sting ofAntitrust on Apple. The Competition and Market Authority has sent to the Cupertino company a maxi fine of 900 thousand euros for "unfair commercial practices to the detriment of consumers". At the end of the investigation, the Authority ascertained "both the incomplete application to consumers, by the companies of the Apple group operating in Italy, of the two-year legal guarantee charged to the seller - reads a statement from the Antitrust - and the communication of unclear information about the coverage areas of the paid additional support services offered by Apple to consumers”.
In detail, three companies of the group founded by Steve Jobs (Apple Sales International, Apple Italia Srl and Apple Retail Italia) are responsible for two violations, respectively punished with fines from 400 and 500 thousand euros (the maximum that the Authority can impose). First, in stores and on the apple.com and store.apple.com websites, companies "failed to adequately inform consumers about rights to free two-year assistance provided for by the Consumer Code".
Secondly, "the information given on the nature, content and duration of the support services additional to the AppleCare Protection Plan payment" prompted consumers "to sign an additional contract when the coverage of the paid service partially overlapped with the free legal guarantee provided for by the Consumer Code".
In addition to paying the fines, the three companies will have to publish an extract of the Antitrust resolution on the site www.apple.com, in order to inform consumers.
Years later and with very different numbers, but today a sort of technological level playing field seems to have been re-established. Indeed, the latest sanction by the Italian Authority brings to mind the historic European action against the most famous of Apple's competitors, Microsoft. Even then the protagonist of the story was an Italian, today much better known for other reasons: he is the current Prime Minister, Mario Monti.
Back in 2004, when he was European Commissioner for the Market with responsibility for the protection of competition, the Professor fined Bill Gates' creature for something like 497 million euro. In short, Apple executives can almost count themselves lucky.
