Battery

Apple offers store credit to settle Canadian lawsuits

Apple continues to very successful in the marketplace with its class leading iPod line of portable media players. However, some of Apple’s claims on battery life and storage capacity of its iPod devices have led to suits being filed.

Apple Canada has reportedlyoffered $3.45 million in Apple store credits to Canadians who bought iPod’s in the first, second or third generations before June 24, 2004. Prior to that date, Apple marketing claimed that the iPod’s had a battery life of 8 hours between charges. The suit contends battery life is only 3 hours.

Two lawsuits were filed over the battery life in Canada with one filed in Montreal and the other filed in Toronto. The Toronto suit was granted class-action status by the Ontario Superior Court while the Montreal suit was denied class-action status by a Quebec court.

Despite the differences in the rulings on the status of the suits over battery life, Apple has offered as many as 80,000 customers a $44 credit that can be used in its store. $44 won’t go far in the Apple store on many of its products, so some will see the credit as simply a coupon to entice users into spending more money in the store.

Battery life isn’t the only feature drawing legal fire on the iPod. A suit is pending that was filed by a student in Montreal named David Bitton. Bitton filed suit because Apple claimed his iPod Nano had 8GB of storage and it only had 7.45GB of space available when new. Bitton is seeking either a full refund of $220 of the purchase price or a 7.5% refund and $75 in damages. The suit sounds like a lot of work for such little return.

Apple’s iPod isn’t the only item that has drawn legal fire for misleading marketing claims. Apple has asuit pending in the U.S. over deceptive marketing that claimed its MacBook LCDs could reproduce “millions of colors” when in fact they could only display 262,144 colors.

dailytech.com