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Apple to China: You Mad Bro?

Having opened its largest retail outlets ever to overzealous shoppers in Shanghai and Beijing last Fall, hiring geniuses and clerks galore, Apple's presence in China has quite expectedly boomed. Like "Krispy Kreme":http://news.google.com/newspapers?id...

Having opened its largest retail outlets ever to overzealous shoppers in Shanghai and Beijing last Fall, hiring geniuses and clerks galore, Apple’s presence in China has quite expectedly boomed. Like Krispy Kreme did in Issaquah, WA, circa 2001; and like Hot Topic, in Scottsdale’s Fashion Square, Chinese Apple customers were so excited they nearly rioted when there weren’t enough iPhones to go around in the land where iPhones are made.

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And now, apparently, there aren’t enough new parts either. According to Apple’s newly released China repair guidelines, the company replaces parts with refurbished pieces, and keeps the damaged parts in the repair process. China’s Apple fans are not very pleased (think of all the ways those old parts could be reused), and a government-funded watchdog group, the China Consumer Association, insists Apple’s repair policies aren’t only unfair but against Chinese law. There’s no response yet from Apple.

Apple store opening in Shanghai

Before the stores, China had only caught the familiar scent, the classic whiff of Made in China, of Apple’s products. Before they could only buy iPhones smuggled into the mainland from abroad at great cost opt for shitty counterfeits. Now, China’s Apple customers have swarmed to official stores across the country and made China Apple’s second biggest market after the U.S. Just imagine the thrill — first promised by Henry Ford, that proto-Steve Jobs — of not only making cars in Michigan but also being able to go downtown and get that Mercury (or the apex of driving machines, the Ford Escort station wagon).

Foxconn factory labor a la Ivan Denisovich

A guy my age no longer needs to tag along with his mom at Foxconn in Shenzen, watching workers chisel, lathe and hand carve iPhones and waiting for that moment to snatch one when the coast was clear. (Before taking the train down to Kowloon to flip the thing for $300, of course.) Now that same guy is able to go and buy the Air, the Book, the Pad, the Pro, the Pod, the Phone, protected and sealed by official Apple warranties: The dreadfully tedious warranties that have given us little confidence in the States (see South Park’s Human CentiPad episode).

In the last 24 hours, a dozen Asian countries (including Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and Taiwan) finally gained access to the iTunes store. But not China and India. Why not? It’s like visiting the chocolate factory and finding out your dreams are all underwritten by some tightwad and his fine print.

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Seeing red

Responding to consumer protection laws abroad, the company did improve Apple Care on iPads in China and Italy, where computers and laptops carry mandatory two-year warranties. Italy fined Apple $1.2 million because of this.

In a lawsuit last year in South Korea, a Korean customer claimed the company had replaced her defective iPhone with a refurbished phone, rather than a brand-new one. Complaints ensued and the company was pressured to modify its terms of service.

An unhappy Lamborghini customer responds to product issues

The Chinese consumer rights group insists that customers deserve fresh replacement parts under a three month warranty. If negotiations with the computer behemoth don’t work out, the associations plans to help consumers take Apple to court and coordinate with related government authorities and, reports Xinhua, “conduct targeted moves.”

China’s consumers have shown serious love for big multinationals: Walmart, McDonalds, Disney, GM, Carrefour, Audi and others are, like Apple, seen as arbiters of a kind of quality possible only after a century of standardization, manufacturing and brand-building. That doesn’t make them immune to the country’s rising tide of consumer angst, which starts with food safety but easily extends into nerdier territory once you move up the income ladder.

As the volume of angered laborers and protestors grows, Apple is going to have to bend over, getting a little more acquainted with the ol’ customer is always right doctrine. Winning the hearts and minds and not just the pockets (or still cheap labor) of China requires a little more tenderness. Pissing off factory workers and righteous Americans with dangerous labor conditions is nothing new, Apple. But trying to pull a fast one on a Chinese shopper? That takes some real nerve.

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Front page image: Nelson Ching/Bloomberg