Apple Must Compensate Brazilian Customer Over $1,000 for Selling iPhone Without a Charger, Judge Rules

[robco74]

Apple also added OLED displays and 5G to the iPhone when they nixed the charger. Many people are moving to wireless charging, or already have a charger. No need to include one in the box for many users. Shipping extra accessories that many users won't ever use is wasteful.

 

[Scoob Redux]

Awesome. If only our consumer protections were as good in the U.S.

 

[The_Auryn]

Dang! Does this mean that I can sue an auto manufacturer for not supplying me with gas for the life of my car? After all, gas is an essential part of the car experience.

You're equating gas with electricity, which is not what this is. How would you feel if you had your own gas tank to install in your car.

 

[Boidarkly]

When they made the decision to leave out the charger, I could never understand why they didn't offer the choice to have one given at the time of purchase. Like a free accessory so consumers could choose to get a new charger or not? "Do you need headphones? Y/N
Do you need a charger? Y/N"
I mean, they still reduce the production and distribution that way. If this is the first iPhone for someone, it's kind of a poor experience.

 

[BP321]

I paid over $1000 for a phone and they didn't even provide me a goat. Least they could give me store credit for some feta cheese or mutton curry if they truly cared about the environment, not profit. Not including goat products is the stupidest thing that many other companies are following.

Haha! Very sarcastic. But hey feta cheese and mutton curry would be a nice courtesy from Apple but it won’t charge my phone.

I love Apple products and their customer service. I only don’t like the idea of buying a separate adapter to charge my new iPhone.

 

[BootsWalking]

Cheaper to pay out $1000.

It's $2,001,000 and counting.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/20/apple-brazil-fine-iphone-charger/

 

[The_Auryn]

Apple also added OLED displays and 5G to the iPhone when they nixed the charger. Many people are moving to wireless charging, or already have a charger. No need to include one in the box for many users. Shipping extra accessories that many users won't ever use is wasteful.

Does Apple give us the option to get one with a charger at no extra cost? Of course not. Do reduce the price of the iPhone without the charger, if you wanted that option? Of course not. This is just about making more money.

 

[I7guy]

a simple check box while ordering to either include a charger or credit 30$ into total price would have been the righteous thing to do,

True. A checkbox to order a charger for $30 as an add-on in additional packaging might have avoided this. However all iPhones would still ship without the charger which has a huge downstream impact from raw materials to transport to trucking etc.

anything else is corporate greed.

Disagree.

apple is not your friend, they are selling you highly overpriced products

Then don’t buy them.

with the nr1 goal being turning a hefty profit. people put emotions into places they shouldnt sometimes

Sure, who are these hundreds of millions of customers buying apples’ overpriced products?

 

[sw1tcher]

How do you know that not including the charger didn't help Apple offset an even bigger price increase incurred in the iPhone from including other technologies or normal year-over-year inflation? It's not like the full retail cost of the charger was included in the price of every previous iPhone. Worst case, it was a $5 component cost, but more likely well under $2.

I know this because Apple didn't just remove them from the newly released iPhone 12 models at the time.

They also removed them from iPhone models that previously came with both the power adapter and EarPods, namely the iPhone SE 2020, iPhone 11, and iPhone XR. And in the case of the iPhone SE 2020, the price remained exactly the same whether it came with them or not. It was a luck of the draw whether you got them in the box or not as both were being sold side-by-side.

 

[visualseed]

And yet they charge a premium for this component that you deem to be low cost.

OMG. I was today years old when I learned that Apple was a business and not a charity /s

 

[I7guy]

It's $2,001,000 and counting.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/20/apple-brazil-fine-iphone-charger/

Still cheaper I contend then the probable $100s of millions for the attorneys.

 

[iGeneo]

Offer two versions.. With Charger (+$25) and Without charger... then see what version sells 10-1

People complain about such rubbish

 

[nexx27]

Very reasonable. I agree with the judge. You wanna sell in Brazil, at least provide the OPTION to get the charger if you don't have one.

It is very simple, you can't use the phone without the charger.

 

[bn-7bc]

USD1000 for a charger, holy crap, how mouch does usb chargers cost in Brazil?

 

[WiiDSmoker]

OMG. I was today years old when I learned that Apple was a business and not a charity /s

Exactly. They’re a business and have to follow the laws of the land. Congratulations for proving my point.

 

[Bandaman]

Actually it did. The price still went up though because of inflation.

It did not. And your reasoning is ridiculous. The only cost saving was for Apple. Nothing was passed onto the consumer. Impressive mental gymnastics with the inflation logic though. Grats.

 

[visualseed]

I know this because Apple didn't just remove them from the newly released iPhone 12 models at the time.

They also removed them from iPhone models that previously came with both the power adapter and EarPods, namely the iPhone SE 2020, iPhone 11, and iPhone XR. And in the case of the iPhone SE 2020, the price remained exactly the same whether it came with them or not. It was a luck of the draw whether you got them in the box or not as both were being sold side-by-side.

How do you know that newly produced phones cost the same as phones produced a year before? It's not like we didn't just live through one of the biggest supply chain disruptions in modern history. Even logistics costs went up.

 

[I7guy]

The amount of kool aid here is sad.

My 1tb iphone 13 pro was almost 1.6k and it came with no charging brick in the box, that is pure corporate greed. There are plenty on the shelves for you to buy all packaged up in additional wasteful boxing and it costs an additional 30-50 bucks.

They advertise fast charging yet do not include what is needed to achieve that in the box. I bought two iphones for Christmas for my folks and guess what, I had to buy two bricks separately, cool additional 100$ for apple.

Saving the environment, give me a ****ing break.

The reason why no reputable outlet will go out of their way to criticize apple for this practice is because they will get blacklisted from launch press events so they wont be able to go hands and write up their articles or get early review units so their launch reviews go live the day of release.

Apple has a monopoly on positive coverage and at this stage can do whatever the hell they want and sheep here will go out of their way to argue how positive this change is.

YES we have plenty of 5watt chargers at home and guess what they are useless. The reason apple does not include chargers anymore is because of their profit margins, under Cook the penny crunching is ruthless hence their trillion evaluation.

Again, I paid $1500 dollars for my iphone and i had to give apple more money to be able to charge it, let that sink in.

Saving the environment argument is the equivalent to a "Putin tax hike", its comedy.

It seems to me you don’t understand the positive environmental impact all around by not including a charger on hundreds of millions of iPhones.

While you may be personally annoyed I support the move and it has nothing to do with kool aid. It’s unfortunate there are those who can’t see the forest from the trees.

 

[darngooddesign]

Offer two versions.. With Charger (+$25) and Without charger... then see what version sells 10-1

People complain about such rubbish

Since Apple didn't reduce the price when they removed the charger they can't charge more for the version with a charger.

Instead they should offer free chargers to those who want one.

 

[I7guy]

Since Apple didn't reduce the price when they removed the charger they can't charge more for the version with a charger.

Instead they should offer free chargers to those who want one.

Apple didn’t raise the price either.

Nobody is getting free chargers. Or maybe apple should just include the 5w brick.

 

[genovelle]

If I was a Brazilian consumer I'd be annoyed at having to pay for an included charger in the price of my iPhone when I didn't need one.

Sure, you can argue the issue of whether Apple did reduce real price when it removed the charger, but this precedent goes beyond that.

Apple should tape a charger to every iPhone sold in that country and increase the price by the price of the charger and an extra $1 for forced bundling. Then charge $1 to remove it for those that want to sell the charger back because they don’t need or want it.

Government get their forced charger, customer can choose, Apple is compensated for unnecessary added effort to comply and doesn’t have to come up with new packaging.

If done tacky enough it would provide an awesome amount of good old petty too.

 

[iGeneo]

Apple didn’t raise the price either.

Nobody is getting free chargers. Or maybe apple should just include the 5w brick.

Then some jack hole will sue "it charges at an insufficient speed"

 

[_Spinn_]

Yikes this is nuts!

 

[darngooddesign]

Apple didn’t raise the price either.

Nobody is getting free chargers. Or maybe apple should just include the 5w brick.

They passively increased the price by adding the cost of a separate charger to the cost of the phone.

 

[Analog Kid]

I get that consumer protection is an important role of government, but I see a lot of governments overstepping what's truly protective and starting to control legitimate product decisions. Governments shouldn't be dictating that chargers must be included, must not be included, or what the charger interface is. It just leads to a mess and more waste and confusion all around.