“A plucky Welshman has successfully sued Apple and forced the company to change a ‘misleading’ Apple Watch product description,” Carly Page reports for The Inquirer. “Gareth Cross, 32, from Aberystwyth, bought a £339 Apple Watch Sport in July, but discovered a crack in the display just 10 days later. ”
“Cross complained to Apple about the damaged screen, but was told that repairing the watch was not covered by the warranty,” Page reports. “This prompted Cross to take his complaint to a small claims court for breach of the Sale of Goods Act, and he was handed a victory against the technology giant this week after a six-month battle.”
“The Aberystwyth court ruled that Apple must refund the cost of the watch and pay an additional £429 in costs. The firm has since changed the product description to remove the claim that it is resistant to impact, too,” Page reports. “Cross told the BBC, ‘I plan to buy another Apple Watch, as for the 10 days I had it I really liked it, but I may wait until the next model is out.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple Watch most certainly is “impact resistant.” It’s just not “impact impervious.” Apple should never have removed the “impact resistant” from Apple Watch descriptions.
Bottom line: Guy loved Apple Watch so much that even after a 6-month court battle over one with a cracked display, he wants another one.
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Juniper Research: Apple is world’s #1 smartwatch maker – July 23, 2015
Canalys: Apple ships 4.2 million Apple Watches in Q2 to become world’s top wearables vendor – July 21, 2015
Apple Watch satisfaction is unprecedented at 97%; beats original iPhone and iPad – July 20, 2015
Non-techies love their Apple Watches even more than tech users – July 20, 2015
Apple Watch is Apple’s most successful product debut ever – June 1, 2015
I thought the US had the monopoly for dumbass judges. I guess the Brits wants to compete and surpass us. lol
It sounds fairly reasonable to me. He finds a hairline crack in the screen of his almost new watch. He asks Apple to fix it. For some reason I can’t fathom, they say “No.” What would you do?
I think taking it to the equivalent of small claims court is a very reasonable step.
So with no way Apple can verify the way the damage was inflicted, Apple should just fix/replace the phone? That’s asinine.
I’d almost stake my life on the fact that they expected Apple to settle. Hell, the value they finally have to pay is likely less than the cost to Apple for legal fees for lawyers representing Apple. Most companies would just pay the extortion and move on. Thankfully there are a few companies out there that won’t do that — even though they take the risk of losing like in this case.
The presumption in English law is that a fault in the first six months is due to manufacture error. You also seem to think that Apple should distrust its loyal customers and not comply with local laws.
Maybe your comment is based on the misleading headline, instead of the article. From what I read, it sounds like the judge did not “force” Apple to remove the “impact-resistant” claim, but that Apple chose to do so.
In other words, the headline includes a false statement. Perhaps “incentivized to remove the impact-resistant claim” would be correct, but “forced” strongly implies something untrue. If the earlier part of the headline includes the word “court” or “judge” or “guy holding a gun” or whatever, people are going to assume the word “forced” means that the doer had no choice but to comply. That wasn’t true here.
I’ve dropped many watches before with no breakage… I also dropped my Apple Watch after about 10 days…. On concrete…. 3-4ft fall…. It smashed like a egg cracks….. It’s fragile!!!
“It smashed like a [sic] egg cracks.” I seriously doubt the truth of this statement.
I’m a bit of a “butter fingers” myself, having dropped them several times on hard floors (never bare concrete, but on asphalt which should be worse). Lots of scratches (sometimes) but never smashing and never reacting as if it were an egg dropped on a hard floor.
Next someone will sue because they claim water resistant. The Apple Watch is but not enough for people who do something stupid and then won’t take personal accountability for their own actions. Guess it doesn’t matter which continent you’re on, there are idiots everywhere.
This seems like an unbelievable story to recall, but I had the very first iPhone and was trying out its mapping features touring downtown LA. Two sales/finance types with blackberries (remember them?) began aggressively mocking my touch gestures on their craptastic plastic phones. One of the guts tapped so hard, his phone fell out of his hands and both watched as it hit the ground with a loud crack with tiny chicklet keyboard keys exploded like popcorn.
I snapped a picture of them trying to collect those stupid keys, waved, then went about exploring.
So moral of they story…electronic stuff don’t like being dropped, banged, submerged in water, over heated, over cooled, or wet.
I have to agree with oslophoto. I dropped watches very occasionally for all of the years I wore them. Never had anything but scuffs. The VERY FIRST and only time I dropped my Apple Watch was onto a sidewalk from 3’.
A simple drop, no other momentum-l was adjusting the strap. The crystal was destroyed. Apple knows it’s fragile, and the Apple Store allowed me to buy AppleCare retroactively for it, despite it being broken. So my total cost was a bit over $100, instead of full replacement.
Make no mistake about it- if your Apple Watch lands badly, even from waist height, you stand a real chance of destroying it. This was pretty disappointing to me. I don’t expect a manufacturer to be responsible for any error I make, but the Apple Watch is not as durable as one would expect from experiences with other watches.