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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
In the US there is a "Lemon Law" for automobiles. After 3 major defects you can return your car and get a new one.
I've always been of the opinion that there should be a similar law for electronics/computer systems. Sometimes you just get a bad equipment and the best course of action is to replace the entire thing.
~.Evanrude
so it'll getted modded to -1. But here goes.
Call Apple Corporate. Ask to speak to a customer care specialist. Explain to them the basics of your problem. Before you call, collect all the "evidence" you can. I don't mean finger prints and dumb stuff like that. I mean, names, case numbers, repair dates. Make sure you have that in order and the first thing you are going to want to do is walk through the details of each and every repair.
Now here's the kicker. Also find a copy of the Applecare Agreement and have that with you. Find as many relavent terms and phrases in that document as you can. Example; "repaired or replaced", and "under contract", etc, etc. Also try and think back to all the dealings you've had with the customer reps you were dealing with. Yes, it's pedantic, but being civil and having common courtesy and letting them be the unruly ones can win a lot of times, especially with the customer care specialists, because they've only got one job, and that's to diffuse pissed off customers. If you make it easy on them, they'll probably give you things, like spare batteries (though that's a rarity).
Oh, and also send of a polite letter to sjobs@apple.com. He doesn't read them, but someone does, so get in line. Your patience may be rewarding. But if your all in a fit and pulling your hair out, feel free to suck on a egg.
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
IANAL, YMMV etc.
You can get remedy through the Consumer's Guarantee Act, which requires that either the retailer or importer/wholesaler (if the retailer is out of business or no longer in a position to remedy the problem) must provide goods and services fit for purpose, and be of a sufficient quality to work correctly. Note that this act is usually (unless you get a good lawyer) relevant to goods and services purchased for consumer use rather than for business use.
It sounds like the device in question is not particularly reliable.
Do everything in writing, including providing them with a summary of the issues and remedies already attempted. cc the supplier (I think in this case it's Renaissance Corporation Limited).
If rarking them up this way doesn't work, for the small cost of ~NZD45 you can file a claim with the small claims court which will allow damages of up to either NZD3000 or NZD5000 (I can't remember which) to be awarded (which won't be enough to cover your losses), or you can engage lawyer and take them to court, and possibly settle for the amount you are out of pocket, plus consequential damages. In NZ you would be surprised how fast a company remedies a situation when a bailiff turns up with a court summons for a company director. You can get the names of the director(s) from the New Zealand Companies Office.
Fast, cheap & reliable. Pick two.
Since I submitted this story Apple have agreed to replace my PowerBook because of what appears to have been a typo in the email I recieved from Renaissance, Apple's NZ distributor.
They still do not accept that nine failures in little over two years (25 months) is enough to warrant the replacement of my Powerbook. They agreed to do this before this article ever saw the light of day.
Apple were supposed to be contacting me today to inform me of what machine they would be offering as a replacement, but as yet I have not heard. Perhaps they changed their mind about offering a replacement after recieving bad publicity. I'll keep everyone posted.
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!)