Professional reviews from Chinese lawyers in apple’s sky high service fees

The following are some tips from professional Chinese lawyer. On March 15 — World Consumer Rights Day — China Central Television (CCTV) broadcast its annual investigative program that seeks to expose companies that harm or mistreat Chinese consumers. Several companies, both foreign and domestic came under the spotlight, and the program rehashed familiar accusations of Chinese consumers being treated unfairly by multinationals. Specifically, CCTV accused Apple of discriminating against Chinese customers by offering lower levels of service and charging fees for replacing back covers of faulty phones, which is done for free in other countries.

There also seems to have been an organized campaign on Sina Weibo in which celebrities criticized Apple for the problems exposed by the CCTV report. The campaign backfired when the aptly named Peter who tweeted his message criticizing Apple, but forgot to delete the instructions it came with telling him to post it at 8:20 pm, just after the CCTV report aired. The word on the street in Beijing is that this campaign was organized on behalf of one of Apple’s competitors. Samsung is the name most often cited, but this is only hearsay. (See China Media Project’s posting for more on what has become known as the 8:20 affair: Did CCTV conspire to smear Apple?.)