Posted on 03/06/2018 11:19:17 AM PST by Swordmaker
A Langley family is blaming tech giant Apple for a fire that destroyed their home.
Cathy and Ian Finley say the fire was sparked by an iPhone 6 that was charging on a chair in their living room.
I came home and put my phone on charge in our house, went off to feed the goats and 20 minutes later I came back and there was smoke billowing from the roof of our house, Cathy said.
After a year of negotiating with their insurer, the Finleys have been awarded a $600,000 payout, which is going towards the construction of a new house.
The Finleys say theyve lost a great deal of income due to the fire and want Apple, the iPhones manufacturer, to compensate them.
We simply dont have the time and the resources to get this farm back up and running again, Ian said.
In an email to Global News, an Apple spokesperson said theyre looking into the customers claim but they have yet to be able to analyze the device.
The Langley Fire Department said the cause of the fire is undetermined. The iPhone is being tested and results have not come back yet.
I dont think they can say that this is the cause of the fire for legal reasons, but there was certainly nothing else in the vicinity that could have possibly caused it. They ruled out everything else, Cathy said.
The family has made the tough decision to shut down the business and most likely sell the farm unless they can settle the dispute with Apple in their favour.
Cathy has another iPhone 6.
My iPhone that burned down my house was insured and they make you take the exact same phone, she said.
Prove that Apple is at fault. This is a case of “go where the money is.”
You cant make this stuff up. Dollars to donuts, if the fire was indirectly related to charging the iPhone, the charger being used was one of those cheap knock-offs sold by Amazon & convenience stores/gas stations.
Stupid people
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Or they were using an extension cordMy 6 charger gets hot when attached to an extension cord.
That’s what I’m thinking.
Given upwards of a billion Apple iDevices with no apparent patterns of self-immolation, best odds are on an el-cheapo charger operating on the hairy edge of failure - THOSE do have a documented history of undue ignition.
I read one detailed tear-down of both the classic 1-cubic-inch Apple power supply vs an identical-looking dirt-cheap knockoff. The former was deemed a tour-de-force of electronic compactness, efficiency, and safety - while the other was an electrocution disaster waiting to happen.
I bet everybody signs off at time of service on a disclaimer that the manufacturer is responsible only for cost of item replacement, not incidental damages.
Guy shoul have use the goat feeding app!!
LOL, Yes he should have.
THAT is a $600,000 house? If they got that much for that shack they need to take the money and RUN.
What a crock. I don't care what Apple's replacement policy is -- If I truly believed my defective phone destroyed my house, I'd ensure I got something else to replace it, even if it took a few hundred bucks out of my own pocket.
“THAT is a $600,000 house?”
Oh, yes! You wouldn’t believe what the asking prices are for Vancouver and surrounding area. I saw a place that had to be at least 75-80 years old, the porch steps were falling off, torn curtains in the windows, yard covered with garbage. Asking 1.2 million. I just about swallowed my tongue!
Yep, a cheap knock-off imitation charger is more likely to have started a fire than an Apple charger, if it was even a fire issue with charging it. I've warned others not to rely on imitation chargers, they're problematic no matter what device you charge. Some charger bricks get really, really hot and you have to wonder if it's going to burst. I use high-quality cables that stop pulling power from a USB source once the iPhone or iPad is charged; these cables have a blinking LED built-in and once the device is full they shut off. Of course a defective brick might still overheat but I don't use the cheap knock-offs.
Apple admitted fault and paid.
I have a real charger that came with my iPad. One of the big ones. When its plugged in the charger gets hot. If I leave it charging on the couch or somewhere I always put the charger plug on top of the iPad. Its hooked to a short extension cord so I have the length to do it. I was surprised at how hot it gets.
Actually, if I recall from the original article I got on Idrop news, it happened in 2016, but I couldn't find it in this one.
I bought one of those real cheapie chargers. I thought I was getting a super good deal. I got it home, and it did not work at all. I took it back, and very soon, they were not selling those anymore. It was a counterfeit.
As I said, perfectly plausible as there is a known failure rate even in the most perfect runs of lithium ion batteries of about one in 10 million that will catastrophically fail sometime during its life. . . i.e. catch fire or explode. That is just the nature of the beast. There are 300,000,000 plus iPads out there so one can expect 30 of them to catastrophically fail at some time during their expected life span.
If you recall the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 and the number of catastrophic battery failures they were experiencing, those batteries were failing at a rate of one in 10,000 in a MONTH. . . and if you calculated out the expected life of the device, almost ALL of them would have catastrophically failed during the life of the device. That's why Samsung recalled every Note 7 made.
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