After three i7's, Apple chose via their so-called Executive Relations to give me a refund. Sending me another iMac was apparently out of the question.
I suppose that's for the best, anyway. Three time's the charm!
But I find it intriguing that the last iMac I received was by far the worst; even though it supposedly was hand-picked.
- Grey bar, visible even when browsing the web.
- Nasty yellow tinge in the centre towards the bottom, while the upper half retained a more pinkish hue.
- Backlight bleeds, and severly so in the bottom right corner.
As others have implied, I believe they circulate the bad ones too. Even for customers who've complained. What a joke.
Lefsi - interesting to see your post. That was my exact same situation. Week 13 i7 direct from China (Apple Executive Relations), and it was the worst iMac of the lot despiute 'pre-screening'. Terrible grey bar, backlight bleed from bottom right corner, DVD scratches disks really bad.
An update to my situation - agreed to accept the i7 because my 'old' iMac flickering has become worse to the point of flickering every 30 seconds or so. So it must go back even despite a better screen and no DVD scratches.
I took the 'new' i7 into Apple Bristol store in the UK, and they agreed to replace the screen and also saw at first hand the DVD scratching. Said they had never seen this before (hmm). Ordered new optical drive.
I collected the iMac the other day and the screen was much much better, but the DVD drive was still scratching (they said it was fixed but I proved in store it was still doing it). I took the iMac home and then discovered severe greasy smears behind the glass of the replacement screen, and a row of dead pixels in the top left corner. A bummer as otherwise the screen was the best I have had (very very faint yellow stripe down the centre but otherwise perfect).
Interestingly backlight bleed was just as bad though as on the other screen, leading me to think that perhaps the two issues are not directly related i.e. you can get a better screen but bleed remains an issue if it was an issue in the first place.
Finally, I noticed a very weird further problem where condensation of some kind was appearing in a stripe across the screen (on the OUTside) after machine has been on for a few mins. Took the iMac back AGAIN and showed them the new issues with the screen. Demonstrated the condensation issue in store and the genuis has no idea what it could be. Totally baffled. They have now ordered another newscreen, replacement front glass, and an entire aluminium case to fix the disk scratching. We laughed that it is basically a new machine as it will take them all day to complete these repairs.
They gave me £100 store credit as goodwill for all my petrol and time for the 5th return trip to Bristol. Happy with that at least.
Returning to Bristol next week to pick up the repaired machine and fingers crossed this will be the final time. I would get a refund but it feels like admitting defeat - after 5 months of isses to walk away with no iMac would seem worse to me than ending up with one that is 99% OK. Plus I got my Mac tax free, a free upgrade to i7 from i5, and now a £100 store credit.
Despite my ongoing pain I am hanging on in there and will report the final outcome next week.
