A maddening tale of one man’s fight for his rights against one of the world’s biggest tech firms. 

It all started with a pair of Apple headphones that wouldn’t charge. Auckland filmmaker Todd Karehana purchased some Beats by Dre headphones from Apple for $599.95 in December 2023, and was full of anticipation when they showed up on his doorstep. “They’re the most money I’ve ever spent on headphones,” he tells The Spinoff, “and they’re touted as this premium product for creative professionals, so I was really excited.”

But after leaving the brand new headphones plugged in overnight to charge, Karehana was disappointed to find they sat at only 10% battery the next morning. “I knew that wasn’t normal, so I contacted Apple and they said they were happy for me to return the headphones and give me a refund.” He got his money back promptly and felt satisfied, not knowing then that this was just the beginning of a maddening years-long spiral into headphone-related hell. 

In January 2024, Karehana used the refund money to buy the exact same pair of Beats by Dre headphones from Apple. They charged up and worked perfectly for about a year, until his listening experience became plagued by an intermittent “crackle and pop” sound. “The popping sound was like when you’re in an aircraft and your ears pop, you could physically feel the change and that was actually quite painful at times.”

He attempted all the troubleshooting suggestions online, but nothing helped. After a couple months of trying to tolerate the popping, in early 2025 he waded through the Apple website to find a phone number. “That’s when they told me that because the headphones were now 16 months old, they were beyond their warranty,” Karehana explains. “They suggested that I could take them to an authorised Apple repair service, but they would charge me to fix it.” 

Karehana dropped the faulty headphones off at a provider in Parnell, dutifully paying the $50 diagnostic fee on the understanding that, when they eventually found the popping sound that plagued him, he would be refunded both the fee and the price of the headphones. A few days later, he got an email: “they told me they couldn’t recreate the problem, that my headphones were ready to be picked up, and that I would not be getting a refund of my 50 bucks.” 

He turned on the headphones when he got home, and immediately heard the popping sound. 

Soon enough, Karehana was back on the phone with Apple, explaining to a brand new person what had happened with the popping headphones. They escalated it to another person, who told him that he could take it to a different Apple service provider for another $50 diagnostic check, or he could send it to Australia for them to diagnose in-house. He decided to send the headphones into Apple, this time requesting a full refund if they found any faults. 

A week and a half had passed when Karehana received the next email from Apple, which said his diagnostic request was “complete” and “a replacement device” was now being sent to him. “Instantly, I was annoyed, because I had told them I wanted a refund and didn’t want to replace it,” he says. “I didn’t want to be lumped with a brand new pair of headphones only for another issue to come up in six months, and I have to go through this all over again.” 

He rang Apple, again, and explained to a brand new person, again, what had happened. “I told them I didn’t want these headphones, I wanted a refund. They told me that because I’ve now got a brand new pair of headphones, those headphones would need to exhibit a fault in order for me to get a refund, because that’s their policy.” Furious, Karehana plugged in his brand new headphones, that he didn’t want, to charge. The next day, they hadn’t charged. 

At this point in the story, Karehana has already owned three faulty pairs of Beats by Dre headphones in his journey to acquire just one working pair of Beats by Dre headphones. 

Back on the phone to Apple about the charging fault, Karehana was told, again, he would have to take the third pair of headphones into an Apple service provider for a $50 diagnostic check of the charging fault. He refused – “not after they didn’t believe me about the second pair” – and asked for another option. They offered him the send-in service to Apple Australia once more, assuring him that they would start the refund process if the headphones were found to be faulty. 

Karehana obliged, and sent the headphones away. A week later, he got another email: his replacement headphones were on their way. 

By the time the fourth pair of headphones arrived, Karehana was livid. “I felt lied to,” he says. “So I had to call a new Apple person who I told the whole story to again, and then they told me that because I now have a new pair of headphones, I have to use them until they exhibit a fault before we can discuss a refund.” Karehana asked if he could speak with the Apple legal team, and was told he couldn’t be transferred, and that they couldn’t provide any contact details. 

Furious, Karehana hung up and immediately lodged a claim against Apple with the Disputes Tribunal. Two weeks later, a representative from the tribunal got in touch asking if he had any contact details for Apple, because they couldn’t reach them. “That was also infuriating, because I had asked for those details myself, and they clearly refused to give them to both me and the Disputes Tribunal,” he says. “So I had to sleuth my way to finding an address.” 

The Disputes Tribunal hearing took place last week via teleconference, with officials trying and failing to reach Apple via a Singaporean number the company had provided. Karehana, on the other hand, had provided a detailed timeline along with invoices, emails and transcribed phone logs, an impressive dossier that has also been seen by The Spinoff. The tribunal ruled in his favour, ordering that Apple refund him the purchase price of $599.95 by December 18, 2025.

While he wasn’t awarded the full amount he requested (Karehana had also worked out how much the 30 hours he spent on the phone to Apple cost him at his regular freelancing rate), it is still a huge victory. “I feel so vindicated, I just wish they could apologise and really sound like they mean it, because they wasted so much of my time,” he says. Apple did not respond to The Spinoff’s request for comment on the case. 

This triumphant win for Karehana is also not his first – he’d successfully taken Apple to the Disputes Tribunal twice over a faulty keyboard on a MacBook Pro and dead pixels on an earlier laptop, along with once escalating a complaint over poorly constructed Nike sneakers all the way to the Nike Australia head office. “My friends call me the brown Karen,” he laughs. “Every so often they’re like, ‘what’s brown Karen up to? Any new complaints happening?’”

People may joke, but Karehana has taken consumer rights seriously his whole life. “I was raised by a single mum on the benefit, so every dollar mattered,” he says. “And when any shopkeeper was claiming that me and my teenage friends were trying to steal, she would always stick up for me and give them a piece of her mind.” He also grew up with the consumer rights show Fair Go, which further instilled “a deep sense of justice and knowing your rights”. 

Karehana shares this story, which he estimates he has told dozens of times to Apple employees, in the hopes that it inspires others to be more aware of their rights as consumers – especially during the festive season. “I’m not going to let any big company take advantage of me, and nobody else should either,” he says. “That $600 could pay my rent or living expenses for a week or two, so I refuse to be bullied out of it by a billion dollar corporation.” 

And while one might expect Karehana is going to have some time off from battling Apple over summer, life has other plans. His partner also owns the same pair of Beats by Dre Apple headphones, which he revealed recently are also now intermittently popping and crackling. 

Karehana had one thing to say: “Leave it with me.”