Comments on: Apple sued over iPhone 3G reception issues

Alabama woman seeks class action status in lawsuit that charges Apple's iPhone 3G network is slower than advertised.

[celticbrewer]

I agree with the basis of the lawsuit. My support of it will depend on what she's asking for in terms of compensation. This is definitely a case where what is advertised isn't what was delivered. As the article states, "Apple finally acknowledged earlier this week that reception issues existed." I'm sure this will get settled quickly out of court.

To Medfolds who asks: "Some people are so retarded. Why doesn't she get a life." Well, she's an apple customer, afterall!

[bjlong80]

Yeah, I had the same issue and go figure, the split second I walked into my local apple store the EDGE network was back up and running but still no 3G. Shocking though how the Apple employees are spouting the same BS all over the country, I got the impression from the "genius" that I knew more about what was going on with 3G than he did. As for this lady filing a law suit, MORE POWER TO HER! I hope it goes to class action status because I will damn sure be including myself in that law suit! It amazes me how Apple can advertise this product as faster when it clearly is not and it clearly was not put through proper testing before the product was released.

[Wheezerdr]

sign me up for the class action suit.

[jcpole]

The plaintiff does have a point, but it's counterproductive to sue Apple at this point. Would she rather Apple spent the money fixing the problem, or paying her drastically inflated attorney fees?

[nachurboy]

If you bought a defective product, do you consider it counterproductive to sue, if the manufacturer can't make it work as advertised and you have no recourse? Apple is going to spend money to fix it regardless of the lawsuit. The only thing this lawsuit does is make the plaintiff's lawyer rich and Apple come up with a fix or replacement.

Good or bad, you need litigation in order resolve issues like this, otherwise there's NO incentive for a large corporation to act in goodwill towards an individual.

[msanto]

See my earlier comment. I work w/ mobile phones, and the iPhone will have 1 bar while the other six on my desk have full bars. And we have several iPhones exhibiting the same issue.

And let me tell you, in my biz, I've seen a lot of crappy phones. Among 3G phones, this is the worst I've seen in comparison to other 3G phones sitting in the same area.

It has nothing to do with ATT or network coverage, as I can demonstrate with real data. And note: users around the WORLD are complaining.

I can't understand these comments by people who really know nothing about the technology.

Here is my fear (and knowing how mobile phones work, it's very valid). Apple will fix the problem by dropping the phone into EDGE instead of letting it sit with 1 bar at 3G. Meanwhile my other six devices will be in 3G.

Two months down the road, if you tear down an iPhone 3G you will see a different 3G chipset, and those late adopters will have a much better experience.

Think I'm making this up? I've seen it before. As I said, I work in the industry.

However, when and if Apple fixes it, I will compare against my other six 3G phones of different models. If they are still in 3G with full bars while the iPhone is not, I will definitely let people know (like the Times, where I have been published before).

[Lerianis]

"Good or bad, you need litigation in order resolve issues like this, otherwise there's NO incentive for a large corporation to act in goodwill towards an individual."

Finally, we have another person who gets it and is bright enough to realize that without the threat of losing money or 'face', most corporations would screw their customers over every single day. It's the same reason why I am against 'litigation reform' connected to health care in this country: you give doctors too much of a pass, and they won't be as diligent as they normally would be.

[Seaspray0]

Where's all that "apple love" from the faithful? Perhaps the fanboys were lemmings after all.

[bourgtai]

At this point, it'd be kind of like that joke, "Black guy walks into a Klan meeting." You don't care what we'd have to say, so we don't care to say it.

[pbbrooks]

Good for the Alabama woman. At the very least, she is forcing Apple to substantiate their position that the iPhone 3G does everything they promised it would. I just bought my 3G last week and am very disappointed with it's poor reception and slow network access. I prefer my old iPhone and will be returning the new one shortly. In my 25 years as an Apple devotee, I have never been more disappointed with Apple.

[bburn--2008]

I've decided to follow my instinct & not bite to the iPhone 3G hype and bought a Blackberry Curve and totally love it. You just can't go wrong with RIM's technology: It's robust, fast & reliable. You just can't go wrong with a BB ;-) Apple deserves this lawsuit.

[mrgoodall]

My previous curve dropped calls like a hot potato should I sue also? And Blackberry's ads show live video with people on the phone, but mine doesnt do that, i should sue too huh?

[nachurboy]

mrgoodall, you should sue if you and 60k or more others are having dropped calls and RIM isn't able to fix it.

If they also advertised a feature clearly, but the product doesn't have that feature, yes, by all means, sue.

It's your prerogative to use the justice system if no resolution can be made directly with the offender.

[imaginenews]

My reception in dallas after the the latest update has gotten worst. I get next to no bars now in a 3G saturated area. That's not much of a fix but more of a break.

[Lerianis]

Something tells me that the problem is the chipsets in the iPhones. That is the ONLY reason why you would get no 3G in a 3G saturated area. Heck, my parents work in a 3G area, and I checked when we were in Baltimore the last time...... no 3G at all, it was dropping back onto the Edge network. I go online and check..... wow..... my father's LG Trax phone uses the same chipset as the iPhone 3G.... connection anyone? I think there is.

[Wander9s]

Should sue both Apple and ATT. Call drop and slowness as their advertise.

[hooterboy31]

I`d like to sue them for their moronic 2.0.2 update which is a waste of time. I wish her the best.

[kaibelf]

I think this lawsuit is completely justified, for the following reasons:

1. Apple spent a month being silent about the issue, with no communication about it to their consumer base. That caused people to not know WHAT to do, and with no "official" worsd from Apple, their on support personnel have been unable to help people with an issue "there have been no reports" on.

2. You can be in the middle of Chicago and still have terrible/no reception, even with their weekly firmware update. Even a generic pay-as-you-go $10 phone works. Why can't this expensive piece of hardware at least pick up signals from the OLD network? Defective parts.

3. If you are unable to access data at a reasonable speed, AT&T will not only NOT credit you for the service, but refuses to allow you to remove the data segment frmo your plan. If you wanted to just get rid of the data segment until they work this out, you're out of luck because of your contract, so you're essentially forced to pay for a nonexistent service.

I'm just surprised that Apple let this happen. Usually their products are so solid. But this one and MobileMe - what a mess!

[Vegaman_Dan]

There has been plenty of response- all of it blame. Apple retail store employees blame AT&T's service. AT&T retail store employees blame Apple's hardware. Which is correct? Without any word from the companies themselves, then theses paid representatives have the only word out there and it's just finger pointing.

[sanenazok]

I'm with the lady suing. It will force Apple to acknowledge that there's a problem. People better get ready for $50 Apple store coupons.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Money sniffing lawyers are hard at work here.

That said, it was only a matter of time before someone stepped up to sue. And they may have a very real case for the situation. There's plenty of evidence to back them up that the device has not lived up to the advertisements. Since Apple didn't do any extensive real world testing on a scale as such needed to actually test the network, they could easily be found liable.

" 'twice as fast at half the price' 'twice as fast at half the price'"

That statement could doom them. The device isn't twice as fast, and actually costs more than the original unit. Truth in advertising is important and that line alone could be a very important tipping point.

In the end does it matter? Not a bit. Apple will simply quietly settle and make all of this go away to avoid having any precendent made that could force more attention to the issue down the road. This is the way that businesses work, and Apple is a business first, and a computer maker second.

[Seaspray0]

Where's all that "apple love" from the faithful cult? What happened to the blind denial of anything wrong with apple? Did you blink or something? Stare at the iphone/ipod/mac... you're getting sleepy... repeat after me, "Steve is our leader. All apple products are cool and hip and inovative and always work great."

[bourgtai]

Seaspray, I think your new daily build of Ubuntu is ready.

[Vegaman_Dan]

They didn't get the call from Jobs- their 3G phone kept dropping the signal.

[IowaNinersFan]

Vegaman-Dan.......LOL. A software upgrade that made the reception even crappier than before. These fanboys are delusional. I'm sure it took this long before someone sued them for making such crappy and expensive products. You go girl!

[Kwasiowusu]

Good to see consumers finally take action aginst Apple's overpriced, deffective products. The iPod for example, is one pf Apple's products, that has had a very high failure rate for years, without Apple compensating the poor saps that had been unfortunate enough to buy deffective iPods. It will be good to see Apple being forced to cough up for false advertising, and selling products that they know don't work as advertised.

[bourgtai]

Early adapter, beware. It's been that way since the dawn of technology.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Here's the situation in a nutshell. Apple promised the customer the Holy Grail. What they got instead was an aluminum can. You can make whatever claims you want, but in the end it is what is delivered that counts. In this case, the customer's experience did not live up to the promises made by Apple and they are looking to have them addressed.

Both Ford Pintos and Ferrari's have speedos that go to 120 mph or higher. Guess which one is actually going to do it. I think if anyone advertised the Pinto as being the 120+ mph car they might get a few complaints that the OEM might have stretched the truth a little. Okay, a lot.

[twyrick]

No, this lawsuit is NOT justified. There's really no proof (yet) that Apple is the one at fault here! In fact, there are already reports of people calling in to AT&T with reception complaints, and being told that it's a known AT&T problem with 3g malfunctioning on some of their towers! One guy on the Apple forums just said he received an $85 service credit from AT&T without even having to fight for it. They were fully AWARE that they rolled out 3g in many markets without making sure it was functioning at 100% of its potential first.

If this was a cellphone made by anyone OTHER than Apple, you'd have to really dig to find cellphone specific review web sites that told you if the reception was below-average. But since Apple is the "media darling", anything they sell is pounced on by all the major media outlets. It sounds to me like tweaks like firmware 2.02 are merely Apple's attempt at making their phone behave better when it runs into faulty AT&T towers. You can change around the parameters all you want for what signal strength a phone needs to see before it decides it's time to switch to/from the alternate EDGE network, or what the "threshhold" is going to be for it to declare you have "no service" ... but that doesn't change the fact that poor signal has a root cause of AT&T not having enough coverage, or covering your area with a partially malfunctioning cell tower!

[msanto]

See my earlier comment. I work w/ mobile phones, and the iPhone will have 1 bar while the other six on my desk have full bars. And we have several iPhones exhibiting the same issue.

And let me tell you, in my biz, I've seen a lot of crappy phones. Among 3G phones, this is the worst I've seen in comparison to other 3G phones sitting in the same area.

It has nothing to do with ATT or network coverage, as I can demonstrate with real data. And note: users around the WORLD are complaining.

I can't understand these comments by people who really know nothing about the technology.

Here is my fear (and knowing how mobile phones work, it's very valid). Apple will fix the problem by dropping the phone into EDGE instead of letting it sit with 1 bar at 3G. Meanwhile my other six devices will be in 3G.

Two months down the road, if you tear down an iPhone 3G you will see a different 3G chipset, and those late adopters will have a much better experience.

Think I'm making this up? I've seen it before. As I said, I work in the industry.

However, when and if Apple fixes it, I will compare against my other six 3G phones of different models. If they are still in 3G with full bars while the iPhone is not, I will definitely let people know (like the Times, where I have been published before).

[JamesXFree]

While I don't believe a class action lawsuit is the answer, I do wish Apple had been more responsive to customer concerns from the beginning since it was obviously a very widespread problem and not isolated to any specific geographic location. I live in a 3g rich environment and while sitting at a patio restaurant had my iPhone switch from 3g to Edge, back to 3g and then to No Service in a matter of minutes without changing location. Since this is a commonly reported problem, I do believe Apple and ATT should have responded much more openly then they have to date.

[renGek]

She's smart because she is probably getting paid some good $$$ to be the face of the initial lawsuit. For her it probably has nothing to do with the iphone if she even had one for more than 2 weeks. I'm sure the law firm representing her justifies it by saying the little guy are ticked off and deserves to be represented. And in many ways that is true. It is the one thing that the little guys have to keep large corporations in check. But make no mistake of it, thats secondary to what the law firm's goal. But then again, its just business.