The Ministry of Justice of Brazil published yesterday (Sept-06-2022), in the Official Gazette of the Union, an order prohibiting APPLE from selling iPhones 12, 13 and following throughout the Brazilian territory.
After many lawsuits filed by several Costumers Defenders called ‘PROCONS’, SENACOM (a Government Agency) embraced this cause taking the Brazilian consumers side.
Explaining it from the beginning: this fight between Brazilian's consumer protection agencies and cell phone manufacturer APPLE began in 2020, during the launch of the iPhone 12 cell phone, when the company started selling cell phones without battery chargers, claiming that was “defending the environment”.
Let’s be very clear: Brazil fully supports the defense of the environment and the preservation of the planet.
But, despite Apple being called several times to give explanations, in none of them did the company make it sufficiently clear about the benefits resulting from the sale of cell phones without the respective chargers.
Likewise, at no time did the company offer to deduct the value of the chargers from the final price of the product, so that no consumer was harmed.
Who likes to pay a lot of dollars for a product that you need to connect to a Laptop in order to use it?
What is a discharged cell phone good for?
Nobody could agree with such practice.
But, the fact that the consumer needed to buy another Apple product to be able to use the iPhone12, for the company, was a perfectly normal thing... After all, profits increase...
But, Brazilian Justice thinks differently and, in the decision published yesterday, the understanding was that this commercial practice of forcing a person to buy another product to be able to charge the cell phone using electricity is an illegal coercion and offends the brazilian Costumers Protection Code.
As a result, Apple was fined more than R$ 12,000,000.00 (US$ 2,285,714.29), in addition to having to adapt to Brazilian regulations in order to continue selling its phones in the country.
But while consumers have won that battle, it seems the war isn't over yet.
The Company said in a statement: “At Apple, we consider our impact on people and the planet in everything we do. Power adapters represent our biggest use of zinc and plastic, and taking them out of the boxes has helped to reduce more than two million metric tons of carbon emissions – the equivalent of taking 500,000 cars off the road a year.”
As the company still has a deadline to appeal, we will keep an eye on it and keep you updated.