“Woman buys an iPhone 4. Fifteen months later the power button stops working. She calls AT&T,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune. “They send her to Apple. She works her way up and down the customer service chain and gets tough love at every turn: Her warranty expired three months ago. She has two choices. Pay for repair ($149.99 plus shipping) or buy new phone.”
P.E.D. reports, “Adopting the consensus view that the iPhone 4’s power button problem is a known manufacturing defect, and buying into the tin-foil-hat theory that it’s carefully planned obsolescence — a part designed to go bad right after the 1-year warranty expires — she files a class action suit under RICO (the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) for $5 million plus.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
All she has to do is buy with visa. She gets an additional years warranty.
Most credit cards do that. The woman is a fool seeking a payday.
I doubt she is seeking a pay day even though she is suing for an amount that is probably just an amount fetched out of the air to get this some eyes and going. She probably had some bad experience with Apple.
Dude, never thought of that. (See post below). Gonna investigate and see if the Visa lawyers found a way to write my issue out of any extended-warranty promise. If I recover the $200 I will owe you a monster bottle of Scotch.
“If I recover the $200 I will owe you a monster bottle of Scotch.”
For $200 it wouldn’t be a very good Scotch.
You can get some very good Scotch for $40+. 🙂
You can get tolerable Scotch for $40 (mass market stuff).
For $200 you start to get into the very good range.
No such thing as a “good scotch”. If you want quality then get a single malt whiskey. Scotch is a blend of various whiskeys usually low quality.
Good thing that “monster” is not synonymous with “good,” nicht wahr?
Deal with it, lady. Everything eventually breaks. My 4S developed odd behavior during its warranty period and finally ceased connecting to wifi a month out of warranty. I took it to an Apple store and an employee knew all about the problem because his phone had exactly the same issue. It cost me $200 for a new phone, but at least my contract was unaffected. I groused about it briefly but realized I didn’t have a case when even an Apple employee was in the same position — and had elected to live with the problem.
Hopefully this is the case that finally brings Tim “The Cook” to justice. If the feds can put an end to the Cupertino family operating out of California, it will be a harsh blow against organized crime in America.
You’re an idiot. But I’m guessing you’re a supporter of an ACTUAL crime family over in South Korea that runs a certain chaebol in competition with Apple. 😉
I think he was being facetious.. is was it ironic.
One can only hope. But still, for a facetious remark to work, it actually has to make sense in context.
A RICO suit adds the context. I thought it was funny. Upon further reflection, he was being humorous, not ironic or facetious.
Also, I need to replace the is in the “ihe ironic” portion with or.
No, it wasn’t autocorrect, just bad typing while listening to VM.
Fair enough. The joke went over my head. I apologize for my remarks.
Lol, I just read a book about Jimmy Hoffa and the mob and had organized crime on the brain when I saw RICO and made the joke.
Some of you guys need to chill.
I don’t think I would call the comment by R2 facetious, but the sarcasm was, I thought, obvious and mildly amusing.
Yeah, now that I think about it and am not listening to VM, it was sarcastic.
While the “Tim ‘The Cook’ to justice” part of your comment made me laugh you sound crazy man.
You sure this wild lady isn’t your gf or wife ? haha
Thanks R2, that was funny.
R2: You couldn’t more obviously be a TROLL. Shamefully poor. Samsung wants their money back.
Fahgedabowdit!
I believe it’s spelled “Fhqwhgads”.
And the iPhone 4 is “free” in certain contracts?
and the shrill bleating of the Chinese consumer has led (blackmailed) AAPL to give them a replacment phone for situations like this AND a new warranty
She could have purchased AppleCare+ instead –
http://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone.html
My iPhone 4 developed a problem with the sleep/wake button (on/off switch) 11 months and 15 days into the warranty period. The button wouldn’t respond to presses. That’s one thing good about the iPhone – if the on/off button becomes unresponsive and the phone is switched off, all you need to is connect it to a charging source and the phone turns on by itself.
I did a quick sync with iTunes on my Mac to back up the phone, reset it to factory defaults and brought it to an Apple Store where it was exchanged for a brand new iPhone 4 within 5 minutes. No muss, no fuss. Excellent Apple service, as usual.
That class act set me up for life as an Apple fan. If I had a Nokia, HP or Motorola phone, they would have told me to walk the plank.
This is why they should not allow people to buy iPhones with their welfare money.
Known problem?
My early-model iPhone is now on its third owner (a sporty guy who likes the outdoors a lot) and it’s working good as gold.
I don’t know about the 4S (yet), but my used 3GS has always had a problem with the power button. I have to press it very hard and it often takes several attempts before it works. It makes turning it off very difficult or anything else that requires holding the button in for a long time. It is still useable though. I hope this woman gets awarded hefty court costs for wasting the court’s and Apple’s time.
“Adopting the consensus view that the iPhone 4′s power button problem is a known manufacturing defect” ? Whose consensus? It is probably the riskiest component in the iPhone, since it is a very thin piece of metal that is repeatedly flexed, that doesn’t make it a defect.
At $149 for the fix, she could get a current model for $200 with a new contract and eBay the old phone for over $100 with the problem fully disclosed. Guess that’s not as good as $5 Million.
If the phone was just out of warranty, that means that it is just over a year old. This means that it hasn’t been paid off yet, and she isn’t eligible to the subsidy for another phone until the end of the current two-year contract (this under the assumption that the original phone was purchased on subsidy). New iPhone 4 costs $450.
Point well taken. I read it with the (unfounded) assumption she got it when the iPhone 4 was still the lead product. I think that may not be the case. Other posts suggest she is on a different path than me, anyway. I’d just be trying to have a product that worked the way it was supposed to. She seems to just be trying to get rich. I think the Racketeer Influenced Organization may be her attorneys firm.
Or you can take it to Guy down at 3 guy’s plumbing…and mobile phone repair. For $3.09 in parts. $22 in labor….how much did that lawer cost?
Probably free. S/He is working towards getting the settlement money. I’m hoping they succeed so I can get 1) A postcard telling me of my options in the class action suite and 2) $3.04 if the case is found in favor of the plaintiffs.
/s
This crime is peanuts compared to what the Illuminati has been doing for the past few hundred years. Some recent acts of their crime include faking the moon landing at Area 51, killing JFK, setting Bill Clinton up with Lewinski, 9/11, Katrina (with HAARP), Benghazi, Boston, and planting spies in Apple HQ so they could report their findings to Samsung. Please, educate yourselves. This is just distraction from the REAL crimes that are happening.
You forgot the drought in Texas, frakking, and hanging chads.
You also forgot the missing 18 minutes in the Nixon tapes, the secret message in the White Album, and McCarthy’s communist list disappearing before he could show it.
The truth is that Lizards control the human race. Look it up. 12 million people will vouch for it.
Talk about disgruntled consumers. I am grateful that I’m not married to this woman.
Unless she wins. 😉
Should of bought a Droid – She would have had an extra one sitting in a box from the BOGO offer 😉
(just kidding)
If she bought a Droid, she would have been brainwashed by the lamestream media, and believe whatever nonsense Fox or NBC is peddling. I would never wish that on my worst enemy.
P.E.D. asks, “…shouldn’t it last the life of the device?” Well, how many components need to stop working before one claims the life of the device is over? I’ve always felt that with “limited lifetime warranties” once the device died the life of the device was over, ergo the lifetime warranty was over.
Another idiot surfaced
The contract life of the iPhone is two years, always buy the warranty for a mobile device to go the full two years. There are too many opportunities for disaster, from carrying it in your purse, your pocket, letting the nephew play with it, dropping it, etc. Life happens.
If you buy a new car, wouldn’t you buy insurance?
The truth is that Lizards control the human race. Look it up. 12 million people will vouch for it.
Well, another way to look at it is that vast numbers of people might as well not have a cerebral cortex. Therefore, their behavior is on the level of a Lizard as they use their older genetic history regions of the brain instead.
Do I REALLY have to consider them to be MY species?!
she files a class action suit under RICO (the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) for $5 million plus
The high damages request alone is enough to get this thrown out of court. She’s got to be crazy. If she could rustle up an actual class action lawsuit, I might care. But she can’t. So Boo-Bloody-Hoo madam. The world does not owe you an iPhone repair out-of-warranty. But I’m sure your lawyer LOVES you. 😕
I’ll bet she’s great in bed. All the crazy ones are. But
first hide all the knives in your kitchen in case you
fall asleep after sex.
Don’t forget her nail files as well. They can be killers.
And the scissors. Never forget the scissors! Damn those scissors.
All she had to do was “request” to replace the battery. Battery replacement is the lowest non-warranty repair cost.
I had a bad home button on my iPod. The cost to repair is a default $99. Instead of repair, I turned it in for $30 off of the next iPod Touch 5.
There is no such thing as planned defect of the power button. If so, we would have heard about millions of repairs of this type. It’s simply a post warranty fault, a random occurrence.
Planned defects in Apple gear? I think not. Check this out:
– Still running my 1993 Quadra 650 Mac, souped up with a PPC 601 daughterboard. All it ever needed was a new PRAM battery.
– Still running my 1997 PPC 9600 server. I’ve killed some hard drives on it, but not the original hard drive! Also needed a new PRAM battery.
– Still running my 1998 PowerBook Wallstreet PDQ. Also needed a PRAM battery. Although I will complain that the clutch on the display assembly was total crap, replaced 3 times. Apple paid for 2 of them via AppleCare.
Get the idea? Go play with Samsung gear, my dear, if you want to see planned obsolescence in action. Sheesh.
Apple for life.
In the iPhone 5 at least, this IS a known issue.
She probably didn’t sue because she didn’t want to pay 149 dollars. She probably had some other frustrating Conversations with Apple. You don’t go and do something like this otherwise. There is more to this story than meets the eye.