The woman who staged a highly-visible protest outside the ABQ Uptown (NM) Apple retail store last month over her stolen iPhone is a veteran protester who seems to be the victim of two long-standing Apple sales and service policies that have generated previous customer complaints. Jeanne Pahls, 53, led the group of six protesters and carried a lime-green sign proclaiming, “Apple sell used iPhones as new” and “Apple helps thieves steal iPhones.” In a sometimes-confusing complaint to the Better Business Bureau (BBB), Pahls said that Apple employees did not inform her that she was purchasing a used iPhone last December, one that had been purchased and returned earlier in the day by another customer. She also complained that later, when the stolen iPhone was presented at the Genius Bar for service, staffers replaced the phone, “no questions asked,” instead of notifying her or returning it to her.
The key elements of Pahls’ complaints hinge on two long-standing Apple policies. First, under certain circumstances a returned product may be resold to another person as “new” without notifying the customer. In fact, iOS devices under warranty are routinely swapped for a “new” device, but one that is refurbished, and not factory-new. Second, Genius Bar personnel do not determine if a product presented to them for service has been reported to police as stolen. In fact, there is no routine method for employees of any retail store to determine if returned merchandise has been stolen.
The latter policy in particular has been the subject of several recent Apple customer complaints. In some cases iPhone owners have received email from the Genius Bar informing them that their repaired iPhone is ready for pick-up. They later learned that the actual thief or a third-party had taken the stolen iPhone to the Genius Bar for service. In many cases, the person with the stolen iPhone has been given a replacement phone, effectively “laundering” the stolen handset. In these cases, Apple’s policy has been to neither notify the original owner nor to return the iPhone to them.
An agreement between the major cellular carriers and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this year will eventually result in a consolidated database of stolen handsets that would permanently disable the phones on any cellular network. This “kill” capability is expected to significantly reduce the usefulness of stolen cellular phones, thereby reducing the incentive for criminals to steal the devices. However, that database won’t be ready until next year at the earliest.
Protest & Aftermath
As for Pahls and her June 12th protest, five other friends and acquaintances from previous political marches joined her to carry signs protesting Apple’s corporate policies. Their action drew the attention of representatives from Simon Property Group, L.P., the mall management, who then called Albuquerque police. Officers and a supervisor attempted to convince Pahls to leave the property, but she refused, saying she would accept being arrested.
While Pahls protested about her own situation, the other protesters in the group held signs that spotlighted Apple’s offshore and tax-free assets, and working conditions at FoxConn manufacturing plants in China.
Despite Pahls’ reluctance to leave, after mall management issued her a warning letter—and at least one TV station had taped a report about the protest—Pahls and the protesters left without incident.
Before her protest Pahls had called an AppleCare representative, who revealed that the iPhone was currently registered to someone else, and then declined to provide any further information. “It was as if I was suspected of stealing the phone myself or selling it and then reporting it stolen,” Pahls wrote to the BBB.
She also had gone to the ABQ Uptown retail store, but received the same silent treatment from staffers there. They instructed her to have the handling police officer call them, and that officer was eventually put in contact with Apple’s security team.
Both an Albuquerque police detective and ABQ Uptown staffers confirmed to Pahls that on December 9, 2011 a woman had originally purchased the iPhone Pahls later bought, along with two other iPhones. In the afternoon, that woman returned all the iPhones to the store. That same evening, Pahls arrived to purchase a new iPhone to replace one that had just been stolen. Pahls later identified the first buyer, called her and exchanged information about the incident.
“The phone I bought was presented to me as a new, unused phone,” she wrote the BBB. “I do not remember consenting to being given a refurbished phone, I thought my phone was new.” Pahls says she registered the iPhone in the presence of store employees, although Apple corporate security later told the police detective that Pahls had not registered the phone. It’s not clear what “registration” means in the context of Pahls’ complaint—registered with AppleCare or activated on a cellular network via iTunes, or both.
“Why was I treated as a non-owner of the phone when I had the receipt for it?” Pahls asked in her complaint. “Why does Apple reregister phones, no questions asked? Why doesn’t Apple report serial numbers of reregistered phones to the police?”
Pahls concluded her complaint by writing, “I have been a several times over computer customer of Apple. It seems to me that I deserved to be told the truth from every Apple employee, deserved to be sold a new iPhone since I was told it was new, deserve policies that will hinder, not help, phone theft, and deserved to be treated as the owner rather than a suspected thief of my own phone.”
Pahls’ complaint with the BBB is still pending. Typically the Bureau attempts to mediate a solution between the complainant and involved business. However, the Bureau has no authority or method of imposing a disposition for its complaints.
Pahls has been on the protest lines before. She is one plaintiff in a long-running lawsuit against Bernalillo County, the city of Albuquerque and its police department over the handling of protesters during a 2007 visit by then-President George W. Bush. The plaintiffs claim they were not allowed into a designated viewing area when Bush visited a local residence for a fund-raising event. Instead, the lawsuit states, the anti-Bush group was shuffled off to a location “at least 150 yards away from the fundraiser site.” The lawsuit claims violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and is still pending in U.S. District Court.
Read a TV news report about Pahls’ Apple store protest, and download (pdf) the warning letter issued to Pahls by the mall management. Also download (pdf) the complaint that Pahls submitted to the Better Business Bureau.
Update: On the day this story was posted, it was revealed that a suspect in the recent burglary of the Steve Jobs family home in Palo Alto (N. Calif.) had been arrested, based on information obtained when a stolen iMac and iPads connected to Apple’s iTunes servers.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Her whole stolen iPhone complaint is one we hear a lot. It’s not our job to police such things. If she comes into the store and says her phone was stolen we not have the authority to do anything. That’s hy she was told to go to the police. If she files a police report and the police chose to follow up with Corporate and request an action then we can do it, whether it is holding the phone, notifying the police it was brought in etc.
Otherwise we have little else to do but assume the phone was a gift or aftermarket sale etc.
Apple doesn’t act as a law enforcement agency because it is not a law enforcement agency.
I can only imagine if some couple breaks up and the boyfriend reports the phone is stolen, and some employee refuses to replace the girlfriends phone because it’s been reported stolen.
How is Apple supposed to enforce that.
However, if the name of the person who ‘re-registered’ the stolen phone is in Apple’s database and the woman has filed a police report, I’d imagine Apple would give the Police the information they need so they can follow up with the person.
When I worked for Apple there were times I suspected people had stolen devices based on having a computer with a name that was nothing close to the name of the person bringing the computer. They’d want help erasing users and fixing passwords. I usually found a reason to claim I couldn’t do it. But I couldn’t do anything else. I once called a customer confidentially and asked them if their computer had been stolen. They said yes. I gave them the name of the person who brought in the computer. All anonymously.
Not all heros wear capes.
The whole “refurbished” bit contradicts everything I was told at my local store. The carriers refurbish phones, as do places like GameStop. Reconditioned =\= refurbished. Just because it doesn’t come in a shiny white box does not mean it’s not new.
I can tell you that many customers don’t care if it’s reconditioned, remanufactured, refurbished or whatever. They only care if it’s new from the factory or otherwise.
Sounds like your run-of-the-mill cunt.
@Apple Sauce
“Just because it doesn’t come in a shiny white box does not mean it’s not new.”
Exactly this. A service swap is warrantied the same way your “new,” white-box phone is. Does that mean there is zero chance it will have some defect and need to be swapped again? No. But a white-box phone could have the same defect. No product sold by any company has a 0% DOA rate.
I worked for Apple for years, and agree with the prior comments regarding Apple’s ability to act as a police force, they simply can not. What would happen if it was believed that a phone was stolen but it was an error and Apple confiscated a device, wouldn’t Apple themselves be guilty of theft. The warranty follows the device, not the owner; hence why AppleCare is transferable. If someone comes in with a broken device, Apple will fix it, Apple can’t acuse people of stealing – it opens the door to way to many issues.
Now – the Pahls just seems to be terribly, terribly misinformed, in addition to lacking the ability to write a clear complaint. Based on what she wrote, here is my description of the events:
1. Customer 1 requests to purchase a phone (most likely, at full price i’m assuming since it would not have been activated)
2. Customer realized they wanted AT&T not Verizon version, returns to store with unopened box and returns device.
-Just like any unopened merchandise, its placed back for sale. (Think of a CD or a book, or a screwdriver, all are put back on the shelf, however, broken things like a defective power tool, opened food products are typically returned to vendors – this is standard retail practice) Any item returned opened to Apple is placed into a separate inventory “bucket” to be sent back.
3. The POS system automatically “registers” the serial number of an UNREGISTERED product into their product registration / warranty database and used the first and last name of the credit card, and the email address used for the receipt.
4. Pahls purchased the same iPhone (because it was probably put back in the front of the stack of phones) and activated on her account, because the phone was already registered, it did not trigger a new entry in the database. Her receipt is not proof of registration, hence why products come with warranty cards, and the iPhone prompts you to register during setup (which would have triggered the replacement, had she not skipped it assuming her receipt would suffice)
5. Pahls has phone stolen
6. Pahls attempts to waste valuable local law enforcement resources, and Apple resources. Finding her iPhone was clearly not a priority for local law enforcement, regardless of the size of the town, and since it took place on school property, it would make sense to involve the school administration. Also, I remember the person that she refers to at Apple. He was part of Apple Retail Loss Prevention, he was the correct path for the store to follow. AppleCare and Corporate have a separate escalation path for requests from law enforcement.
I just think this woman has made a huge deal out of absolutely nothing…. I read her complaint and the description of the events – and this makes perfect sense to me, nothing she says is at all possible. If her phone had been “refurbished” it would’t have come in white box with all the cables and packaging, Apple ships refurbished units in reusable foam padded plastic cases to reduce costs, no pretty pictures, no cables, no brochures or stickers either…
We probably all have bought things that other people have returned, sometimes we may realize it, but most of the time we don’t. The only reason she ever found out was because of her failure to properly register the device. I’m feel bad that she was treated poorly during her first trip to the genius bar, but I imagine she was difficult, argumentative, and had a sense of entitlement… all of which will make it more difficult anywhere to receive empathy and assistance.
Years ago I was instructed on the phone to “cut up”a customer credit card by the issuing company. Being young and stupid, I went to do that when the customer (a big dude) jumped the counter and came after me! Needless to say I dropped the card and backed away. You NEVER know how someone will react and Apple staff should not be expected to risk themselves over a phone. Chances are if the person has stolen the phone, they are not going to be nice and kind to a Genius who says they’re confiscating it or refusing to service it. They may in fact be aggressive and dangerous. YOUR phone isn’t worth it.
This is simple:
Buy a new product you get a new product. Never is an open box item sold to a customer. Never. If the product is sold and returned unopened it is sold as new, as the device within has never been used.
If you come in for service the warranty terms are very clear:
Apple will either (1) repair the hardware defect at no charge, using new or refurbished replacement parts, (2) exchange the product with a product that is new or which has been manufactured from new or serviceable used parts and is at least functionally equivalent to the original product, or (3) refund the purchase price of the product.
As stated earlier, Apple policing stolen phones would be a huge liability for Apple and a source of abuse by people looking to make trouble.
“She also complained that later, when the stolen iPhone was presented at the Genius Bar for service, staffers replaced the phone, “no questions asked,” instead of notifying her or returning it to her.”
I did not say the phone was replaced. I said that the employees at the Apple Store told me that was what happened.
I was told so many different things by the employees at the Apple Store and Apple Care that it took months to get somewhere near the truth. Surely Apple can do better than this.