adminCorporate mea culpas have become a rite of passage for international companies criticised by China Central Television, including Volkswagen AG, Carrefour SA (CA) and Yum! Brands Inc (YUM).
The network beamed its programme on Apple to more than one billion people just hours after Li Keqiang, who has pledged to root out consumer abuses, was named premier.
The state-run People’s Daily followed with more than a dozen articles at a time when China struggles to cope with poisonous food, air pollution, government corruption and thousands of dead pigs floating in Shanghai’s drinking water.
“The state media has been picking on foreign companies really too much lately,” said Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai.
“The government should ensure that companies treat Chinese consumers fairly. They also have to make sure when they do it that it’s clear it’s for the protection of consumers rather than where it’s becoming to seem a political issue.”
The attacks on Apple come five months after sales of Japanese-brand cars plummeted due to a territorial dispute over uninhabited islands.
After the March 15 report on CCTV, China’s commerce market watchdog pledged to strengthen regulations concerning infringements of customer’s rights.
The State Administration for Industry and Commerce asked local authorities to increase their supervision of clauses in Apple’s warranty policies.
An official in the administration’s news office who declined to be identified wouldn’t comment on whether Apple’s warranty policies broke any laws.
“It is completely normal for the Apple company to apologise to Chinese consumers, and I think such action is commendable,” Hong Lei, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said during a briefing in Beijing yesterday.
In a change, Apple will now offer full replacements of iPhone 4 and 4S models, and the warranty will be reset to one year at that point, Cook said in a letter posted on the company’s Chinese website.
Previously, the company provided new parts attached to the back of the customer’s existing iPhone, and didn’t extend the warranty.
Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest maker of smartphones, repairs or replaces individual parts and will reset the warranty if it replaces the entire device within the initial one-year period, said Chris Jung, a Seoul-based spokesman.
Apple also vowed to improve training, customer service and monitoring of stores authorised to sell its products in China.
“In the process of studying the issues, we recognise that some people may have viewed our lack of communication as arrogant, or as a sign that we didn’t care about or value their feedback,” Cook said.
“We sincerely apologise to our customers for any concern or confusion we may have caused.”
Yin Wen, producer of the CCTV show, said the network wasn’t told by the government to target Apple, and the reason why People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, published several follow-up articles on the issue was because “Apple has stirred public anger.” – Bloomberg.
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