A visitor examines the DR-900 9' Touch E-Reader at the Asus stand at the CeBIT Technology Fair on March 2, 2010 in Hannover, Germany. (Photo : Getty Images/Sean Gallup)
Retailers of e-books have finally started refunding customers for Apple-funded credits to their accounts. The move comes three years after a court ruled for the first time that Apple was liable for conspiring with five other major book publishers in the United States to fix e-book prices.
Consequently, Apple has consented to pay $400 in settlement ending an anti-trust complaint and retailers have begun refunding the affected customers the credit into their accounts. However, the Cupertino tech giant still does not accept any wrongdoing related to e-book pricing, The Verge reported.
The conspiracy by Apple and other publishers resulted in the price of e-books to increase by 30 percent to 50 percent. In other words, consumers had to pay anything between $12.99 and $14.99 for e-book with original price tag of $9.99 from Amazon.
Customers who purchased e-books from Apple, Amazon.com Inc., Barnes & Noble Inc. and Kobo Inc. between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012, will be affected by this settlement. Hence, they need to check their e-mails for notifications from these e-book vendors.
The affected customers will receive the credit amount automatically in their accounts. The amount they would be receiving would depend on the number of e-books titles and the number of e-books they purchase.
On an average, customers will receive $6.93 for each New York Times bestseller they bought and $1.57 for all other books. In both cases, it is expected that the credit will be twice the amount that the consumers actually overpaid. The credits will expire on June 27, 2017.
Soon after the announcement made by Hundreds of consumers took to the social media to say they had received their settlement credits. Some of the consumers received even more than $100 and many said they would again spend their credits on more e-books, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Earlier, some publishers, including Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster Inc., Penguin Group USA, Macmillan Publishers and News Corp's HarperCollins Publishers had settled for a $170 million sum with the Justice Department and various states.
On the other hand, Apple persisted on an appeal and filed a lawsuit that the company lost in 2013. Eventually, the Supreme Court too declined to hear Apple's challenges last year, denoting that the Cupertino-based company had to comply with a settlement it reached in 2014.
Watch "Apple's e-book price fixing conspiracy" below:
