Why is apple so self obsessive over its technology to the point of even resorting to seedy and dirty tricks just to make consumers purchase a new phone. Do they like being sued?? Because among several suits smashed on their heads this week, there is one suit worth a whopping 1 trillion dollars. Yes!! That’s right; Apple is being sued for 1 trillion dollars
The company has been hit with precisely 9 lawsuits as reported by Reuters among which one is 1 trillion dollars. Fresh on the heels of battery gate last week when Apple actually admitted that they have deliberately been slowing down older phones to save battery juice, the company has been hit with lawsuits filed in the US district courts of Illinois, California and New York. A similar suit has even been filed in Israel.
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The lawsuits filed by individuals have claimed that the tech giant has deliberately slowed down devices to compensate for poor battery performance and was done without warning to users. The company has officially admitted they slowed down phones using a software change that occurred last year. During the time, many were speculating about the possibility of such a thing happening with iPhones. Now that fear has been confirmed and yes!! Apple has been resorting to such practices.
The company said they slowed down performances for battery life and it has affected the iphone6, iPhone 6S, iPhone SE and iPhone 7. This was done to prevent them from unexpected Shutdowns.
The lawsuits allege that users were deliberately manipulated and misled into purchasing new phones instead of just replacing the batteries which would have been a fraction of the cost.
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The largest lawsuit amounts to $ 999 billion or you could say 1 trillion. It was filed by Violetta Mailyan who filed the first class action lawsuit against the company. A second class action lawsuit was filed by Raisa Drantivy in New York. Raisa is demanding only $ 100 million. Well! That’s a concession and much smaller than 1 billion.
Each of the lawsuits represent the millions who have been affected by the slowing down of iPhones even as Apple has released its latest versions being the iPhone 8 and iPhone X which was released last September. The suits also seek to bar the company from meddling with the computing speeds of devices. If this is proved in court, it would validate the fraud claims.
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Violetta Mailyan’s 1 trillion dollar lawsuit against Apple was filed on 23rd December in the US district court of California-Western division –Los Angeles. Raisa Drantivy’s lawsuit was filed in the eastern District court of New York. The six clauses of the lawsuit are as follows.
Under the 'Substantive Allegations' segment it states: that the defendant which is Apple, alleges that its battery can retain up to 80 percent of its capacity for 500 recharging cycles. Apple has said that it slows down phone processors when wearing out. This was done without a user’s permission
In Israel, Apple was sued for a class action lawsuit amounting to $ 125 million for intentionally slowing down iPhones. This makes 9 class action lawsuits against the tech company.
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According to Apple, updates from last year contained a smooth out feature for batteries that are old or low on charge. They said phones without this feature would be shutting down abruptly. This was due to a precautionary measure to prevent components from getting burned.
One of the lawsuits filed in San Fransico says “the batteries’ inability to handle the demand created by processor speeds” and that this was a defect which Apple should have acknowledged and replaced with free batteries, instead they sought to conceal it. The plaintiff is being represented by Jeffrey Fazio who had earlier represented people in a $53 million settlement with Apple way back in 2013 because of its inept handling of iPhone warranty claims.
Rory Van Loo, a Boston University professor specializing in consumer technology law was quoted as saying “If it turns out that consumers would have replaced their battery instead of buying new iPhones had they known the true nature of Apple’s upgrades, you might start to have a better case for some sort of misrepresentation or fraud.”
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In the latest update of the issue, Apple had posted a formal apology on its official website stating that the problem was a misunderstanding about the battery life of older iPhone models. It has also provided information about the reasons why phone batteries lose effectiveness over time. It said that Apple “never do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.”
The company has also reduced the cost of replacement batteries from $79 to $29 with effect from January 2018.
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