The consumer rarely gets screwed (unless they just shrug their shoulders and decide not to complain).
1)If you blatantly accept a box from UPS or Fedex (or whoever) with a giant hole or major dent in it, you are pretty dumb...Refuse delivery, immediately call your vendor and demand a replacement...it's quite easy and at the end of the day the vendor and shipper figure out who is repsonsible for the damage.
2)Even if you got a perfect box from the shipper, opened it up and found it in pieces, you would still call the vendor immediately. Take photos. If the vendor tells you you're out of luck, immediately call your credit card company and dispute the bill. 99% of card companies will protect you from a dead-on-arrival product that the vendor refuses to take back under basic/normal circumstances.
3)Let's say 50 days go by and your new product dies, you can either call the vendor (or supplier sometimes) and ask for a fast repair...most will want to help you right away on such a short death time period for your product. If it happens on day 359, you might wait awhile. They don't want a customer bad mouthing the vendor/supplier on something that's a few days/week out of the normal 30-day return policy...especially on a brand new product like these iMacs which may keep potential buyers from purchasing if they hear your a)product death and b)the vendor's refusal/slowness to help.
4)Many credit cards (Amex is awesome) covers products for 1 year LONGER than the original warranty you purchased. Get a Mac with a 3 year Apple warranty?...Amex will cover it for a total of 4 years. That means that if your Mac breaks/dies at 3 years 9 months, Amex will pay for the repair or a brand new unit (typically whatever is cheaper and easiest for everyone). This plan has helped me a few times the past few years and I now use my Amex for every single purchase of anything.
