Brazil fines Apple $1.9M for not including charger in iPhone 12 box

AppleInsider · March 20, 2021 12:17PM

Brazilian consumer protection regulator Procon-SP has fined Apple for selling the iPhone 12 in Brazil without the charger, months after the organization forced Apple to provide chargers sold in Sao Paolo.

In December, Procon-SP declared Apple had to provide a charger to anyone who bought the iPhone 12 and requested it. On March 19, the regulator continued to attack Apple, fining the company for failing to adequately explain the charger's exclusion.

The fine of 10,546,442.48 real ($1.9 million) was accompanied by accusations that Apple misled in its advertising, and sold devices with factory defects, according to Tilt. Apple also allegedly failed to maintain fair terms of contract with consumers, and for not repairing devices under warranty.

"Apple needs to understand that in Brazil there are solid consumer protection laws and institutions," said Procon-SP executive director Fernando Capez. "It needs to respect these laws and these institutions."

In December, Apple told the agency the charger's removal was due to environmental concerns, in that there are too many charging bricks in the world. The removal was also believed to cut down on carbon emissions, but the agency at the time wasn't satisfied by the explanation.

The regulator decided to apply the fine due to Apple apparently failing to convince the regulator. Apple has the opportunity to ask Procon-SP to reevaluate its decision, or it could move to the court system for a more favorable result, other than paying the fine and changing its practices in Brazil.

The other complaints, which are included in the fine, include accusations the iPhone's water resistance isn't enough for consumers. The regulator received complaints from consumers, where their Phones stopped working properly after entering the water, but were also denied a repair due to water damage.

Issues following system updates and refusing to repair products bought abroad within 30 days were also mentioned.

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kelemor · March 20, 2021 12:48PM

1.9 million prolly find that in the couch cushions

fred1 · March 20, 2021 1:49PM

This is nuts. Companies don’t have the right to include or not any accessories with their products? Or to decide what their warranty covers? What’s next, the state determining prices?

lkrupp · March 20, 2021 2:08PM

Easy fix, just raise the prices of Brazilian iPhones to cover the cost of the forced inclusion of a charger. $50 ought to be about right.

lkrupp · March 20, 2021 2:11PM

fred1 said:

This is nuts. Companies don’t have the right to include or not any accessories with their products? Or to decide what their warranty covers? What’s next, the state determining prices?

Be careful what you talk about. Price controls are the first step to a centrally managed economy and I’m positive they are being discussed and promoted by people like AOC. Remember the Soviet Union's ‘Five Year Plans’ that always failed?

MplsP · March 20, 2021 2:25PM

lkrupp said:

Easy fix, just raise the prices of Brazilian iPhones to cover the cost of the forced inclusion of a charger. $50 ought to be about right.

yeah - $50 for a charger that costs Apple $0.50?

fred1 said:

This is nuts. Companies don’t have the right to include or not any accessories with their products? Or to decide what their warranty covers? What’s next, the state determining prices?

nice strawman - no one is talking about price controls. (what while we're at it, maybe we can say that Brazil's decision means the next step is providing healthcare to their consumers? Apple has to follow local laws, like every other company. Besides, this was very clearly an economic decision that Apple tried to couch as an environmental one. All Apple needed to do was offer a free charger for those who wanted/needed one - problem solved.

nadriel · March 20, 2021 2:43PM

fred1 said:

This is nuts. Companies don’t have the right to include or not any accessories with their products? Or to decide what their warranty covers? What’s next, the state determining prices?

That’s why consumer protection agencies exist, in general a single consumer has no voice or the means to demand justification in a contested situation. Companies have a lot of freedom, but when they suddenly change practices this kind of thing happens. I don’t have to agree with the reasoning in this case, but without consumer protection we’d be worse off.

Warranty is not only written by companies, some countries have stronger warranty policies on different products that companies are held to uphold.

There’s a long way from holding companies in check to determining the prices of their products. But looking at the drug prices in the U.S, I’d say that it might be necessary in extreme cases for necessary stuff that someone needs to live. Also price fixing by competing companies is illegal pretty much everywhere. So yeah, countries take notice on prices, and it’s not always a bad thing.

I’d bet that Apple was prepared for this (Not the first time this stuff happened in Brazil, I think) and didn’t get hurt, they still have options to not pay the fine as was stated in the article.

crowley · March 20, 2021 2:51PM

lkrupp said:

Easy fix, just raise the prices of Brazilian iPhones to cover the cost of the forced inclusion of a charger. $50 ought to be about right.

So Apple should make iPhones even less price competitive out of spite towards a legal ruling? Great plan, as always.

crowley · March 20, 2021 2:52PM

fred1 said:

This is nuts. Companies don’t have the right to include or not any accessories with their products? Or to decide what their warranty covers? What’s next, the state determining prices?

No no no, what's next is they come and take your guns away.

osmartormenajr · March 20, 2021 2:53PM

Just my 2 cents (also full disclosure: I’m Brazilian, and I have a better understanding about some local issues, but I’ll defer to my fellow forum members if that skews my judgment).

Brazilian consumer protection law states that any product sold here must be fully functional. There should be no need of additional purchases to get basic functionality. Now there are some legitimate arguments that the lack of a power brick infringes the letter of the law. I myself am all in for “greener” initiatives, but IMHO Apple is wanting in providing a satisfactory justification.

Now, for the price raise argument. It’s entirely on Apple’s power to do so, and maybe they should. I can’t fathom where the state controlled prices, Soviet Union and AOC narrative came from in previous comments. I’d go out on a limb here and just say it’s some sore Republican that never traveled more than a 100 miles from his hometown, and/or attended an university.

Just keep in mind that Apple has an extremely loyal customer base in Brazil. In the past two years our currency devaluations to half its value when compared to US dollar. Five years ago I purchased my current MBP. Today the same amount of money would only get me halfway into a new iPhone price tag! If you account for purchase power parity, it’s even worse than that. A new iPhone costs 11 months worth of minimum wage for a person.

Now, you may disagree with me (it’s kind of the point of a forum), but my take is: for that kind of money, not only should the power brick be included, it shouldn’t be a half-assed 5 W that takes half of forever to fully charge my iPhone!

nadriel · March 20, 2021 2:56PM

lkrupp said:

fred1 said:

This is nuts. Companies don’t have the right to include or not any accessories with their products? Or to decide what their warranty covers? What’s next, the state determining prices?

Be careful what you talk about. Price controls are the first step to a centrally managed economy and I’m positive they are being discussed and promoted by people like AOC. Remember the Soviet Union's ‘Five Year Plans’ that always failed?

I googled AOC price control, there’s a long way from controlling price gouging by the healthcare industry and by government contractors to U.S. government determining the price of iPhone.

Unrelated hyperbole. So don’t worry, if the U.S. will ever have a centrally controlled economy it won’t happen in our or children’s lifetime. That kind of utopian (or dystopian depends who you’re asking

) society only exists and will for a very long time in Sci-fi.

edit: missing parenthesis

iGlowEarth · March 20, 2021 3:20PM

What’s AOC stands for? I tried to google it, it said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez an idiot U.S. Representative... in this comment it said AOC price control but would like to know what AOC stands for...

lkrupp · March 20, 2021 3:48PM

crowley said:

lkrupp said:

Easy fix, just raise the prices of Brazilian iPhones to cover the cost of the forced inclusion of a charger. $50 ought to be about right.

So Apple should make iPhones even less price competitive out of spite towards a legal ruling? Great plan, as always.

Yes, especially in Brazil.

omasou · March 20, 2021 5:12PM

This exemplifies the problem w/the world.

Everyone wants to sue someone for money instead of working for it.

Now municipalities and countries are doing the same to make up for loss revenues.

This really needs to stop.

cpsro · March 20, 2021 5:48PM

Let’s burn down some more rainforest now.

randominternetperson · March 20, 2021 5:50PM

This is the classic "damned if you do; damned if you don't." The EU says stop creating ewaste by including chargers; Brazil says stop selling incomplete products by excluding them.

osmartormenajr said:

Just my 2 cents (also full disclosure: I’m Brazilian, and I have a better understanding about some local issues, but I’ll defer to my fellow forum members if that skews my judgment).

Brazilian consumer protection law states that any product sold here must be fully functional. There should be no need of additional purchases to get basic functionality. Now there are some legitimate arguments that the lack of a power brick infringes the letter of the law. I myself am all in for “greener” initiatives, but IMHO Apple is wanting in providing a satisfactory justification.

And there is no exception/provision for "full disclosure"? There are no products sold with a "batteries not included" caveat? This is an interesting edge case. At some point (and many would say we are already there) one could argue that USB-A power supplies are just as ubiquitous as AC wall sockets (or close enough).

CheeseFreeze · March 20, 2021 10:51PM

lkrupp said:

Easy fix, just raise the prices of Brazilian iPhones to cover the cost of the forced inclusion of a charger. $50 ought to be about right.

Yeah because Apple also decreased it the prices by $50 when they stopped shopping it with an adapter, right?
”Because of the environment”, right?

Nope.

To increase profits. As if Apple was “environmentally conscious” - selling desktop computers where the monitor and computer are glued together and render useless when one of the two breaks.

oh, and:

„Adapter not needed“
(includes a usb-c to lightning cable)

If anything, they make more electronic waste by including a cable that doesn’t work with the adapters most people Apple claims to already have 😅

telcontar46 · March 20, 2021 11:27PM

As a large corporation doing business in many countries Apple must comply with the local laws in all of them, or contest those laws in the appropriate court. In order to comply in Brazil it appears that Apple must supply a DC charger. Whether Apple chooses to do so by sacrificing some of its profit on each iPhone sold there or increase the cost op iPhones sold there is Apple's choice. I'm quite certain that Apple's unit cost on a single charger is not $25 or $50, but that is irrelevant. (check Amazon or eBay) The folks at Apple are "big boys"who know how to run their own business quite well.

Depending on the country and local market place in question, more and more people have desktop computers, laptops, "pads" of one brand or another or other appliances that contain a USB port, and from there a simple cord with a lightning connector on one end and a USB on the other is dirt cheap - unless you insist on buying yours from Apple, in which case the price will be much higher. Nevertheless, I have been using Mac toys since 1984 at home and at work, and overall I have been very pleased with the Apple experience.

crowley · March 21, 2021 12:54AM

randominternetperson said:

This is the classic "damned if you do; damned if you don't." The EU says stop creating ewaste by including chargers; Brazil says stop selling incomplete products by excluding them.

Fortunately the EU and Brazil are different places, and Apple are more than capable of doing different things in different places, so it's not "damned if you do; damned if you don't" at all.

crowley · March 21, 2021 12:55AM

lkrupp said:

crowley said:

lkrupp said:

Easy fix, just raise the prices of Brazilian iPhones to cover the cost of the forced inclusion of a charger. $50 ought to be about right.

So Apple should make iPhones even less price competitive out of spite towards a legal ruling? Great plan, as always.

Yes, especially in Brazil.

So there's particular spite towards Brazil? Because...?

Moronic.

Kuyangkoh · March 21, 2021 2:04AM

lkrupp said:

Easy fix, just raise the prices of Brazilian iPhones to cover the cost of the forced inclusion of a charger. $50 ought to be about right.

Agreed on that, just raised the price

Brazil fines Apple $1.9M for not including charger in iPhone 12 box

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