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AppleCare - How Many Problems is Too Much?
steeviant wonders: "I live in New Zealand, and have been dealing with AppleCare Australia over issues with my PowerBook G4, which has needed three replacement power supplies, one battery, two motherboards, a top case, and a screen replaced under warranty, and it now has another hardware problem. I'm not satisfied that AppleCare Australia think it is acceptable for my PowerBook to have nine problems in two years, and want the machine replaced, but they are refusing. I have scoured the apple.com.au, and apple.com websites trying to find some way to contact anyone to try to get AppleCare to reconsider their stance on this issue. If New Zealand had an Apple branch office, I would simply take them to court, but even that is not possible as their computers are sold through a local distributor. Surely Apple don't consider this appalling number of failures to be acceptable for a computer which cost over NZD $9000. Can anyone suggest an avenue through which I can contact Apple in the U.S. for help?" Sometimes handing technical issues defect-by-defect works, however it seems to me that there are many cases where it would seem to be a waste of time...both the manufacturer's and the customer's. Should manufacturers be required to replace an entire machine after a certain number of defects in a specific time period, or might there be a better way to handle these kinds of technical issues? Update: 03/31 3AM EDT by C : steeviant wants to let everyone know that Apple has offered to replace his machine with a 'like for like' model before this article was even posted. So, "All's well that ends well." for some, how about you?
Screen: Check
Motherboard: Check check!
Battery: Check
Top shell: Check
Power supply: Check
The only thing on that machine that may still be original is the bottom shell cover! Well, maybe the modem, optical drive, ram and airport card are still original too.
The video card is on the motherboard, as is sound, CPU, and all the ports. The only thing separating this machine from a new one is this one has known issues and a new one has unknown issues.
I would wonder if perhaps the owner has bad power at his house? Maybe that is causing all the issues? It seems curious to go through batteries, power supply, and motherboard and not suspect dirty power.
GPL Deconstructed
Apple has agreements with their parts manufactuers to warrenty parts. I learned this while talking with an apple CSR after my brand new powerbook arrived with a defective screen. Because the screen was flawed, apple wanted to capitalize on their warrenty with the screen manufacturer (Samsung). I don't know if this means they got the new screen for free, or what.
Given this kind of arrangement I don't think you have much chance in convincing them to give you a brand new machine.
My own powerbook (15" 1.25Ghz) has been in for servicing 3 times since I got it in November. In general apple's customer service has been terrible. I'm trying not to let it get to me though, but I'll think carefully before I buy my next apple product.
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I support spreading santorum
My first dealings with apple was when I decided to switch and get a powerbook alum. It was a great machine, even though the battery life was 1.5 hours. I started having the white spot problem and the screen died. I talked with apple and sent the computer back. Since they fixed it I haven't had any problems, but like someone else said it's just like any other computer maker. All products have problems, but it's all in how the company deals with it.
It seems like apple's arm must be twisted to react to problems with it's hardware. Look at the ipod battery issue. Given that it was a small problem, but a reported one, apple sat on it until it got out of hand. The powerbook white spot problem wasn't taken care of until too many people had the problem. I've read of similar issues with the ibooks screen and motherboards.
I really like using apple products (OS X, powerbooks, ipods) but it concerns me when a company is reluctant to fix their hardware, and since apple is the only maker of the hardware we have to either raise a huge stink, or wait till they feel it's a wide spread problem.
I feel I have to buy the applecare protection because the parts on powerbooks are so costly it's not worth the risk. If I was more confident in their workmanship I wouldn't get one. So far they haven't given me reason to think otherwise.
I've owned Apple products since Apple ][, including many Macs. Had a bad modem on a G3 once. Sent it in, they sent a new one. Recently had a bad remote control on a very new iPod. I went to the web site, entered the problem and had a new control in the mail within 3 days. They didn't ask for the old one back or anything. I know it's only a $40 item, but was nice to have such quick service.
Bottom line, my experience has been that Apple very rarely breaks, and the few times it did break I was given prompt service.
If you have to destroy your iPod to replace the battery then I'd say you should not be trusted around anything electronic. I got a used iPod and replaced the battery in about 10 mins. The company I bought the battery from even included a couple of small plastic wedges to use to open the case without scratching it.
I've heard the whole sorry saga straight from the horse's mouth. He's come over more than once wanting to borrow my iBook PSU to confirm it's his PSU that's dead not his PowerBook; I've seen the ugly flaking paint that resulted in his top case being replaced, and heard the stories about the other failures. Recently I had him round to target-disk a backup image of his HD onto my G5 (which incidentally has the power supply chirp issue, and my iBook has had a logic board replacement) in the hope that his machine would be replaced soon.
Apparently Apple were suggesting that maybe he was abusing it, which is somewhat ironic considering I'd expect the HD and optical drive to be suffering in that situation, and those two *non-Apple* parts are still working fine. About the only ones that haven't been problematic, in fact.
From what I've heard about Apple repairs, it's the luck of the draw as to how you're treated. :(
Reasons like this are why I skipped out on AppleCare and went with a CompUSA warranty.
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http://www.compusa.com/tech_services/serviceplans
Notice the "No Lemon Guarantee" which says that the product will be replaced if a single component fails three times. I've had several amigos with laptops that have failed who have ended up with a better generation one, such as going from a G3 PowerBook to an original G4 TiBook, at no cost over the inital price of the warranty.
My brother had run the gamut of problems on his 1st generation 12" iBook in the 2 and a half years he's had it. CD tray issues, logic board failures... he had basically every part of the machine replaced in that time. About a month ago the CD tray stopped working, he sent it in again, and it came back not entirely fixed. He pushed a little harder, and they offered to replaced his old G3 iBook with a new 800 Mhz G4 iBook with slot load drive (the model in the current line with the closest specs to his machine), and threw in the bluetooth module on there as a show of good faith. Plus, they prorated his 3 year applecare, and wrote him a check for the months left on his Applecare for the original machine that he won't use.
Again, YMMV, but my family has had nothing but good experiences dealing with Apple support.
No offense to the original poster, BUT THE MACHINE IS OVER 2 YEARS OLD. I've dealt with Apple, Dell, HP, over similar issues and none of them want the machine back, and they will each make you jump through hoops to get the machine taken back.
It varies from vendor to vendor but typically here's how it works. If within the first 60-90 days after you've purchased your machine, and you've had enough significant repairs, all the vendors above will take the machine back and replace it. The kicker is this rarily happens.
Say on the last Dell laptop (w/ 4yr Gold Care Support) we had this happen to. The laptop's motherboard needed replacing within the first 30days of ownership. They did this no problem. The user starts experiencing problems again, about 2wks down the road they think its the docking station screwing up the laptop. The repair the laptop and replace the docking station. Add another week to the total. The new docking station is in, the user uses it about 2 or 3 times before going on vacation. Add 3 weeks. User comes back, and within a week minor problems start happening again, within two weeks, we're back at stage one. The replace the docking station. 3-4 weeks after they replace the motherboard. Anyway come 6 months in, I request they replace the machine. It's not a year old, and obviously something is wrong. They won't replace the machine because its over 90days.
I'm lucky, I've dealt with Dell too frequently. I hang-up, call back in and request hardware exception assistance--basically this is were you send your issues directly to an engineer, if they think its a design flaw they request the machine back and replace it. Its hit or miss, but our machine got selected, and Dell takes it back.
I've had Apple do the same thing, but only if the machine is under a year old, and typically within the first 4 months (120days). The problem is its very hard to determine if a machines a lemon within the first 90 days. But to this day, I've made a mental note, if the motherboard needs to be replaced within the first 90days, request a machine replacement. Its easier to deal with their irritation at this stage, then it will be when your tired, frustrated, and way over your 90 day return policy.
Apple does take machines back, lord knows I've bought enough refurbished products from them to know this is true. Dell does as well. I found my return to HP the easiest. But I just don't deal with them frequently enough to know if thats always true or some random act of kindness.
This doesn't necessary answer your question, but your case reminded me of a horrific experience I had as a technician back in the day, when dealing with a problem like this from the other side.
Most times you can diagnose a problem, replace the correct part, and move on. If you're smart you can even do this quickly and efficiently, at least until boredom sets in and you realize you need a more challenging job, but I digress.. Anyway, every once in a blue moon, you get something like this:
Diagnose system. Determine Part A is bad. Replace part A. Retest w/burn in. Ship. Get rewarded for speedy diagnosis and repair.
System comes back. Part A appears bad again. Shake head at bad luck. Replace part A. Retest w/burn in. Ship. Get yelled at for rework.
System comes back. Part A appears bad again. Spend hours going over the entire system, discover that part B is faulty in a way that destroys part A over time. Replace part A and B. Retest. Ship. Get yelled for rework, wasting parts, and for taking too long on diagnosis, but feel good that a tricky bug has been mastered.
System comes back. Part A is bad again. Spend more hours going over everything, discover that part C is causing B to fail silently over time, which causes part A to fail over time. Get yelled at for more rework and again taking too long to diagnose problem while tying up the good oscilloscope. Tell factory to get better QA. Watch flunkie in the corner replacing parts all day without a clue get a bonus. Replace system. Test w/burn in. Look for new job.
I worked in AppleCare US for a few years and authorized the replacement of a few systems for people when it was deemed to be in Apple's best interest. The comments I make apply to the US, other countries may be a bit different. At the time, it was OK to replace a system if it had 3 major repairs (major components replaced). People around me abused that (replacing systems w/o determining it was a h/w issue or before 3 repairs) and then we were required to go thru a supe before replacing a system. He would always push back, a pain for those of us that actually did our jobs... Anyway, after I left that department, I heard that they were no longer using the magic number of 3, I don't know what their policy is now. When a person calls AppleCare, probably the first thing through an agent's mind is how long the call will take (since one aspect of an agents metrics are their call durations). And, of course, customer attitude matters. If I had a total asshole on the phone, I was much less inclined to go the extra mile and help them. But, if a caller simply and concisely tells their story and then will answer the agents questions, I think they have a better chance at getting good service. (This may not apply to the original posters issue, I just wanted to add what I faced on a daily basis). In my years at Apple, I found that most agents were not all that good at troubleshooting and would say almost anything to get a caller off of the phone. An above poster suggested calling Customer Relations or Exec Relations, that is an excellent idea. If Exec Relations takes over your case, you will be dealing with a person that can do a lot to get your issue resolved. On the other hand, if your system is working fine now, why should Apple replace it? I think that Apple is probably just like any other company that generally takes the lowest bid and hence may suffer a certain percentage of failures. One person above talked about calling AppleCare for their education issues. Apple has agents that take education calls apart from regular consumer calls. I surmise that Apple may have given them instruction or different guidelines regarding education institutions, i.e. treat them with velvet gloves, etc. Posting anon since I don't want Apple legal on my ass
I've gotta disagree. I just received a G5 Xserve that my company had ordered, and it was missing the optional video card. The guy at AppleCare had to fight the other folks to have a card shipped to me. SOP was to have me ship the Xserve back to Apple and they'd ship me an entirely new unit. So, YMMV.
I just went through the process of getting my iBook replaced quite recently (the new one should be getting here tomorrow, actually).
In the past year (I've had it for 15 months, but the problems didn't start until a year ago), it had been in for repairs five times, and not long ago, it started having issues again. Nearly everything in it had already been replaced once already, if not more times than that.
The previous couple times I'd called in, they'd hinted that they'd do something about it if it had any more problems. For a while it was doing fine, I suspect because I got a new logic boards after they'd resolved the problems they had been prone to. The new logic board was fine, but other stuff started to go.
In my case, I didn't even have to ask them about getting it replaced this time. I think it had enough frequent flier miles from travelling back and forth across the country from Boston back to Apple that I must've earned a new one. Although it had been fine for a few months after getting the original problems resolved (after a few tries and a few logic boards), they agreed it was ridiculous that it had had so many problems, and they voluntarily replaced it for me without me having to suggest it. I had a few problems with FedEx taking forever to ship the old one back to Apple so it could be processed and the new one sent to me, but everyone at Apple has been extremely helpful about it.
Without exceptions, everyone I've talked to on the phone has been friendly and professional, and they've generally gone out of their way to get stuff taken care of as well as they could and as quickly as they could. The past couple days, as I've been calling in to check up on the status of the whole process, I've amazingly been on hold for a grand total of under five minutes before getting a real person, and that's over three different calls combined. Except for this most recent time, I've been shocked by how quickly my computer has been returned to me. I call one afternoon, the shipping material arrives the morning, Apple receives and repairs it the next day, and the morning after that, I have a computer again.
Of course, I would prefer that nothing had gone wrong with my computer in the first place, but this is the first Apple product I've had this kind of trouble with (I was using my Quadra 950, from 1992, as a router until a month ago, when I replaced it with something that could handle 802.11b, and I have stuff older than which still works fine). If anything of mine breaks again that I have to talk to any tech support people about it, I hope it's a product of Apple's again.
I probably sound like a complete fanboy whoring myself out for Apple, the Great and All-Powerful, but I've really been that impressed with the people working there, even if I've been kind of frustrated by the whole thing (thanks, Josh, Glenn, Greg, and everyone else I've dealt with there).
(As an added bonus, the model I had (the iBook with an 800MHz G3 from a year and a half ago) was out of stock, so they're replacing it with the current model iBook G4. So, for putting up with everything that went wrong with the old one, I get a new toy. Huzzah!)
When my first generation iPod was getting only 1 hour of battery charge, I went down to the Fashion Valley Apple Store with a long list of things to say and possible rebuttals to refusals that I was prepared for them to give me. To my surprise, all I had to say was, "My iPod only gets an hour charge now." The guy asked for my serial number, then went to the back of the store. A few minutes later, I was a proud owner of a new refurbished first gen iPod with 10 hours of battery life. I think when it comes to customer service, your attitude and tone with the CSR will determine the response you get. Not fair, I know, but it pays to be nice to people.