What Apple advertised and what Apple delivered were two different things: Delhi Commission awards Rs.1 Lakh to Consumer over Stolen Untraceable iPhone

In a significant consumer rights ruling that puts tech giants on notice, the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, South Delhi, has held Apple India liable for deficiency in service, directing it to pay Rs.1,00,000 in compensation to a Delhi consumer whose stolen iPhone could not be traced, because a critical pre-condition for the very feature Apple had prominently advertised was never clearly disclosed to him at the point of sale.

The controversy began on February 10, 2022, when Shan Mohmmed purchased an iPhone 13 for Rs.70,500, drawn in significant part by Apple's marketed assurance that the device was "findable after power off", a representation that, to any reasonable buyer, suggested an unconditional safety net against theft or loss. When his phone was stolen from his residence on September 2, 2022, and an FIR was duly registered, Mohmmed did exactly what Apple's advertising had led him to expect: he contacted customer support and followed every instruction on the company's official platforms.

The device was never found. Apple's defence was clinical, theft cases were excluded under its warranty terms, the "Find My" feature had to be separately enabled by the user before the advertised functionality could operate, and the responsibility for tracing stolen devices rested with law enforcement, not the manufacturer. The complainant, Apple argued, had simply never activated the prerequisite feature.

The Commission, presided over by President Monika A. Srivastava and Member Kiran Kaushal, found Apple's defence unconvincing on the most fundamental ground: the representation had been placed before consumers without a single asterisk, disclaimer, or conditional prompt. While the fine print technically existed, accessible only upon clicking through the message, the Commission held that burying a critical pre-condition behind a click-through, with no clear guidance or upfront disclosure, crossed the line from incomplete communication into misleading representation.

In the Commission's assessment, a reasonable consumer encountering the phrase "iPhone findable after power off" would naturally and justifiably read it as an unconditional promise, and Apple had done nothing at the point of that representation to correct that impression. Consequently, the Commission held Apple India guilty of deficiency in service and directed it to pay Rs.1,00,000 as compensation to the complainant.

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