Apple Now More Lenient On iPod Water Damage Policy

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The little white/silver liquid contact indicator (LCI) turning red or stripped is often the death knell for your electronic product’s warranty. Even though the item never touched water, users know that even a little moisture can set that extremely sensitive sensor off, denying you hundreds of dollars in coverage that you should have been entitled to.

Apple users might soon have a reprieve from this often overly harsh criteria: Igeneration.fr reports that Apple is easing up their iPod water damage policy. Now, in addition to the red mark, if you insist that you didn’t dunk the product in liquid, the product must also show physical water damage on the exterior for you to be denied your warranty. An Apple Authorized Service Provider(AASP) worker sent 9 to 5 Mac a screenshot of the policy changes:

This probably has to do something with the recent Korean case where a a father sued on behalf of his 13-year-old daughter who was denied the warranty on her iPhone 3G because of water damage. The girl and father claim the phone came nowhere in contact with any liquid. They are seeking 294,000 won (US$251) for the principle of the matter that they did nothing wrong and were denied repairs, and they say they hope their case will help other Apple users in the same situation. Or, it could be because of this report by a local Houston station that the iPhone LCI detects water just from the sweat from your hands while at the gym according to what Apple employees told the people interviewed. Or, this class action lawsuit that claims Apple forces people to buy discounted phones because they deny customer’s service on their original phones because of “water damage” that never occurred.  Good job for Apple for loosening your policy, but if these indicators are as sensitive as these reports claim, maybe it’s time to extend the policy to all Apple products or get a new kind of LCI?

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