Apple iCloud+ Subscribers ‘Shortchanged’ on Cloud Storage Capacity, Class Action Says

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Apple faces a proposed class action lawsuit that claims the tech giant “shortchanges” iCloud+ subscribers by providing five gigabytes (GB) less than the promised cloud storage capacity.

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The 23-page lawsuit says that despite the company’s representations that an iCloud+ paid subscription plan would provide added storage up to a certain limit in addition to the five GB of storage capacity automatically allotted to each Apple device owner for free, the defendant delivers only the paid storage limit it promises minus the five GB a subscriber already receives free of charge.

According to the suit, Apple’s iCloud legal agreement and price list for paid subscription plans represent that beyond the five GB of free storage offered to all device owners, users who pay for an iCloud+ plan will also receive additional storage capacity in exchange for monthly subscription payments—that is, $0.99 per month for 50 GB, $2.99 per month for 200 GB and $9.99 per month for two terabytes of paid cloud storage.

However, Apple violates its own contractual promises by failing to provide subscribers with the full iCloud storage limit as advertised, the case alleges.

“Instead, when a class member purchase[s] from Apple a monthly cloud storage subscription … Apple deduct[s] the 5 GB of storage it already was delivering to all its device owners for free from the advertised additional storage limits it was to deliver in exchange for the monthly subscription payment,” the complaint contests. “In this way, Apple shortchange[s] all putative class members 5 GB of storage every month of their paid subscriptions.”

For example, an Apple device owner subscribed to the lowest iCloud+ tier is promised to receive 50 GB of additional storage in exchange for a monthly charge of $0.99, the filing says. The lawsuit claims that although the defendant should ultimately deliver a total of 55 GB of cloud storage to the user, it provides only 50 GB.

“Thus, in exchange for the monthly payment of $0.99, that subscriber receive[s] only 45 GB of paid cloud storage, not the 50 GB of paid storage he contracted for and was promised,” the suit relays.

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone in the United States who has paid for an Apple iCloud subscription (called iCloud+ since June 2021) at any time since September 1, 2019.

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