Whomever is in charge seems not to have learned from this as well.
Let's suppose that the UK repair operation is manage separately. Let's call that exec Joe. And suppose further that the person in charge measured by metrics like "doesn't spend any more on repairs per sale than the US operation does", implying that spending less is better.
Joe making a rule something like "refuse any warranty repairs if a moisture sensor trips, even if the damage is unrelated" is a pretty easy way to keep repairs down. Some people may sue, sure, but probably not many.
And let's assume further, as is common, that Apple's lawyers are all on staff and under their General Counsel. That means they're a fixed cost, and not directly on the budget of the repair operation. That is not one of the metrics Joe is evaluated by. Maybe they won't need to add any new lawyers to handle the extra load; maybe they will. Further, any relationship between repair rules and legal costs will be hard to spot, given that it's delayed by time and filtered through many people.
So at worst, Joe might down the road have to face some sort of complicated analysis from the head of legal complaining about increased costs. But he can point to repair cost savings, so it'll be difficult to say whether on net he's making or costing Apple money.
I would guess the bigger risk for Joe is not legal expenses but the PR problem from writeups like this or an eventual decline in something like a Net Promoter Score metric as more people feel put off by Apple. Those, however, are also pretty long feedback loops. So Joe gets an immediate reduction in repair costs versus the possibility of a problem a year or three down the road. Many ambitious execs are perfectly fine with that; they're hoping to be in a new position anyway in a couple of years, so it may be the next guy's problem.
And really, Joe may not have a problem at all; as this article makes clear, having to sue the company wasn't enough to keep the guy from buying another Apple laptop. That's not a great incentive for anybody to change behavior.
“Customer hostile” seems to be a perfectly “good” way to run a business if you goal is raw profit. Doubly so in the US with essentially non-existent consumer protection law.
In the US, people generally have at most a couple of ISP choices, and the general pattern of duopolies is to offer basically the same thing with minor differentiators (e.g., one will be 10% cheaper and 10% worse). Many airline routes are minimally competitive.
This is not getting better with ecosystem lock-in effects. As TFA mentions, this guy had such a bad experience that he sued Apple, and he still bought another laptop from them. That's because Apple intentionally killed off the companies that built MacOS compatible hardware, and never allowed anybody else to build IOS phones or tablets.
Most people have very limited choices, and all those choices engage in essentially the same user-hostile practices anyway. The only “choice” is to leave it altogether, which is visibly happening now there is an alternative to cable TV, but not having an internet connection isn't an option for most people.
It's also often a profitable way to run a company. Take a look at the Net Promoter Score for the Fortune 500: https://customer.guru/net-promoter-score/fortune-500
The number in theory ranges from 100 (everybody would enthusiastically promote to friends) to -100 (the opposite). Some well-liked companies include Apple at 47, Starbucks at 77, and Costco at 79. In contrast, Comcast is -3, Time Warner is -5, United is -8. There are definitely some places loved by customers in the Fortune 500, but as you look down the list it's far from universal.
Comcast's profit was something like $11 billion last year. Are they customer hostile? Notoriously. Do they care? Not really!
Routine cases like these will be managed with boilerplate briefs and filings, standard arguments, and form letters.
Claims may be checked very briefly to make sure there's nothing unusual or legally dangerous about them. If there isn't, the process will likely be handled by standard templated paperwork, and might as well be automated.
Nominal numbers = bad KPI
Ratios = good KPI
"Repair spend / (lost) court filings" is a way better ratio than plain "Repair spend".
But yes, it's perfectly possible that a company would use a bad nominal metric like "repair spend". It need not even be explicit. Typical budgeting processes encourage that sort of thing because it's seen as good to be under budget and bad to be over it.
Maybe, they are focusing on other things like thinness and light weight which results in making gadgets less repairable instead of a big planned conspiracy.
... And suing customers like crazy to support a less repairable product strategy.
When apple starts making a show of actually putting up not-intentionally-cryptic schematics and supplying the market with the parts necessary to repair their dying machines (batteries would be a good start) I might loosen my tinfoil hat, but you'll have to forgive me for the time being...
It's the same reason most companies try to prevent third parties from repairing their products. 100% "I don't want to stake my reputation on someone else's repair job".
I'm just saying that if a company _does_ make it hard to repair their products, and you sat in on the meeting where that decision was made, you're going to hear "I'm tired of people trying to repair our products and screwing it up".
MBP with water damage to the battery charging circuitry. Battery is fine. Laptop is fine on AC power.
Let's see how much it'll cost... maybe $300ish? Labor, parts?
Nope. "That will be $899. Maybe we should talk about getting you into a new MBP instead?"
Not when even the CEO lists repairs as one of bigger growth concern https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmd9a5/tim-cook-to-invest...