Another day, another lawsuit. UK consumer rights group Which? claims that since 2015, millions of UK owners of Apple devices may have overpaid for their iCloud storage.
The lawsuit basically argues that the tech giant forces iOS and iPadOS device users to buy iCloud storage as it doesn’t allow other cloud services to integrate deeply with the system for data backup. The class action lawsuit requests damages of about £70 per individual.
From the lawsuit: Which? alleges Apple abused its dominant position by not giving iPhone and iPad users a choice of cloud storage provider. Instead, it steered them to its own iCloud service, and this led to Apple charging customers excessive iCloud subscription fees.
Everything we do is about championing consumers, here to make life simpler, fairer and safer for everyone. We believe that Apple breached competition law and it has cost UK consumers millions of pounds, so we are taking legal action against Apple to recover the overpayments made on iCloud services obtained on or after 1 October 2015. We want to make sure that Apple, and other big corporations stop behaving in this way.
As noted by 9to5Mac, A similar class action lawsuit is currently being advanced in US courts. In reply, Apple given TechCrunch the following statement: Apple believes in providing our customers with choices. Our users are not required to use iCloud, and many rely on a wide range of third-party alternatives for data storage. In addition, we work hard to make data transfer as easy as possible — whether its to iCloud or another service. We reject any suggestion that our iCloud practices are anticompetitive and will vigorously defend against any legal claim otherwise.
