AppleCare+ extends the devices' one-year limited warranty and the ninety days of technical support (which is known as basic AppleCare).
It can be attached, via the serial number, to devices at the time of purchase, or up to thirty or sixty days (depending on location) post-purchase.
This effectively means that, in certain countries in the EU, AppleCare still offers phone and online support for ninety days on all devices.
After the six-month period, this is reversed, meaning that the customer may need to establish that a hardware defect did exist when they received the product.
[17] On December 27, 2011, Apple was fined a total of €900,000 by the Italian Antitrust Authority for failing to properly inform customers of their legal right to two years of warranty service under Italy's Consumer Code.
According to the Italian agency Apple only disclosed its own standard one-year warranty and offered to sell customers AppleCare for one additional year instead of abiding by the law.
The agency fined Apple €400,000 for failing to disclose the legally mandated two-year warranty and €500,000 for selling overlapping AppleCare coverage.