Disappointed with the weak and diverse enforcement of consumer rules in the European Union, Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding took an example of Apple’s poortly informed warranty information in most of the European Union’s Apple website. In general Apple offers a warranty of one year on all of its product range which does not comply with the European Union standards pertaining to which Apple had to extend the warranty to a default of 2 years on all of its products sold in the European Union (EU) and discontinue the sale of its extended warranty packages for all products. But Justice Reding says that the information is poorly conveyed to the buyers.
Reding said that lawsuits have been filed by consumer associations of various countries in the EU like Belgium, Portugal and Germany against Apple for the same issue, the Italian Antitrust Authority even fined Apple €900000 over the company’s warranty policies.
There is a need for a more prominent role in monitoring and coordinating enforcement of EU rules said Reding, also, the approaches to enforcement in these types of cases turn out to be very diversified and inconsistent at a national level and Apple seems to be not informing consumers in at least 21 EU member states of the legal warranty rights they have.