Apple could find itself facing a class action lawsuit over the loss of “countless” text messages, courtesy of its iMessage service.
California resident Adrienne Moore filed a case against Apple back in May this year, saying that she missed out on receiving text messages after giving up her iPhone 4 and moving to a Samsung Galaxy S5.
Moore’s victory in court means that she now has the ability to pursue a class action lawsuit against Apple. She is also seeking unspecified damages.
“I recently switched from an iPhone to Android, and discovered shortly thereafter that my phone number was still associated with iMessage, meaning that any time someone with an iPhone tried texting me, I’d receive nothing, and they’d get a “Delivered” receipt in their Messages app as though everything were working as expected,” she said in her original complaint.
Apple, for its part, is arguing that it never claimed that iOS 5 iMessage service was designed to recognize when iPhone users jumped ship to other companies’ devices.
“Apple takes customer satisfaction extremely seriously, but the law does not provide a remedy when, as here, technology simply does not function as plaintiff subjectively believes it should,” attorneys for the company argued.
With that being said, Apple recently launched an online tool that lets former iPhone users deregister iMessage, even in situations when they’ve already given up their iOS devices.
Source: Reuters
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
2 responses to “iPhone switchers could sue Apple for disappearing iMessages”
I’ve had this happen but not quite. When I’d send them, they’d simply not send. It would never tell me that the messages were delivered. And deleting the conversation from my iPhone, deleting the contact and then readding the contact fixed it in every instance.
Pain in the ass, for sure, but not a huge problem.
I’m definitely not against the lawsuit. I’ve switched between platforms and had friends switch back and forth several times and there are always a few people with lost texts because they forgot to disable iMessage. I’ve even had friends who did disable it and still don’t seem to get half my messages.