A weeks ago, Apple reached an agreement in the United States to settle a lawsuit against the company for implementing obsolescence measures in iPhones when the battery was showing signs of exhaustion, a lawsuit that has cost it, for now, 500 million. Now it is Europe's turn.
A European Union consumer association, Euroconsumer, has filed two class action lawsuits in Spain and Belgium for "unfair and deceptive business practices", due to performance management that it introduced in iOS 10.2.1 without informing customers until she is forced to.
Euroconsumers, which describes itself as the world's leading organization of consumer groups, claim that the measures introduced by Apple in iOS 10.2.1 to slow down the operation of the iPhone when the battery needs to be replaced, amounts to a "Planned obsolescence".
According to Euroconsumers in the Press release that you have sent to the media:
The lawsuits cover the owners of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S and 6S Plus and allege that Apple is involved in unfair and deceptive business practices. The lawsuits request compensation of at least 60 euros on average for each affected consumer in Belgium and Spain.
This update was released in early 2017 with iOS 10.2.1, but not included in the update notes this new functionality. It was not until the end of 2017, when it was found that the performance of the iPhone with a bad battery, was much lower with a new battery.
When it was made public, Apple apologized for the lack of communication and created a battery replacement program for 29 euros / dollars based on the iPhone 6. Euroconsumers says that in a few days it will present two similar lawsuits to Italy and Portugal, with which he wants to get a total of 180 million euros in compensation.
And in the case of compensating the user, how to justify that I changed my iPhone 6 for it, its components still working well 🙁 I suppose that we will get little, that we were the ones who suffered it.