Apple to Pay Canadian Customers Up to $150 Following iPhone Battery Controversy

[bgillander]

At best, and at a stretch you could give the store employees a pass, (but is it realistic to say that none of them knew and didn't report it).
At worst Apple knew, how could they not, and did not pass it down.

I honestly doubt that the line level employees knew, just because line level employees seldom know. Blaming the little guy seems to happen a lot, but the problem is actually at the top. If you read my post just before that one, I'm obviously not a fan of how Apple handled this, and figure they should have done a recall on the batteries or phones, as my only two bad iPhone batteries were both on the same SE1.

 

[H2SO4]

I honestly doubt that the line level employees knew, just because line level employees seldom know. Blaming the little guy seems to happen a lot, but the problem is actually at the top. If you read my post just before that one, I'm obviously not a fan of how Apple handled this, and figure they should have done a recall on the batteries or phones, as my only two bad iPhone batteries were both on the same SE1.

At the start I'll take that, but as it gathered more and more steam I can't believe that most of them didn't know.

 

[bgillander]

At the start I'll take that, but as it gathered more and more steam I can't believe that most of them didn't know.

I'm not sure what you mean by the reporting part, though. If Apple didn't tell them until they told us, how would they know? They might notice that a lot of people are coming in complaining that their phones are slow, but I expect that always happened and still does... just look at how everyone complains here about everything.

And if none of them knew about the throttling, what would they report, and to whom?

 

[H2SO4]

I'm not sure what you mean by the reporting part, though. If Apple didn't tell them until they told us, how would they know? They might notice that a lot of people are coming in complaining that their phones are slow, but I expect that always happened and still does... just look at how everyone complains here about everything.

And if none of them knew about the throttling, what would they report, and to whom?

Reporting up the chain.
I'm pretty sure most large companies have a system in place designed to see problems coming.
It might be direct one to one from a more senior member of staff.
A system where faults are categorised.
Staff training to not only listen first but also ask certain questions and look for certain indicators to recognise software and hardware trends, a multitude of things.
Coupled with this, the points I mentioned here, #17 .

I find it very hard to believe that this wasn't known to most floor shop staff after a given time. Heck my mother tells/asks me things she's seen on YouTube about consumer electronics and she's about 80 and a technophobe.

 

[bgillander]

Reporting up the chain.
I'm pretty sure most large companies have a system in place designed to see problems coming.
It might be direct one to one from a more senior member of staff.
A system where faults are categorised.
Staff training to not only listen first but also ask certain questions and look for certain indicators to recognise software and hardware trends, a multitude of things.
Coupled with this, the points I mentioned here, #17 .

I find it very hard to believe that this wasn't known to most floor shop staff after a given time. Heck my mother tells/asks me things she's seen on YouTube about consumer electronics and she's about 80 and a technophobe.

Yeah, chain of command 101. That's likely why the throttling was implemented, as I assume they reported up the chain that iPhones were shutting down under load.

But how would reporting the side effect of that throttling help, as they would be reporting it up the chain to the people that created that "fix"? That is like the movie plot trope where you tell your boss you think there is a spy in the company, only for it to turn out that they are the spy.

Again, if the line workers knew, boo to them, but that is a big assumption. Most low level workers don't (get paid enough to) want to take a stand to rock the boat, but they also don't like it when senior management messes things up and leaves them dealing with the public, so I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt rather than default them as the fall guy.

In my case, when I took it in to be looked at they didn't try to upsell me, but this whole mess had already made the news, so I guess someone could just assume they became less evil after. The employee looked at the diagnostics, then showed me the results and said "that's weird", as my phone would occasionally show a drop from 70 or 80% battery to 10 or 20% in the logs. She said they could try replacing the battery to see if it would help, but the "$29 deal" was over. I wasn't impressed by the price, but tried it and it worked great for a bit over a year. The employee was fine, the process was okay, but I was annoyed that I didn't take it in a few months earlier when the "deal" was on because they had added the Battery Health indicator and it showed 92%. I was home at the time and wasn't using the phone much, and let the "Battery Health = 92%" lull me into thinking I just hadn't charged when the battery life sometimes seemed a bit shorter than I would expect. It wasn't until it died while I was using it one time after I had just charged it that I realized there was actually a problem. So, yeah, those batteries were hot garbage and Apple should have recalled them. But at least they didn't burst into flames, so I guess they were just garbage.

 

[H2SO4]

Yeah, chain of command 101. That's likely why the throttling was implemented, as I assume they reported up the chain that iPhones were shutting down under load.

But how would reporting the side effect of that throttling help, as they would be reporting it up the chain to the people that created that "fix"? That is like the movie plot trope where you tell your boss you think there is a spy in the company, only for it to turn out that they are the spy.

Again, if the line workers knew, boo to them, but that is a big assumption. Most low level workers don't (get paid enough to) want to take a stand to rock the boat, but they also don't like it when senior management messes things up and leaves them dealing with the public, so I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt rather than default them as the fall guy.

In my case, when I took it in to be looked at they didn't try to upsell me, but this whole mess had already made the news, so I guess someone could just assume they became less evil after. The employee looked at the diagnostics, then showed me the results and said "that's weird", as my phone would occasionally show a drop from 70 or 80% battery to 10 or 20% in the logs. She said they could try replacing the battery to see if it would help, but the "$29 deal" was over. I wasn't impressed by the price, but tried it and it worked great for a bit over a year. The employee was fine, the process was okay, but I was annoyed that I didn't take it in a few months earlier when the "deal" was on because they had added the Battery Health indicator and it showed 92%. I was home at the time and wasn't using the phone much, and let the "Battery Health = 92%" lull me into thinking I just hadn't charged when the battery life sometimes seemed a bit shorter than I would expect. It wasn't until it died while I was using it one time after I had just charged it that I realized there was actually a problem. So, yeah, those batteries were hot garbage and Apple should have recalled them. But at least they didn't burst into flames, so I guess they were just garbage.

Call me cynical but I just don't believe the store staff didn't know about the battery problems.
Most places I deal with in a number of industries, car dealerships, Car hire like Hertz, places like LG etc etc are aware of issues.
A lot have bulletins that come out as soon as something like that is identified and even the call centra staff are aware.

I can't believe that with the furore that was on various pertinent media channels, most notably ASF, that they were unaware.

 

[bgillander]

Call me cynical but I just don't believe the store staff didn't know about the battery problems.
Most places I deal with in a number of industries, car dealerships, Car hire like Hertz, places like LG etc etc are aware of issues.
A lot have bulletins that come out as soon as something like that is identified and even the call centra staff are aware.

I can't believe that with the furore that was on various pertinent media channels, most notably ASF, that they were unaware.

Again, I'm sure many store staff did notice there were issues with the iPhones shutting down under load, and likely that reporting would have led to the throttling change, but that doesn't mean they know details about the attempted fix to the shutdown issue. So that would mean they did what you want, yet you are still blaming them.

It is easy to argue either side of Apple doing this: Apple did it to prevent phones from shutting down or Apple did it to sell more phones. I personally think Apple did it so they wouldn't have to recall the garbage batteries, but I can't blame the employee that sold me the new battery, as that makes no sense.

 

[bgillander]

I find it very hard to believe that this wasn't known to most floor shop staff after a given time. Heck my mother tells/asks me things she's seen on YouTube about consumer electronics and she's about 80 and a technophobe.

I forgot to say that if your mother is on YouTube at 80 and telling you about consumer electronics, she deserves more respect than being referred to as a technophobe because she certainly is not! Kudos to her!

 

[H2SO4]

Again, I'm sure many store staff did notice there were issues with the iPhones shutting down under load, and likely that reporting would have led to the throttling change, but that doesn't mean they know details about the attempted fix to the shutdown issue. So that would mean they did what you want, yet you are still blaming them.

It is easy to argue either side of Apple doing this: Apple did it to prevent phones from shutting down or Apple did it to sell more phones. I personally think Apple did it so they wouldn't have to recall the garbage batteries, but I can't blame the employee that sold me the new battery, as that makes no sense.

It's more than the staff noticing.
1. From what I know, (I've been to genius bar for issues - though not this one), they put the device on a diagnostic and very likely one that is deeper than anything you have at home. This will VERY likely tell them, even if not right then and there that there was a power issue at the point of shutdown from the logs.
2. In addition to this the customer will be pointing then that way by actually telling them, oh my phone randomly shuts down.
3. Then on top of that, some customers will demonstrate it to them.

This 'genius' will have seen this issue more than once. Just isn't realistic to me that this thing doesn't stink to high heaven.

 

[H2SO4]

I forgot to say that if your mother is on YouTube at 80 and telling you about consumer electronics, she deserves more respect than being referred to as a technophobe because she certainly is not! Kudos to her!

Love my Ma, but I wish she wasn't...............

 

[bgillander]

It's more than the staff noticing.
1. From what I know, (I've been to genius bar for issues - though not this one), they put the device on a diagnostic and very likely one that is deeper than anything you have at home. This will VERY likely tell them, even if not right then and there that there was a power issue at the point of shutdown from the logs.
2. In addition to this the customer will be pointing then that way by actually telling them, oh my phone randomly shuts down.
3. Then on top of that, some customers will demonstrate it to them.

This 'genius' will have seen this issue more than once. Just isn't realistic to me that this thing doesn't stink to high heaven.

You are describing the process I just described going through myself. Thank you for reminding me, but I remember it too well.

Again, the shutdown was the root cause that led to Apple throttling the phones, and it is pretty safe to assume that the genius bars did pass that info to Apple if only because Apple created the throttle "fix". However, the shutdowns don't seem to be an issue for anyone but us and that wasn't what the settlement was about. It was about the throttling to try to prevent the shutdowns. The attempted "fix" is what got Apple in trouble, not the problem they were trying to fix. That is the crux of the controversy.

It seems like we are actually agreeing that the real problem was the battery issue, but in a weird twist, what got Apple in trouble and the reason for this settlement is the throttling used when Apple tried to fix the shutdown issue. So it is extremely likely that the genius feedback actually did lead to the throttling, but that doesn't mean they would be aware of the technical details of the way that Apple tried to fix the isssue, at which point it isn't like they would know exactly why an iPhone a user brought in was running more slowly when it was throttled.

The throttling didn't fix my battery issue, but the battery issue isn't what got Apple in trouble (though that would have made far more sense to me). As much as I may think Apple should have given me a new battery, that isn't what the settlement was about. Did the genius that sold the battery to me know that the batteries were problematic? Perhaps, since this whole issue was already in the news, but the observations of one employee or even one store aren't necessarily large enough to spot trends. I think AI and large data models have severely thrown off a lot of people's expectations of a single individual's ability to spot a trend.

 

[H2SO4]

You are describing the process I just described going through myself. Thank you for reminding me, but I remember it too well.

Again, the shutdown was the root cause that led to Apple throttling the phones, and it is pretty safe to assume that the genius bars did pass that info to Apple if only because Apple created the throttle "fix". However, the shutdowns don't seem to be an issue for anyone but us and that wasn't what the settlement was about. It was about the throttling to try to prevent the shutdowns. The attempted "fix" is what got Apple in trouble, not the problem they were trying to fix. That is the crux of the controversy.

It seems like we are actually agreeing that the real problem was the battery issue, but in a weird twist, what got Apple in trouble and the reason for this settlement is the throttling used when Apple tried to fix the shutdown issue. So it is extremely likely that the genius feedback actually did lead to the throttling, but that doesn't mean they would be aware of the technical details of the way that Apple tried to fix the isssue, at which point it isn't like they would know exactly why an iPhone a user brought in was running more slowly when it was throttled.

The throttling didn't fix my battery issue, but the battery issue isn't what got Apple in trouble (though that would have made far more sense to me). As much as I may think Apple should have given me a new battery, that isn't what the settlement was about. Did the genius that sold the battery to me know that the batteries were problematic? Perhaps, since this whole issue was already in the news, but the observations of one employee or even one store aren't necessarily large enough to spot trends. I think AI and large data models have severely thrown off a lot of people's expectations of a single individual's ability to spot a trend.

Yah, maybe I'm too unforgiving.
In some of the companies I've worked for in the past, this kind of thing has been picked up on. If it's unusual it's noted and whilst it doesn't necessarily guarantee a fix or reaction from the OEM, it certainly becomes common knowledge in tech support.

 

[fredn]

So... weird case here of a dual US/Canadian citizen. Lived in both countries during the relevant time periods. Got the US settlement. Wondering if it's also possible to get the Canadian settlement as well.

 

[bgillander]

So... weird case here of a dual US/Canadian citizen. Lived in both countries during the relevant time periods. Got the US settlement. Wondering if it's also possible to get the Canadian settlement as well.

Not unless you also bought an iPhone in Canada, too. We have our own model numbers and the serial should be an easy link for Apple.

 

[steve123]

Anyone know when the website will start accepting submission of claims? The website still says If the Court approves the Proposed Settlement, more information will be provided on this website about how to submit a claim.

 

[solarbiz]

I have the receipts with IMEI numbers from both my old 6 and 7 phones but they are not accepted on the form. Apple support tried to locate serial # from IMEI # and could not. Anyone with advice?

 

[richelb]

7 years later and we're supposed to have serial numbers. Ha.

I feel like they’re partly banking on the fact a lot of people may have trashed (physical or digital) or don’t have any access to that info anymore if the phone was removed from their iCloud account. In my case, luckily I kept emails from Apple Store work orders so I found the one when I got my 6S battery replacement FREE when they admitted some known issue with unexpected shutdowns etc, and is stated in the notes lol (which the issue later reoccurred lol - and makes me laugh they alledgedly admit no wrong doing within the class action 🤔😂)