Bengaluru’s consumer court asks Apple India to pay 1 Lac as damages to an iPhone 13 owner

Bengaluru’s consumer court ordered Apple India to pay a sum of INR 1,00,000/- to one of the customers after he sued them for unfair trade practices and for hardship caused

In October 2021, Awez Khan bought an Apple iPhone 13 at INR 79,999/- with a one-year warranty. However, the phone’s battery and speaker stopped working properly and since the phone was under warranty, he reported the same to the iPlanet Care Center in Indiranagar, Bengaluru. A technician assured that his iPhone will be fixed. A few days later, Khan, Khan was informed that his iPhone 13 has been fixed and he can collect it from the service center.

Upon checking, Khan found out that the battery and speaker problem remains which is when he flagged the issue and asked the service center to repair the phone again. After two weeks, he was informed that they detected a glue-like substance in the phone and that repairing this was out of their warranty policy. Khan was asked to pay extra to get his iPhone 13 repaired.

This is when Khan took it to Apple India via email but to no avail. Khan later sued Apple India accusing the tech juggernaut of unfair trade practices at the Bengaluru Urban District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission based in Shantinagar in December 2022.

Apple India defended themselves saying that the damage was ‘accidental’ and with a lack of facts. Apple’s lawyers tagged the lawsuit as legally not sound. The tech giant alleged the user had done unauthorised modifications to the phone which made it out of warranty. However, the court favored Khan ordering the tech juggernaut to pay a sum of 1 lac rupees which includes INR 79,999/- for the iPhone 13 he bought in October 2021 and the additional INR 20,000/- for the hardship he had to go through.

It isn’t the first time Apple has been accused of such unfair trade practices. Earlier last year, Apple India and its authorised service center were asked to repair the phone and pay INR 10,000/- to a user based in Bengaluru along with INR 10,000/-. If the tech giant fails to repair the phone, it was asked to refund INR 92,000/- that the user paid to buy the iPhone in 2018.

Earlier this year, a court orders Apple to pay $90 to over 3mn iPhone (with models released pre-2018 ) due to the ongoing ‘batterygate’ issues and how Apple throttled the performance on older iPhones to lure users into ugprading to a newer iPhone.