Apple was fined a total of €900,000 ($1.2m) by the Italian Antitrust Authority today for failing to properly inform customers of their legal right to two years of warranty service under Italy's Consumer Code. The agency says Apple only disclosed its own standard one-year warranty and offered to sell customers AppleCare for the additional year instead of abiding by the law — pretty shady stuff, actually. The agency fined Apple €400,000 for failing to disclose the legally-mandated two-year warranty and €500,000 for selling overlapping AppleCare coverage.
In addition to paying the fine, Apple's agreed to change its Italian AppleCare package to reflect the two year warranty term within 90 days, and put up a notice on its Italian website alerting people to the settlement. It doesn't sound like people who bought AppleCare will get any extra coverage, but we've reached out to Apple for comment and we'll let you know if we hear anything.