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Should Apple Give Back Replaced Disks?
theodp writes "As if having to pay $160 to replace a failed 80-GB drive wasn't bad enough, Dave Winer learned to his dismay that Apple had no intention of giving him back the disk he paid them to replace. Since it contained sensitive data like source code and account info, Dave rightly worries about what happens if the drive falls into the wrong hands. Which raises an important question: In an age of identity theft and other confidentiality concerns, is it time for Apple — and other computer manufacturers — to start following the practice of auto mechanics and give you the option of getting back disks that are replaced?"
Do you always get your part back at the mechanic? Aren't some parts "cores" used to make remanufactured parts? Just like PC drives?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Dave Winer learned to his dismay that Apple had no intention of giving him back the disk he paid them to replace.
/sarcasm
Does not compute. He paid them to replace it, not to replace it AND give back the old one.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I was just thinking about this today. I'd expect that this would be the case for a warranty drive repair, but when the customer bought a new drive? The old part should definitely remain the property of the customer...
In most states, the consumer does not have the option to have the old parts returned, they have the right to have the old parts returned. Where laws are properly enforced, it's a rather big deal if the mechanics doesn't do so.
And yes, the laws regarding computer repair should be the same.
Right there on the "customize your system" page for many (if not all) Dell Machines is the option to keep your defective disks after they have been replaced.
It costs a little extra and coming from the field support arena I know why.
Whenever you replace a part under warranty they take the old one. Not because they have use for it but to make sure you don't. Imagine an unscrupulous person who would call in "My drive is broken" then when the tech replaces the drive, he just turns around and sells the old one (which was fine anyway).
The same logically applies to other components and Dell only makes this special exemption for Hard drives because that's where the data is stored.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
According to the excerpt, Apple owns the drive, not the data on it. IANAL, but they don't have any legal right to distribute your data that's contained on the drive. If they accidentally give someone the drive with the data still on it, then it seems like that could equal a big lawsuit. That's why they'll most likely wipe the drive. If you're that concerned with a middle man digging through your drive, then you probably should have been more careful with 1) signing forms without reading them, and 2) using PCs or notebooks where you'll invalidate any warranties by breaking the case seal.
If there's sensitive information on the drive, you have every right to want it back (especially if it wasn't warranty work). Apple deserves the highest possible mark of shame for this disregard for the security of their customers' information, it's absolutely not permissible.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I recently encountered a similar situation - my mother had dropped her cell phone into the pool, and it wouldn't recognize any SIM cards anymore. She had "insurance" that sent her a replacement refurbished phone in exchange for sending the old phone back (but the premiums plus "deductible" would have been enough to cover the cost of the refurbished phone, and far too expensive to trade in the almost-working phone, so it was a terrible deal).
Unfortunately, she apparently had credit card info inside the phone somewhere (no, I don't know what she was thinking). I wasn't really comfortable with sending the phone like that through the mail, so we tried to get AT&T/Cingular to give up a way to unlock the phone to delete the card info or give us a way to perform a master reset (assuming that the functionality exists), but they refused. We sent it anyway, but I wish we could have at least reset the phone, if not kept it in its broken state (or maybe shown it to our local store that it was indeed broken or something...).
I work as a Tier 1 agent for AppleCare and I can assure you that getting your hard drive back for a mail-in repair is an option; however, most Tier 1 agents do not know how to put this request in so it's not often done correctly. It's definitely not a standard, and if a hard drive is replaced through a mail-in repair the minimum price would be a flat-rate repair which is at least $249 but oftentimes it is more than that.
I ran into a similar problem. Once I found out that my apple care warranty also forces me to forfeit my drive, it also came to my attention from my attention that it would most likely be a refurb. Plus, I wasn't allowed up to upgrade to a higher capacity drive. My fault for not reading the AppleCare warranty. The "geniuses" at the bar insisted that the entire process of replacing the drive would take 2 weeks and that it was much too hard for mere mortals. Since they didn't have any stock that matched my drive (but they had countless higher capacities laying around), it had to be sent out of state. I was like bullshit, took my drive and my broken hard drive. Replacing it myself took only 15 minutes. don't get me wrong, love my mac, but the warranty plan could improve.
Donald Ray Moore Jr. (mindrape)
Suspected Terrorist
Maybe his disk drive was broken, so he could not take the sensitive data off it?
This is a good reason to use an encrypted filesystem if you can.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
It would be good customer service to ask. I can understand the risk of abuse by giving customers 2 drives for the price of one, but at least one's options should be given up front. They could offer a transfer fee or a keep-old-disk fee or the like. Find a decent compromise.
Table-ized A.I.
From the story, a few things appear evident:
This Macbook was not under warranty, or the hard disk replacement would have been free.
The $160 that the author is scoffing at isn't that outrageous if you consider that he paid for a hard disk and the labor to install it (though if his generation of macbook is anything like mine, replacing the hard drive is a snap. Still, using his auto analogy, mechanics get to charge you $100 labor to install your brake pads, even though it takes them only a few minutes).
If he had demanded the old disk and made a scene, he probably could have gotten it back.
I agree that saying that the old hard disk is theirs is lame as hell, and he's rightfully angry about that. It's probably the only point of the author's that holds water. There are alternatives to the Apple Store for repair, though. CompUSA was one (though it's now going out of business). There are other Apple Authorized Service Shops, like Ikon Solutions, and the old-skool Apple stores (privately owned ones, of which many still exist).
I once decided to have an old iBook's hard disk upgraded. I took it to CompUSA (please don't snicker, the iBook was under warranty, CompUSA is/was apple authorized so it meant saving my warranty, and this was around the year 2000, before Apple Stores were everywhere). When I took it in, I simply asked to keep the old drive and they were happy to put it in a static bag for me.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
What was his plan if the device was lost or stolen?
Encryption goes a long way in remedying this particular dilemma. If you're worried enough about it to freak when they don't send the drive back, you should be worried about loss or theft. Use TrueCrypt or your favorite encryption software for those files.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What if the data on the drive can be recovered? What if there are credit card numbers and other personal information on the drive? Source code? Trade secrets? Does Apple really want to treat their customers privacy so shabbily? For what? Don't they already make enough money off the $160 price for the new disk?
Here's another question for ya-- why didn't you use FileVault? Y'know apple throws it in OS X for ya for *free* for a reason...
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Did he make it conditional up front to return the defective drive? If he didn't it was probably thrown on a pile with other drives making it impossible to return. The other point is I've dealt with surplus and most companies don't recycle intact drives the first thing they do is drill or punch a hole through the drive making them impossible to recover data from. I'm guessing that's Apple's policy like most major companies. There's an outside chance of people in the repair department pocketing the defective drive for recovery but that's a risk anywhere and has nothing to do with Apple.
First of all, there's a problem with an awful lot of 80GB Seagate drives that are (mainly) used in Macbooks. Apple has been acknowledging it to a limited extent, and even though the laptop was out of warranty, the drive would likely been covered if enough of a stink was raised.
Secondly, if he paid for a replacement, he should have been allowed to keep the old drive. Once you're paying, you are buying the new part and the labor involved. Although, if his drive in fact has the same problem the Seagate 80s are coming up with, data snooping is not a problem... (the failed drives are, in fact, causing platter damage)
Third (and most important, perhaps), he should likely have been aware that on a Macbook the drive is a user-replaceable part. You remove the battery, unscrew the three screws that hold the memory/HD in place, and just pull the drive. Put the positioning screws on a new one, slide it in, and all is well with the world. I did a swap-out for a customer of mine two weeks ago who had a Seagate die, and the new 120 I put in cost about $100. The work took 5 minutes, most of which was spent looking for my screwdriver set!
Apple should get things clear though, and also step up and start a warranty extension for these drives. They've been pretty good about it with other hardware issues so far.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
A similar consumer law should force the return of replaced parts on computers, and don't expect Apple to change their mind about it until such a law is passed. And while they're at it, they should forbid under pain of long jail sentences, computer technicians from rifling through your hard drive for files of interest. I'll let the occasional child porn collector slip past this barrier in the interests of increased privacy from young geeks in the process. And I'd test them from time to time with decoy systems with files too interesting to resist by anyone who is pursuing through your personal data.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I cannot count how many times I have heard this advice, yet it bears out repeating over and over and over again - do not sign ANYTHING without reading it first. This is the person's mistake, and he willingly admits to his mistake. It is a shame that it happened at an Apple store, but to be honest, it could have been anywhere, even an automotive repair shop.
The only reason automobile mechanics must give you a replaced part if you ask for it is so that you can get a second opinion afterwards, thus hoping to reduce fraud that tends to run rampant at some questionable automotive places where either through technician ignorance, negligence, or through purposeful managerial policy, a part is replace that does not need to be replaced.
Apple has a legitimate reason for keeping the drive which is described on the form given to the customer - it believes the drive can be fixed and sold. As a paying customer, you are a part of that economic system. If you do not wish to participate, that is your prerogative, and with standardization of components, you are more than welcome to find an alternative (which ironically the consumer considered and should have pursued).
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
It was worth it for me to just buy a new (and bigger) drive so I could keep the old one. I still haven't decided if the lost data is worth the effort of recovery, but at least I have that option now.
Apple can't claim the manufacturer's warranty on the disk if they can't return the failed unit after they replace it. It would be sensible if they'd charge a token fee to cover some of their costs and just return the failed disk. Of course, it's been out of his hands by just taking it to the service centre; who is to say they didn't recover some data *checks tin foil hat*.
This is why I encrypt my disks. Everything. I've been doing it for a long time and I pay a considerable performance penalty for it. As disks get faster I need faster hardware to keep up. If a disk ever fails (or goes missing) I can live (mostly) safe in the knowledge that the data on it is junk to the next person without access to my super secret key.
Why wasn't he using File Vault; it's standard and part of OSX. Sure, Apple probably have back doors but it's one step in the right direction.
I drink to make other people interesting!
I'm sure everyone here remembers the geeksquad incident with people looking for porn and trying to compile a collection of all the porn they could. Or the guy this week that got arrested because a rep at CompUSA(I think) found kiddie porn on his computer while looking for pictures to put on a DVD to test the drive they just installed. It is in the nature of some people they are going to spy on other people's drives. Especially so here in the USA. Not sure why but people seem to be addicted with getting into everyone else's personal lives.
Now, just because you got the disk back doesn't mean they didn't look over your data anyway. I always encrypt my drives completely with a FDE program. That way if it does fall into the wrong hands they can't do anything with it anyway. My personal opinion, if you don't want someone going through your drive, you should either:
1. Take it to a repair center and watch them do the repair.
2. Take it to a friend/relative whom you know won't go fishing through your stuff.
3. Learn to fix it yourself.
4. Replace it yourself and use those handy dandy backups(you did do backups right?)
5. Suck it up and accept that some minimum wage freak is gonna go through all your stuff with a fine toothed comb looking for goodies.
Now, #5 might not be a big deal if you have something like source code, they might not know enough about programming to realize what they have and how valuable it is if they wanted to use it against you. In the end, it would be great if the IT industry had some kind of checks and balances to keep everyone honest and separate those who are honest from those who are lying kniving thieves, but this is the world we live in. Until someone can come up with an effective way to keep everyone honest, FDE is needed.
Me personally.. if I had a drive that wasn't encrypted I'd value the data and the cost of the replacement drive. If losing the data to the wrong hands could cost you millions of dollars, a $200 drive isn't too much to throw out yourself and replace. If it has no real value then why not RMA it? The choice is yours, so make it a good one.
for consumer electronics. I worked at a warranty center for 35 brands and to keep fraud to a dull roar the wanted the parts back. We'd fill out all the paperwork, stick it and the parts in a bin and wait for the field rep to audit them. Then they'd take them back or tell us to dispose of them.
I assume it's similar in other industries. It's way too easy to claim you replaced a set of brake pads or that microprocessor and not do it but get the money for the part.
Since the party paying is the manufacturer then they get the old parts back.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
- If you don't have an agreement in writing, you don't really have an agreement.
- Never sign anything without having read and understood what you are signing.
Making excuses about "fine print" is just a way for lazy people to justify their laziness when it comes to reading a contract. This guy has no one to blame but himself.Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I had an interesting experience with this several years ago. The hard drive in my parents' new HP failed, and being under warranty, they offered to replace the drive. Within 48 hours, a package arrived with a replacement. I pop it in... and it boots into Windows NT. It was an old drive of a recycled computer (or something) and had not been wiped or formatted. It was a fully-functional install of NT, complete with all of the previous user's data. Brief inspection revealed quite a bit of personal and even sensitive information still on the disk.
I called HP about it, they apologized profusely and sent yet another replacement drive (this one in factory packaging). Still, I was scared sending my mum's drive in with everything still on it, so I took an industrial magnet to it before I returned it. Not a month later, I had a Seagate external drive fail under warranty. Needless to say, I was nervous then. Nervous now.
--RIAmAses! Let my MP3ople go!
With the small, truck-sized caveat that axiom number 1 is entirely untrue, this is good advice.
Number 1 should be rephrased to say "If you want to secure an agreement, do it in writing." As written, the converse is not true--an agreement without writing does indeed exist and has consequences all the time. It's like the mythical "it's not a contract unless I signed it" that also isn't true but will never die.
Still, unless he requested the part back up front, that drive became Apple's property as soon as the replacement was installed. Also, unless it was requested and required that the drive be returned, there's likely no way it can be recovered. It got binned with the other bad drives.
This is a simple case of whining because the customer didn't really know what the hell he was doing, when all he needed to know was right in front of him the whole time, not bound in some dusty, obscure location in an archaic form of legalese.
This is standard practice in the industry; components replaced under warranty have to be replaced...
Except that this was replaced beyond the warranty; it cost him $160. At that price I would expect to actually be buying a drive, not trading in an old one. 80 GB laptop drives on Newegg range from $55 to $88, which means that, at $160, installation is between $72 and $105. That's already fairly high, but I'm willing to grant Apple that they have to worry about breaking more, and need to have a profit too. But that price plus the old drive? That's voluntary highway robbery!
It's his loss for signing the contract without reading it, but that doesn't mean that we can't sit back here and berate Apple for being stupid.
Apple considers the Hard Disk Drive in a MacBook to be DIY. You will not void your warranty by replacing, upgrading or repairing whatever slides into that nice little slot. If he had such a hard time with not only the price but also the fact that they were keeping his HDD maybe he should have clicked around their support site for like 2 seconds... http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/MacBook_13inch_HardDrive_DIY.pdf ~me
They're going to resell his old drive as a refurb if they can. If privacy was a problem he should have bought a new drive.
Contracts require "meeting of the minds". And again, there was a reasonable expectation that he would be able to keep his old drive, given that he was paying way over retail for the new one. You can't impose any condition you please just by burying it under 10 pages of fine print. Imagine buying a new car and getting ready to drive off when the salesman says, "Oh yeah, the ten page contract you signed stipulates that we get to keep your old car," when nothing of the sort was mentioned before. While it is typical to get trade in value for a car you are replacing, no one is going to accept such a trade in unless it is explicitly mentioned and negotiated beforehand. Maybe you had planned to give the car to your son, or sell it yourself.
Similarly, it is typical that the trade in value of the old drive factors into the price of replacement and repair, but it must be made explicit. The exception is when replacing a drive under warranty. It is generally understood that a warranty guarantees you a working set of components, and so it would be expected that in replacing a component, the warranter keeps the broken unit to recover any possible remaining value and to discourage warranty fraud. However, this did not happen under warranty. The price for repair was much greater than the cost of typical drive, so there is no way that the customer could have reasonably expected that the $160 was based on the store keeping his old drive. I think the customer could easily win this in small claims court. He'd get his old drive and money back, and the store would get the replacement drive back. He could then his laptop to another store and renegotiate the repair of his laptop.
Actually for a smart guy, Dave Winer (and Robert Scoble) seem to have terrible judgement.
First off, with going direct to Apple - retaining your disk is but a phone call away and a credit card charge. Really. Speak to Customer Services.
If you decide to go to an Apple Authorised Service Provider (disclosure: I own one) then it's entirely at the discretion of the Service Provider. They can withhold the disk and ask you to pay for the charge Apple might levy for an "official Apple part" or you can go for a "third party" disk (cos, yes, they're all third party!) and get a new disk, at retail prices AND keep your disk!
This isn't so much as a YRO item as a "Why didn't you ask for your disk back when you handed over the machine" item? Shouldn't Slashdot have a Bozo Alert category?
>Apple can't claim the manufacturer's warranty on the disk if they can't return the failed unit after they replace it.
If the drive was under warranty, then why did he have to pay?
I'm posting this reply AC in order to avoid the obvious liabilities.
I work for an Apple store and to the best of my knowledge, we have no recourse with regard to customer's who want their drives returned. It's just not an option. On top of that, we won't even work on computers, in or out of warranty, that have a 3rd-party hard disk installed. YMMV.
If you need to bring in a computer that has sensitive data on it, my reccomendation to you is this: back up EVERYTHING you might need from the drive and use Disk Utility to securely erase the drive. You're pretty much boned if the drive has failed. If you're really this paranoid I would reccomend not storing this type of data on your internal hard disk; at this level, you are being paranoid, no matter what you've been told/think. No one at Apple or Apple's partners has any desire/motive to recover data from your failed hard disk.
I do not personally agree with this policy; however it is what it is and this policy has stood up to legal trials before (believe me, I know).
I don't know how much info is really on an iPod unless you've used it as an external drive... right? But I definitely feel your pain in regards to iPod repairs. I have never been more furious with a company in my life. Conveniently my iPod's drive died just weeks after the warranty expired. When I found out how much repairs were going to cost, I figured why buy a hard drive for $150+ when I can get the new video iPod for a bit more? My friend suggested buying a drive online and doing it myself. Sounded brilliant so I went bidding, got a drive, and popped it in my iPod. Bad move... (Just so ebay doesn't get a bad rep or whatever, the guy offered a full refund if the drive didn't work).
My iPod still didn't work, so I figured I could take the iPod to the Apple Store (I have an hour drive to get to one, mind you). To make sure I wasn't driving up there for no reason, I explained my problem to an Apple rep on the phone. They told me to bring it down, and they'd take care of it. After waiting for a half hour or so, the tech guy called my name. I walked to the counter optimistically, and handed him the iPod. He told me my drive was bad, as expected, and I pulled out the other drive to ask him about it. He looked at it disapproval. I asked if he could at least test it for me or something. He asked me if I had taken the iPod apart ever, and I had to answer with an honest "Yes, I did." He looked at me as if I had just handed him the plague. He set the iPod on the counter immediately, and basically told me it might make a good paper weight. I argued to no avail, and ended up selling my dead iPod on ebay in case anybody needed parts. *sigh* a mere $50 for a $300 electronic device... have to love the tech industry.
Greg Loesch
http://greg.loeschfam.com
..I had the Apple "Genius" grab a magnet from the back room and, in front of me, wipe it all over the HD. He was very cool about it, understood perfectly, and was more than happy to do it for me.
Sugapablo
I'll bet that magnet didn't do a thing.
Possibly more. Depending on the value of the data on that drive.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I see no reason why this disk shouldn't be returned to the user. They purchased a replacement drive..
This is why when i do work for anyone any old parts they go in a box.
Unfortunately the article is light on details. While $160 is overpaying for an 80GB hard drive (esp. if it's only 5400 rpm), it's probably NOT overpaying if it includes the cost of installation as well as the cost of re-installing the OS. While the article certainly implies that they did, in fact, include the cost of installation, he doesn't mention if they did any other service or whether they broke the price down for him.
I have upgraded the hard drive on one of my old MacBook Pros and there's external compartment to access the drive. There's no quick-access panel to make this easy. The bottom case of the laptop has to be carefully opened. An experienced person could probably swap the drive in maybe 20 minutes, but then it also has to be tested and get an OS installed and that'll take longer.
Everyone jumps on the auto-parts law, but remember that law only applies to parts that can't be reconditioned. There are a number of car parts that can be reconditioned and when you have these replaced you generally do not get them back. But typically you'd know up front if you were getting new vs. reconditioned parts and if there's a deposit, etc. for the failed part. If you buy a new car battery -- even if you intend to replace it yourself, the parts store is generally required by law to charge you a 'core deposit' fee, which you only get back when you return the failed battery.
I'm amazed that this person writes that they felt they were being overcharged but then did not ask about the price before agreeing to let them do the service -- then made assumptions.
All that aside, I too would be very worried about my data falling in to the wrong hands. But isn't that ALL THE MORE reason why he should have asked questions resolved any doubt BEFORE agreeing to the service?
Unlike the MacBook Pro, the MacBook allows HD replacement as a "user-serviceable" part (i.e., doesn't void the warranty; one thing that keeps me from buying a MBP -the hope of eventual better MB graphics being the other...). Now, not everyone is a geek and up for installing the OS, restoring from backups (?!) etc. -but you could buy a big, fast drive for the same $ -and this was posted on Slashdot...
I'm entering this conversation late, but here it is, how I handled it when my MacBook's 80GB drive died:
I sat down for my appointment at the Genius Bar. I asked him if I would get to keep the drive, since I was worried about my data. He said no, since they have to return the dead drive to the manufacturer. Fine, I agreed with that, so I asked if he could certify that the drive was indeed "dead" and worthy of replacement, so I could take it home and sandpaper the platters. He said that was fine; I didn't take his word for it, and made sure the manager was okay with it, in case his shift ended and there was no record that my drive was officially declared under warranty repair.
So I went home, and completely took out the platters, and put back together the case of the drive (sans platters) and took it back to the Apple store.
They put a new drive in my MacBook without fuss, and took the old drive's metal shell to give back to the manufacturer. I don't know if this scenario is officially endorsed by the corporate office, but it worked at the Cambridge, MA Apple store.