Apple under fire for allegations of controversial business practices

[Applause] this is the image of an apple store that the company wants you to see masses of customers hungry for the latest product knowledgeable young staffers eager to serve [Applause] mad rush to be among the first to buy a brilliant new device [Applause] lately however that positive image is being tarnished by stories of customers being wildly overcharged for repairs in Apple stores we decided to use a hidden camera to verify many reports that Apple customers are often told they're malfunctioning computers are not worth fixing even when minor repairs could remedy the problem our team came to a Toronto Apple store with a macbook computer that had a common problem the screen had stopped worth take very dim when I tried to turn on [Music] so yeah so there's a lot of liquid that's gotten on the inside it's a normal picture the little red dots here they're normally white and it means that they've come in contact of liquid so for it to be basically all over the whole computer music something's going through the whole sure if that would need to be looking at replacing quite a few components are you sure it's a can it be something else as well well regardless of what the cause of it is if it isn't the liquid we have to fix a liquid so it's not like we can't do partial no Pez when it's been damaged so what are my options now this oh well what I was going to say is basically all the components that you need to replace is going to cost more than $1,000 so to fix it entirely cost more than $1,000 yeah so the very least we'd need to replace is the logic board and the topcase so that we're looking at 600 plus 503 $1,100 for the labor of 100 and then if we need to replace the display as well that's another 780 so the display we may not need to replace but we're still looking at a total of around Wow so just to be clear there's no cheaper alternative for this I mean that that cost is very close to the cost of buying a new computer in terms of pixie in the store [Music] many Apple customers have shared similar experiences and so we decided to double-check the diagnosis on 1st Avenue in Manhattan there is a small computer repair store run by Luis Rossmann he started fixing computers in college and now makes youtube videos teaching people how to repair complex items overall Apple tries to get you to purchase a new device instead of a pair year old his videos often draw millions of views we brought him the computer that the Apple store in Toronto said was not worth fixing so this is a macbook pro that Apple the Apple store said but it cost $1,200 to fix and wasn't worth doing all right let's take a look and see if that's true see you see you can see the Apple logo there hmm and watch if I take a light and I put it through there you'll actually be able to see everything on the screen so this is my microscope light and when I put it right through here you can see that there's a cursor there and then it's moving so most of the screen is working properly it's just that this they'll backlight is not working right this could be either due to a bad screen a bad motherboard bad cable but we'll figure that out once we open it up all right so let's take a look on the inside of this now this is where the screen is gonna connect to the computer okay so the first thing I'd want to do is examine that area of it to see what it looks like see if I see the pin that's sticking out okay so that pin is actually most likely the pin for the backlight and as you can see it's probably not making contact because it's bent outwards and I got my set of tweezers over here and I'm just gonna try to push that back into the slot and try to get it back into its groove so that when I replug in the connector it'll work at the Apple store they suggest that this was water damage well you can see that there are water indicators that have turned red so that's why they got that idea and they're by the battery so this this is a water indicator and these these turn red when they see liquid however the thing here is that these not only turn red when they see liquid they also turn red anytime there is humidity so if you have this in a very humid room all of these sensors will turn even if you've never spilled liquid on the machine all right so let's plug this back in and hope for the best all right as you can see we've got an apple and we have a light so it fixed yeah now that took you like one-and-a-half minutes maybe so if I walked in off the street with this problem what would you charge - for the repair you just did if somebody wanted me to just bend the pin back I wouldn't charge them for that I would say I'm gonna rework your original cable that may not last long term but here it's free if they wanted us to replace the cable depending on the model anywhere from 75 to 150 depending on the difficulty of opening that model but something like this we wouldn't charge for and 99% of the time just bending the pin back it'll allow it to last until the end of the life of the computer we asked Apple to respond to this incident to fix it entirely will cost more than a thousand dollars yeah and to the widespread allegations a similar corporate behavior they declined to provide a spokesman but issued a statement claiming their customers are best served by Apple's certified experts using genuine parts they denied systematically overestimating repair costs how often do people show up here with the Apple Store telling them it can't be fixed or it's too expensive somewhere between 10 and 30 times a day no kidding yeah in San Luis Obispo California iFixit is probably the most successful third-party repair business in North America the business test cell phones and computers diagnosis problems that regularly occur and develops the tools and techniques to repair them they sell the tools and repair manuals over the internet I fix it has 125 employees and makes 21 million dollars a year the business is owned by Kyle Wiens who is also a leading spokesman for the national right to repair movement it used to be that you if you bought something you'd be able to get it fixed when you needed to and over time we've lost that ability whether it's a vacuum or a television or a laptop it's increasingly more challenging to get access to the information that you need or for local shops to get the parts so right you're pairs of movement and a set of legislation that would restore that ability to fix your own stuff how does that will fit into that question Apple's perspective is that they want complete control over the device from the moment that you buy it all the way through the end of life and right to repair take some of that control away from them and puts it in the hands of the owner and and that's where for a manufacturer to say we're making a product and we're putting out in the world and we're going to control every aspect of what happens after the fact is is complete lunacy we asked Kyle Wiens to show us some of the tricks Apple uses to foil easy repairs starting with non-standard screws so this is the pentalobe screw it's on the bottom of the MacBook Pro and it's it's these little five points so you can see it's it's not like any screw that you've seen before and it turns out that Apple invented their own screw it's it's purely they want to make the device is harder for normal people to open with the tools that they already have lying around then Apple started gluing in batteries this is knife on eight and and this is the battery and it's glued in and that's unfortunate it doesn't need to be glued in batteries didn't used to be glue then yeah it's a is 3m Qasim command adhesives okay there and I broke and sir there's your home button on some Apple phones the home button would have to be replaced if the screen cracked and I can take the home button now it was a cheap and easy repair but then Apple reprogrammed the operating system to detect non-authorized home buttons and the phone would suddenly stop working yeah it would be like if you're driving your car and maybe you changed out the tires and you had aftermarket tires and then all of a sudden Tesla pushes out a software update and your car stops driving because of those aftermarket tires it the stems from a mentality that they're the center of the universe and nobody else is doing anything with their products Apple insists that its products are best serviced by its own staff and clearly sees unauthorized third-party repair businesses as the enemy Louis Rossmann and iFixit have received legal threats from the company when they published schematics a repair manual information I would be happy with a rollback on the intellectual property law and the immigrations and customs enforcement law that allow people to be either thrown in jail or prosecuted for importing parts and for showing a schematic because Apple writes the manual they own the copyright to it and so if you post that manual online they'll send you a legal takedown threat saying that's our copyrighted material if you don't take it down we'll sue you for up to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in damages per incident and and those legal threats have have really put a damper on repair information online the type may be turning against Apple on the right to repair this is the New York State Legislature where Lois Rossman and the right to repair movement have set up a repair cafe to put on a show for politicians which one of these 1 2 & 3 do you think is covering up the battery connection so far this year 17 US states have introduced right to repair legislation that would force Apple and other companies to provide repair manuals and spare parts to third-party repair businesses I'd like Apple to change by acknowledging that if they're not willing to do certain jobs maybe somebody else would and to just I'm not even asking them to extend an olive branch I'm just asking them to you know stop extending the knife what happens when the first state actually passes one of these proposed legislation this is where it gets really interesting is the moment that one state passes things it's is the dam is going to burst so if Ontario decided working in the past right to repair legislation that could actually pass right to repair for the world because manufacturers aren't going to provide products differently to people in one jurisdiction they want to simplify their operations the right to repair movement has put a spotlight on some of apple's predatory business practices I mean that that cost is very close to the cost of buying a new computer and many Apple customers are starting to wonder whether the company really has their best interest at heart terence mckenna's documentary continues after the break when we come back Apple customers accuse the company of a sneaky policy that pressured them to buy new smart phones it was sort of a Eureka moment and that's what prompted me to really take a deep dive into our performance data and see what was happening after an incident last winter Apple faced a fresh allegation customers suspected the company had a policy designed to pressure them into buying new smart phones here's Terence Mckenna with part two of tonight's documentary [Music] one night last December at the office of a Toronto software firm called primate labs founder John Poole was trying to solve a mystery his company sells an application called Geekbench that millions of customers used to analyze the performance of their cell phones and computers his customers were complaining that their Apple iPhones were suddenly running a lot slower and they wanted to know why my wife just offhand mentioned that her iPhone 6's felt slow and the numbers that we got out of it were significantly lower than what I'd expect from a phone like that to the point where I didn't believe what was happening then he noticed an anonymous post on the internet telling people if your iPhone slow replaced the battery it was sort of a Eureka moment and that's what prompted me to really take a deep dive into our database of performance data and see what was happening Poole plotted the performance of millions of iPhones on a graph the performance of many phones was cut down after the latest operating system upgrade from Apple John Poole published his findings which amounted to a scientific accusation that Apple headquarters in Cupertino California was intentionally slowing down customers phones without telling them to his surprise the company quickly admitted it but insisted they were doing nothing wrong to see whether Apple will face a class-action lawsuit admitted to slowing down old giant says it's done to save battery life Apple's admission that it was intentionally slowing down the performance of older iPhones triggered news reports around the world complains their iPhones were running slow it looked like a case of planned obsolescence an effort to pressure consumers into buying new products when they didn't have to but Apple's CEO Tim Cook denied it we always focus on the user experience so at the heart of any decision that we make is the user there has been an international upsurge in anger from Apple customers at this demonstration in Paris Apple is portrayed as the evil empire accused of tax evasion and cheating customers France has moved to make planned obsolescence a crime and has placed Apple under formal investigation on Apple's home turf in California Canadian consumer rights lawyer Shanna Scarlett was previously part of a successful lawsuit that forced Apple to pay a four hundred and fifty million dollar fine for breaking US antitrust laws now she has launched a class-action lawsuit alleging that Apple has tricked its customers they actively reached in to a consumers phone through the operating system and made what is a large change in terms of the throttling of performance without properly disclosing it to consumers that is a you know a fairly invasive act for a company to do Apple declined our request for an interview but when the government of canada demanded an explanation from the company at a parliamentary committee hearing mark today we have from Apple Canada exactly infamy lack Apple Canada lawyer chuckling Samuel ACK agreed to appear the sole purpose of the software update in this case was to help customers to continue to use older iPhones with aging batteries without shutdowns not to drive them to buy newer devices I think that if Apple were truly interested in the consumers interest maybe it could have told them that the entire problem would have been solved by a battery replacement but it wasn't necessary to face the stark choices of throttling performance automatic shutdowns or buying a new phone there was a fourth option on the table that was just replaced the battery I don't think that Apple did anything wrong mr. Erskine Smith you have five minutes Apple's lawyer was challenged by Toronto liberal MP Nathan Erskine Smith who pointed out that Apple had issued a sort of apology for its actions now you've strangely today said Apple did nothing wrong but the issue is disclosure and Apple apologized for non-disclosure with related in relation to the slowed performance so was the non-disclosure intentional or inadvertent we did not non disclose anything we didn't have anything to not disclose but the slowed performance of the phone the very reason you're attending today that you did not disclose to consumers was that non-disclosure intentional or inadvertent it was not intentional Apple's admission that it did not properly disclose the slowdown is key to Shanna Scarlett's lawsuit against the company a case that she says proves the value of consumer class actions how are you one person supposed to fight against Apple how is one person with ten dollars of harm supposed to fight against one of the most well capitalized companies in the entire world it's impossible [Music] Silicon Valley has been driving the US economy for years now but there is growing scrutiny on the questionable business practices of Apple and other star companies here and a growing movement to make them more accountable to consumers for the National I'm Terence Mckenna in Cupertino California

Channel: CBC News: The National

Views: 3,242,186

Keywords: Apple, deceptive, controversial, business, practices, overpriced, repair, charges, battery, slowdown, scandal, CBC, The National

Id: _XneTBhRPYk

Length: 18min 12sec (1092 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 08 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/maxjag]

I spilt some water on a maxed out Mac from work and it stopped working.

Took it to the Macstore.

I was told it wasn't reparable and that I would need to buy a full replacement for it.

Took it a local Mac repair shop. Got it fixed for a $100.

[u/[deleted]]

Jeez for $1200 you’re only a tiny bit off from a brand new laptop

[u/radiomix]

Don't forget the involvement of farmers in the "Right to Repair" movement. John Deere has similar practices to Apple when it comes to farmers trying to work on their farm equipment. A $200,000 tractor can stop working if you don't use a certified John Deere part because the software knows it's third party. Some have gone so far as to replace the tractor's software with hacked Russian versions to get around this issue.

Correction: Ukrainian versions of the software.

[u/somellama1]

Do you think Tim Cook fucks money

[u/epidemica]

I knew this was Louis Rossman before even opening the link, this headline is his business model.

[u/[deleted]]

"It's not a computer, it's a lifestyle."

[u/certstatus]

why would you ever pay $1200 for any kind of computer repair? just buy a new computer at that point.

[u/zenofchaos]

The real question here: Is anyone really surprised?

[u/Halvus_I]

Apple doesn't do any repairs of any kind. They replace parts, period.

Oh and they dont keep parts stocked in the store, each part has to have a replacement order associated with it before being shipped.

Edit:Edited upon hearing stories they do in fact stock parts.