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Apple Voiding Smokers' Warranties?
Mr2001 writes "Consumerist reports that Apple is refusing to work on computers that have been used in smoking households. 'The Apple store called and informed me that due to the computer having been used in a house where there was smoking, [the warranty has been voided] and they refuse to work on the machine "due to health risks of second hand smoke,"' wrote one customer. Another said, 'When I asked for an explanation, she said [the owner of the iMac is] a smoker and it's contaminated with cigarette smoke, which they consider a bio-hazard! I checked my Applecare warranty and it says nothing about not honoring warranties if the owner is a smoker.' Apple claims that honoring the warranty would be an OSHA violation. (Remember when they claimed enabling 802.11n for free would be a Sarbanes-Oxley violation?)"
If it was in the agreement, I don't see why it wouldn't be legal. Since smokers are not a protected class, they can be discriminated against by private industry without any legal repercussions.
Of course, if it's not in the agreement, you could argue breach of contract (or whatever the particular legal term would in this case) because they're trying to impose additional conditions on the warranty after it's already been purchased.
Look at this and tell me that you wouldn't run screaming if someone asked you to repair that. Also, the way smoke is clogging up that fan, I'm thinking that smoking around a computer is a decent reason to void your warranty. Like using your phone in the rain. The harm came to the unit through your own negligence...
I used to work as a computer technician to pay my tuition.
Computers that had either failed or seized up due to nicotine/tar build up were impossible to clean, and nearly impossible to repair. The nasty build-up got literally everywhere, clogging heatsinks, coating voltage regulators, caps, expansion slots, and other devices that depend on air convection to stay cool. The only way to get these machines running stably again was usually massive part replacement.
If smoking doesn't constitute improper operation, it should. For all the people bitching out there, smoking has been demonstrated to cause premature failure to humans, particularly second-hand smoke which contains a Noah's Ark of nasty bacteria and pathogens. WHy is it such a surprise that it also kills sensitive electronic equipment?
(1) When did Microsoft buy-out Apple? They must have taken-down the "Don't be evil" mission statements.
You seem to be confusing Apple and Google.
(2) Is there any proof that SMELL can cause lung problems?
No one said smell can cause lung problems anymore than people claim sight can cause your chest cavity to be punctured because you can see a guy aiming a gun at you. Smell is a sense which can be used to detect things that are potentially damaging, like carcinogens.
Slashdot ate my [shudder] tag.
Dealing with anything which a smoker has owned (or used) is just completely disgusting. House, covered in yellow nicotine stains, thin film of brown smoke residue on fucking *everything*. I have a photo somewhere of a lightbulb which has a yellow/brown vapour deposition coating on one side, the other being less exposed. Then there's the smell on their clothes, in their cars, the yellowed teeth, yellowed fingers. I'd put money on it that the macbook in question was just as disgusting inside.
Deleted
"As a smoker I find it hard to deny Apple's case here. Tobacco smoke is not a good thing for electronics. "
But that isn't Apple's case. They're claiming that working on a gadget that was exposed to cigarette smoke constitutes exposing their employees to a biohazard.
Not that cigarette smoke predisposes the gadget to breakdown (which it may or may not do).
Well, third-hand smoke is considered by at least some docs to be a direct cancer risk.
There comes a time in every friendship when you have to say, "I never liked you, get lost." --Bill McNeil
In some parts of the country you don't get much of a choice. It's very hard around here to get an affordable rental and buying something is usually not affordable. Trust me if the other option is being homeless, they may as well hold a gun to a loved one, because you'll pay the money whether you want to or not. People around here that make minimum wage can pretty much count on rent taking up half or more of their paycheck, niceties like chemical free living aren't necessarily realistic.
Killz white primer paint works wonders on smoke impregnated walls. Not a shill... just used it on the walls in my house. Sometimes the house is worth it, even if there's smoker's residue. Like someone else said, clean it first, then Killz the rest. :)
No
Have you ever opened up a computer that a really heavy smoker has been sitting in front of for years? It's disgusting. Everything has a coating of tar on it, it stinks even before you power it up, and when you try to work on it, it's all gummy.
I'm just amazed that more hard drives and more fans don't fail because of smokers.
It's pretty bad when you wipe the screen and the paper towel turns ORANGE!
Is Apple being dumb? Now that smokers are the minority, I don't think so. Let them pay for supplemental coverage, same as health insurance. Besides, if you want to quit smoking, there's an app for that
Maybe not, but it doesn't excuse not honoring the warranty.
I don't think anyone is demanding they work on it. They're just as welcome to replace the device.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
I've used it too, and it's great, but it's called Kilz, not Killz. One is a brand name, the other is leet speak.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Then you end up with this gross yellow residue running all over the place.
Seriously - go up to a smokers' computer and wipe it down, and see what comes off. Or open one up on a humid day and feel how all the parts inside are sticky with tar residue.
Your insurance policy calls it "smoke damage" for a reason - smoke is not beneficial.
This came about as a direct result of people falsely claiming against the warranty when there was known water exposure. All modern cell phones and their batteries have this feature as well, and there are absolutely times when the sensors (really just a system by which a striped ink pattern bleeds to stain the material when wet enough) have been triggered by humid weather, or condensation.
As for you not "buying any more Apple products", likely you weren't a customer before this. I have heard this same tired old statement again and again. Yet Apple sells more and more every year, and maintains their reputation as the most customer friendly consumer electronics company. That's not to say they are perfect, and there are plenty of things they do that annoy me. Comparing them with the competition, though, they are the best to work with, and give the most discretion to their employees to override policy of any of the major firms.
Regarding cigarette smoke and OSHA, I would say they definitely took the wrong angle and are likely technically incorrect. At the same time, while I approve of people being able to smoke if they want, smoking near computers shortens their life significantly, due to the gummy deposits that form on the components, heatsinks and fans, and vents. I have cleaned off many computers in this condition, replaced fans if needed, etc. I charge for the time. I also stink like a couple of thousand stale old cigarettes until I shower. When you have an employee working an 8 hour shift, it would be abusive to force them to clean a computer in this condition and suffer for the rest of the day.
The submitter to Consumerist is an ass who knows exactly how nasty his computer is, can see the gummy deposits, etc. which occurred due to very close proximity smoking at the computer's location. His screen is probably nasty, too. And it's not like this is new information. Smoking near computers has long been known as a really bad idea.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
It may be more of a danger to children, but to dismiss an environment that is coated with poison dust as harmless without further study is absurd.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-third-hand-smoke
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
A smell is caused by particulate matter hitting your olfactory senses.
smelling smoke = breathing some trace of smoke.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
When I worked TV repair, we'd jack up the estimate on smoker's TVs to compensate for the nastiness factor. The electrical charge attracts the particles from the ambient air and the build-up in some environments can be dramatic -and fast. Failure was very often scum related, either by blocking cooling air, or providing an arc path for the High Voltage.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
ok, I'll bite with my ignorance of why this then only applied to Apple, not other US IT companies?
When SOX was passed, there was a lot of discussion about what it meant for the company I was working for at the time. SOX made the CEO and CFO personally liable for the company's compliance with accounting rules. As an engineer, a lot of the discussion in my area centered on software upgrades. How did we have to account for upgrades and bug fixes?
As I recall, selling a product with the expectation of future free upgrades could be interpreted as booking revenue in advance of sales. If the customer's decision to buy was based on the expectation of the upgrade, and the seller books the revenue at the time of the sale, then the seller has booked revenue for a non-existent sale -- the future upgrade. By giving away free upgrades, the company could be establishing the expectation of future free upgrades, making the CEO and CFO potentially liable for accounting malpractice.
In the end, we decided what a lot of tech companies, including Apple, seem to have decided -- bug fixes would continue to be free, since they are addressing a product defect and not enabling new functionality. Upgrades, even if it was just to enable a latent feature of the hardware, would not be free.
Having done PC support in offices back when smoking in offices was common I can attest to the putridity of a machine that gets smoked around. I would equate it with working on a grimy car engine. It's even worse with pet owners that smoke. You take the machine outside and "hose down" the system with a spray circuit board cleaner and replace the PSU. It's messy work but you bill the customer for your time. If you think the customer may balk at the expense you talk to them, maybe show them what smoking around computers does. It wasn't that big a deal when most of the system's chips didn't need heatsinks. You could get away with cleaning just the CPU's HSF, and maybe replace the PSU if the customer was on a budget.
Of course I only worked on steel cased, pentium-era desktop machines. Modern systems and notebooks in particular would be more involved as they really depend on staying clean and cool to avoid heat related instability. I would expect a cleaning could include a surcharge for abusive and unusual treatment of the hardware. I mean, if someone brought me a machine that they had doused in maple syrup, I would probably refuse them service or just name a price that I figured was a little north of what I thought they would be willing to spend.
As for the health concerns, well I smoke anyways, but I do it outside. I'd still wear gloves, just like I almost always did.
But Apple has other concerns. I doubt a mall store tech could contain the mess with the resources they have available. They might not actually be allowed to use the cleaner I would use. Or it might attack plastic requiring full dissasembly of a notebook. I don't know, I'm out of the loop on that.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
Having done computer repairs for heavy smokers, I would void the warranty just for the damage it does to the electronics. There is nothing as disgusting as the inside of a smoker's computer. After a few months, the tar will have completely enveloped the heatsink, power supply, and every fan in the system. Sometimes it's so thick that the air cans can't blow it out. I've replaced a lot of fried motherboards because of this.
Disclaimer: Evolution comes with NO WARRANTY, except for the IMPLIED WARRANTY of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
I've been an ex smoker for quite a few years now and it is a bad habit. But I have to say your claim is unadulterated BS. I've built, rebuilt and modded my own machines for years while I was a heavy smoker and have NEVER seen anything like what you're claiming. I don't know why you would bother to invent something that is so obviously untrue but it is both amazing and depressing that people are so unquestioning as to accept it as "informative."
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
As a reformed heavy-smoker who also smoked in a room full of computers, I'll call your bull... er, bluff on this one. I generally take apart my computers once a year or so to blow out the dust and remove the cat fur that inevitably clogs the intakes. I've never had an issue with tar on heatsinks, nor premature failure of components. Some of my machines were in constant use for up to a decade before finally being retired.
Non-smokers whining about the smell of old tobacco is one thing, but when we resort to lies to "prove" a point, there is no argument.
Sorry, it's very obvious when:
a) using anything from a smoker's house
b) being near a smoker, whether they are smoking or not.
c) driving behind a smoking driver
d) someone is smoking nearby.
Zippthorne is in no way unique in this regard, even if your own olfactory sense is not processing the stench in the same way.
I don't believe you for a second. Your statement may look good for slashdot, but one would expect all electronics to fail because of smoke. Are TVs, VCRs, DVDs, PVR's, fridges, sound systems, game systems, microwaves ovens, clocks, etc., failing because of smoke? Of course not.
Olrik (non-smoker)
I call bullshit on your bullshit. I fix PCs for a living, and you know when the owner is a smoker because you get this stuff inside it:
http://www.thecomputerwizard.biz/photos/smoke2a.jpg
Brown tobacco residue everywhere. It's thick and sticky and difficult to brush away, unlike normal house dust. It also smells like an ashtray.
What worries me most is that the owner's lungs are probably like that too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC