This week Apple Inc has been threatened with a temporary closure of its Italian operations due to the absence of their offering of a free two-year warranty on their products. As demanded by Italian law, a free two-year warranty is indeed required on products in many categories in the tech world – Italian authorities are also threatening Apple with a fine of 300,000 euros for this situation. This fine and threat comes after a similar situation in which Italy’s AGCM competition and market authority called Apple on not telling customers their rights to free technical assistance.
This second offense is having Verizon get a fine that’s quite a bit less than their customer support situation, that particular case sending Apple up for 900,000 Euros instead. Of course such cash is beyond inconsequential for Apple if you’ve only got raw hard cash on your mind, the cases themselves being the important factor here – along with the temporary closures, of course.
Apple appealed against the antitrust fine being shown here today earlier this year but lost the case, with their current predicament giving them just 30 days to respond to the AGCM. The AGCM alleges that Apple currently offers a free one-year guarantee for their products with an extension to two years for a fee without telling customers that they are obliged by Italian law to give two years for free.
Stay tuned as Italy speaks with Apple in under a month – or so they hope. Have a peek in the timeline below to see how often Italy comes up in tech news here on SlashGear – it’s not often!
Story Timeline
- Nokia N900 available for pre-order in Germany and Italy
- Nokia Booklet 3G up for €699 preorder in Italy
- Asus Eee 1215N and 1201PN info surfaces in Italy [Updated with NVIDIA comment]
- UK iPad preorders being delivered today [Update: Italy too]
- Google Cars Ordered Marked and With Fully Announced Itinerary in Italy
- Asus Eee Pad Transformer Android tablet packing 3G gets official pricing in Italy
- Samsung seeks iPhone 4S sales ban in France and Italy
- Apple loses appeal on $1.2M fine in Italy
- Italy gets a new Ferrari red high-speed train
- Italy gets Galaxy S III early and attempts to smash it
Apple gets antitrust and closure threat in Italy is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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so they hope. Have a peek in the timeline below to see how often Italy comes up in tech news here on SlashGear – it’s not often.
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