A Chinese man, Quan Jiang, aged 30 has managed to trick Apple into replacing as many as 1500 iPhones that he claimed “wouldn’t turn on” Out of the 3000 devices he attempted to send in, almost half were replaced with new, original Apple iPhones.
Out of the 3000 devices sent to Apple, only 1,576 were accepted, which still faced the company with an $895,000 loss, according to the court documents.
Counterfeiting of Apple products is a huge issue in China. In the more populated areas, you’ll always find more than one electronics parts shop that claims they own original parts but that is hard to confirm in the grey market.
Mr Jiang found a loophole in Apple’s warranty program. If the devices wouldn’t turn on, they could not be diagnosed and checked for any counterfeit parts. Combine that with identity theft and you’ve got yourself a business worth hundreds of thousands of illegally acquired dollars.
It’s unknown how long the scam has been going on but Apple only realised something was off during 30th of June, 2017. Apple’s legal counsel sent Jiang a “cease and desist” letter to an address in Corvallis where as many as 150 of the warranty claims had pointed to.
Apple’s lawyers have commented on the matter:
Submission of an iPhone that will not power on is critical to perpetuating iPhone warranty fraud, as the phone will not be able to be immediately examined or repaired by Apple technicians, triggering the Apple iPhone replacement process as part of its product warranty policy,” Duffy wrote, quoting Apple brand protection representative Adrian Punderson.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon, Mr Jiang was receiving as many as 20 to 30 inoperable and counterfeit iPhones from his partners in Hong Kong, between January 2016 and February 2018.
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