Apple has just been fined $9 million in Australia for misleading its customers. The fine has been handed out by the Federal Court in Australia. This penalty is levied on Apple as part of the judgement for the lawsuit case filed by Australian Competition and Consumer Commission against Apple. This lawsuit was filed last year by ACCC on the charges that Apple had been misleading its customers on Error 53. To put things into perspective, Error 53 is a bug which affected a number of Apple iPhone users last year.
As explained by the ACCC Commissioner, Sarah Court, during the hearing, Apple was denying the customers in Australia to have their devices repaired by third-party without offering any solution. Sarah told that the customers said that “they were being refused a remedy of any kind by Apple on the basis that their device had had unauthorised repairs, and those repairs could be as minor as just having a cracked screen replaced on an iPhone or iPad, which all of us need to do from time to time,”. She further added that “So these consumers were being told, ‘because you’ve had this third party repair, you are not entitled to any remedy’.
On this, the ACCC argued that every customer should be able to have third-party repairs done as long as the repair does not “damage the underlying system of the phone.”. On this, the ACCC won this lawsuit claim and Apple has been fined $9 million in Australia. Also, the company has taken a “court enforceable undertaking to not engage in this kind of conduct in the future.”. In 2016, Apple mentioned that Error 53 comes when the home button is replaced on iPhones by third-party repairs and not directly by Apple. The error comes as Apple’s software searches for the original home button which is not present and instead finds a third-party one. Also, there was a lawsuit filed in the US for this same Error 53 bug too but that was dismissed due to lack of merit.