14 DAY TRIAL // Apple did not abide by China's rules regarding certain customer services, so the country felt it had no choice but to send its watchers and strap some labels upon it.
For those who don't know what led to this, the short version of the story is as follows: Apple's customer support in China, especially for returning and having items repaired, was not satisfactory. We went into the matter, in as much detail as we could, here.
Unfortunately, the few changes that the Cupertino, California-based company did were not enough to appease the China Consumer Association.
In fact, according to National Business Daily, Apple is now on the CCA's “company integrity” blacklist.
Apple's repair policy, apparently, has another secret that, for good or ill, is no longer a secret. CCA gave a certain “consumer Wang” as an example.
The consumer's iPhone 4 suffered a defect while it was still in warranty, so the man went to Apple to get it fixed.
Apple fixed it, sure enough, but refused to renew the warranty, which meant that no free repairs would be offered if some other phone component failed afterwards.
There was also grumbling about the repair policy itself, by which Apple uses old, spare parts to repair damaged consumer devices, but keeps defective ones. Apple then repairs the defective parts and uses them to fix other devices that get sent in.
CCA wants all parts used in repairs to be new, not rehabilitated, especially if Apple isn't going to renew the warranty. Add to that the fact that Apple takes no responsibility for damage suffered by products during transit and you have a very disgruntled country.
We don't know if Apple will agree to make further changes to its customer support policy. All we can say is that the corporation could really have done without this bad publicity now that its patent spat with Samsung is climbing one level higher.