Apple Won’t Repair Apple Watch Because Owner Has a Defibrillator: Class Action

Apple refuses to repair Harrison Varnes’ Apple Watch under the Apple Care+ service contract he bought for $4.34 a month and continued to pay for through December because he has an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) embedded in his chest to prevent future cardiac arrhythmias, alleged Varnes’ breach of contract class action Thursday (docket 1:24-cv-01007) in U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Brooklyn. Apple told the Queens, New York, resident that his ICD rendered him an “unintended user” of the Apple Watch and AppleCare+, said the complaint. After contacting the Apple service team, Varnes on Dec. 12 received 11 separate refunds of $4.34 each, representing credits for the monthly Apple Care+ payments he made for 2023, it said. But at no time did Varnes agree that these refunds “would be in full satisfaction of his claims,” it said. Varnes has received no further offers of compensation from Apple for his two prior years of payments for AppleCare+, despite Apple’s admissions that it never intended to perform services on his Apple Watch, which still hasn’t been repaired, it said. Nothing in the AppleCare+ contract suggests that AppleCare+ services aren’t available to Apple Watch customers with ICDs or defibrillators, the complaint said. Varnes, by counsel, served a pre-suit notice and demand letter on Apple Jan. 18, formally notifying it of the breach of its AppleCare+ contract and demanding that Apple repair his Apple Watch or provide compensation, said the complaint. Apple responded Jan. 26, confirming that it wouldn’t repair his Apple Watch under the AppleCare+ contract because of Varnes' ICD, it said. It pointed to language in an “obscure” subdomain of the Apple website that instructs Apple Watch owners not to use the device with a cardiac pacemaker or ICD, it said. “The language says nothing about Apple refusing to service an Apple Watch product under AppleCare+ merely because the Apple Watch user has a cardiac pacemaker or ICD,” it said. Varnes sues on behalf of himself and a class he defines as all individuals with cardiac pacemakers or ICDs or other implanted electronic devices who bought an Apple Watch within the U.S. and are or were covered by AppleCare+. His complaint cites research showing that more than 3 million people in the U.S. are thought to have a conventional pacemaker and more than 300,000 are estimated to have an ICD. He alleges that the total claims of individual class members in his action exceed $5 million in the aggregate, exclusive of interest and costs.