Back in 2020, Apple admitted that some AirPods Pro units suffered from both crackling sounds, and faults in the Active Noise Cancellation feature. The company launched a recall program which allowed customers to return their AirPods and have them replaced.

Apple said that only models made before October 2020 were affected, but a new AirPods Pro lawsuit claims this isn’t true – and says the company’s own actions confirm this …

Apple’s service program acknowledged both of the issues reported by users:

An affected AirPods Pro may exhibit one or more of the following behaviors:

– Crackling or static sounds that increase in loud environments, with exercise or while talking on the phone

– Active Noise Cancellation not working as expected, such as a loss of bass sound, or an increase in background sounds, such as street or airplane noise

The company offered three ways to resolve the issue:

However, a new class action lawsuit reported by ClassAction claims that Apple didn’t in fact fix the problem in later versions of the same model.

The class action charges, however, that the apparent audio defects affect all AirPods Pro Gen 1 headphones, regardless of their manufacture date.

Though consumers began to complain about the sound problems with the AirPods Pro Gen 1 soon after their release in October 2019—and even though Apple has admitted to the audio issues itself—the company continued to sell the devices for hundreds of dollars a pair until September 2022, the case shares.

It says the service program was worthless, as it just allowed customers to swap one faulty pair for another. It says close examination of the design and components before and after the cutoff date reveals no significant difference that would fix the problem.

“In other words, those users simply received another defective set of AirPods Pro Gen 1, with many users later experiencing the Audio Defect with the defective replacement set as well,” the case says […]

With regard to manufacture date, the filing states that there exists no significant difference in first-generation AirPods Pro devices made before or after October 2020, the date specifically listed on Apple’s support page.

The law firm claims that Apple was well aware of this, as it extended the program by a further year.

Just two weeks shy of the scheduled October 31, 2021 end date for Apple’s AirPods Pro service program announced a year prior, the company updated this timeline to cover affected AirPods for three years after the first retail sale of the unit, essentially adding another year of coverage, the case relays.

However, it should be noted that it is not unusual for Apple do this when issues continue to come to light over a long period of time, ensuring that owners who only experience the problem later are still covered.

If you are affected by this, there’s nothing you need to at this stage. If Apple offers a settlement, customers will then be invited to make a claim.

Via Macworld.