two years that applies to _the seller_ of the product, not the
manufacturer.

As sellers, Apple have probably not wanted to comply with the two-year seller
warranty, but the other part of the problem is that they have _mislead_
consumers to believe that they were not covered by this protection for the
full two years. And even if they are not the seller, the consumers purchasing
Apple products would still be covered by the European warranty, albeit through
the seller of the product, leaving little if any reason to get AppleCare.

Take [this link](<http://www.apple.com/support/products/ipad.html>) for the
iPad:

    
    
        Every iPad comes with one year of hardware repair 
        coverage through its limited warranty and up to 90 days 
        of complimentary support. AppleCare+ for iPad extends 
        your coverage to two years from the original purchase 
        date of your iPad and adds up to two incidents of 
        accidental damage coverage, each subject to a $49 
        service fee.
    

This information is misleading according to EU consumer law. Apple has
continually been sued in countries such as
[Italy](<http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16339651>) for misleading
customers, and I imagine that they've seen that their prospects of winning an
appeal case are slim.

In other words, what is new is probably that Apple have found out that they
can no longer dodge European consumer laws without a litany of suits and bad
PR, so now they're resorting to this statement.

~~~
Retric
Applecare includes replacements for damaged devices. Accidentally drop your
iPhone in some water and you don't have to spend 600$ replacing it. So, sure
if your device is defective and the battery melts down in 13 months your
covered, but I destroy way more than one cellphone every 12 years so it's well
worth the 100$ IMO.

~~~
konstruktor
They are not selling Applecare plus in my EU home country yet, and it's not
available for laptops anyway. Regular Applecare does not cover accidental
damage.

------
truxs
I think the title is quite misleading, apple did not "gives in" they just
force to apply the laws

------
tomflack
In Australia we have an "expected life" provision in consumer law, where more
expensive products have a higher expectation they'll keep working - a $2000
fridge should last longer than a $200 fridge for instance.

I've never seen it actually applied to Apple products, but a "reasonable
person" as defined by the law would surely expect a $1,799.00AUD Macbook air
to last longer than the 12 month warranty covers.

Does anyone know of such cases?

------
yeureka
This is interesting. I previously though of buying through John Lewis because
they offer a 2 year warranty on computing products. I wonder if this will harm
them.

------
hackermom
This isn't an extension of the one-year warranty. It's a clarification of the
consumer complaint period and an acknowledgement of it. While EU mandates a
minimum of 2 years, in some countries, this time period can be longer, like in
Sweden where it's 3 years. However, there is a big difference between warranty
and a consumer complaint case: Apple's warranty covers things that break
_after_ the customer has received the product - essentially a guarantee that
the customer will be able to enjoy 12 months of fault-free goods - while a
consumer complaint case covers defects and flaws (including false or erroneous
marketing) that were present in the product _before_ the customer received it.
Examples of this can be a manufacturer claiming that an LCD screen is a 24-bit
truecolor display while it is in fact an 18-bit dithering display, or claiming
a certain resolution for a digital camera higher than the camera's sensor can
actually provide.

If something in the product that was working ok and as advertised for 1 year
suddenly breaks, you're not covered by Apple's warranty, and you're not
covered by the consumer protection laws of the EU. If you within the
established consumer complaint time period find that something about the
product isn't as it should or isn't as advertised, you have a legal right to a
full refund providing that you can prove that the problem in question
accompanied the product when you received it.

The bottom line: you still just have 1 year of _warranty_ , but now Apple also
lets you know that you have another type of consumer right that extends beyond
the warranty period.

~~~
morsch
At least here in Germany, in many ways, the two-years "consumer complaint
time" works out as an implied warranty. When I'm not discussing the difference
between Apple's manufacturer warranty ( _Garantie_ in German) and the legally
required one ( _Gewährleistung_ ), I'd simply translate it as warranty. If
anything, the protection offered by the _Gewährleistung_ extend beyond the
ones offered my many manufacturer warranties.

If any piece of electronics dies within two years that's not _expected_ the
die from mere use (e.g. laptop batteries), I immediately return it to the shop
I bought it from (not the manufacturer) and I can typically expect some sort
of remedy; repair, replacement or a refund. I'm not sure how much of it
directly derives from the EU regulations, I sort of expected it to be very
similar in other EU countries but I might be wrong.

Incidentally, we also get fourteen days to return anything bought online for a
full refund, no questions asked, including shipping costs for for stuff >40
EUR. Naturally it ends up being a zero-sum game, the shops have to recoup
those costs some way.

