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3rd Replacement Unibody Macbook in 6 months...can I get any type of a refund?

R

redrox5

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 7, 2009
93
0
Chicago
So my Unibody Macbook was originally purchased the day they came out. It is the 2.4 and served me well from September until the end of December. At that point I started it up one day and it crashed to the point that I couldn't do anything, the pinwheel of death was spinning but it wouldn't let me shut it down, so I turned it off with the power button. When I turned it back on it gave me the flashing question mark folder. I took it to my local Apple store and they said the hard drive died. So they ordered me a new drive. They replaced it and then it was great until February. Then it did the same thing. Crash, I power it down manually, when it starts back up, I get the flashing question mark folder. So I take it back, they say the hard drive died again. So they give me an entirely new MacBook. Literally 2 days later it happens again. They didn't want to deal with it and so they gave me another new MacBook.

Fast forward to about 4 hours ago. SAME DAMN THING happens. I'm a knowledgeable computer person and sure enough, it won't do anything. Mind you each time I've tried running disk utilities on it from the Leopard install disk with no luck. The past few times just for kicks I've tried reinstalling Leopard and it can't even find a disk installed. Needless to say I'm mad.

My question is this, do you believe that if I complain enough about this I can get a full or partial refund? I'm pretty well fed up with the MacBook and this is tarnishing my Apple experience (I've been a Mac user for nearly 10 years now). I still want to stick with an Apple, do you think it would be easier for them to do if I told them I wanted a refund to put towards a new MacBook Pro (15" or 17")? Also, has ANYONE else had this problem? I've searched around a bit and only found a few instances of this happening.
 
redrox5 said:
My question is this, do you believe that if I complain enough about this I can get a full or partial refund?
Click to expand...

No. Your situation is less than acceptable, but I doubt they would even consider giving you any money back; Regardless of how crappy a situation you may be in. You said you've had it since September. That's well over the 14 day return policy.

But I'm not Apple. Just my $.02
 
I wouldn't complain, but rather be polite and explain your issues. You've already hit the lemon-rule and received a replacement, and so continued issues are bound to earn you some measure of respect from an Apple rep.
 
That is certainly some bad luck. The hd was probably the effect not the cause. Power surge for example could spike the voltage and zap something.

I once worked with a person who had to sit on an anti static mat, and clip a cord to her body to work at a computer. If not something about her body zapped computers when she touched them.
 
Ok well I'm going in today to see if they can do anything about it other than give me a new (replacement) MacBook. I'll admit that it is nice that they are so quick to give me a replacement, as my warranty then starts over, but I'd really like to move on to something with a different logic board in the hopes that this will stop happening. I'll post my results later!
 
MrM said:
You said you've had it since September. That's well over the 14 day return policy.
Click to expand...

And interesting because they only released the Unibody MacBook in October. :)

When you bring your MacBook to Apple, they will probably offer you another replacement. Just ask politely if you can get it replaced with another model, if you can just pay them the difference. I don't see why they should refuse, it's more money for them. Good luck!
 
redrox5 said:
I'll admit that it is nice that they are so quick to give me a replacement, as my warranty then starts over, but I'd really like to move on to something with a different logic board in the hopes that this will stop happening.
Click to expand...
Does it? :eek:

Darn, that's good service, then!
 
I Wonder...

Do you have secure internet it could be a hacker that your mac may be picking up some sort of virus, but yes HD's do die and some have bad luck so it may be a virus which is doubtful, but yet it may be just the model, Try Explaining to apple even though they aren't very considerate :D
 
Update:
I had a genius appointment tonight, described the problem, he looked back through the log of all the things that had happened, told me that either it could be sent back for repair or I could talk with the manager on duty to see what we could work out. I decided to chat with the manager who turned out to be amazing. He offered me one of two choices; I could either exchange it straight up for the new high end (2.53 i think) 13" MacBook Pro or he would give me the full purchase price back, $1599 towards a more expensive machine. I thought about it for a bit and ended up getting the 2.13ghz/128gb ssd MacBook Air, for a total price of about $217 difference. Once again my faith in Apple is restored!
 
That's great, but just to note, you can always get a refund from a company when they are unable to rectify your problem. It's covered under an implied warranty that also ensures a toaster will toast. The first thing you always do is send a letter to the company's legal center explaining the issue and giving them a set time to respond before you seek third-party assistance. In this case, I usually go to the Attorney General or file small courts claim. I've done this numerous times with Dell, so...
 
veo321 said:
Do you have secure internet it could be a hacker that your mac may be picking up some sort of virus, but yes HD's do die and some have bad luck so it may be a virus which is doubtful, but yet it may be just the model, Try Explaining to apple even though they aren't very considerate :D
Click to expand...

This has been covered a lot lately. There are no "viruses" for Apple OS X in the wild...

A couple Trojans, yes. But they do not do what the OP has described.
 
redrox5 said:
Update:
I had a genius appointment tonight, described the problem, he looked back through the log of all the things that had happened, told me that either it could be sent back for repair or I could talk with the manager on duty to see what we could work out. I decided to chat with the manager who turned out to be amazing. He offered me one of two choices; I could either exchange it straight up for the new high end (2.53 i think) 13" MacBook Pro or he would give me the full purchase price back, $1599 towards a more expensive machine. I thought about it for a bit and ended up getting the 2.13ghz/128gb ssd MacBook Air, for a total price of about $217 difference. Once again my faith in Apple is restored!
Click to expand...

You won't regret it, Air is a great machine if you don't need raw power. And at least the next time something goes wrong with your computer, it probably won't be the drive ;).
 
maybe you have some habit that stresses the hard drives like crazy or heats them up till they fail. do you download 100 different torrents while the computer is sitting on a pillow trapping heat or something?

Remember, the only constant in all your dysfunctional relationships is you.
 
This is exactly what happened to me.

I brought a refurb whitebook back in October.
In november it had to have the logic board replaced.

I brought a WD 250GB hard drive and upgraded my machine. The hard drive died in March with exactly the same symptons as you described.

I sent the drive back to WD and they replaced it with a 320GB drive.

This drive has died again last week. So its back to WD again.

But now i'm wondering if there is something wrong with the mac thats making it spit out hard drives like this.

I've been working in IT for 10 years and in that time i've seen about 10 hard drive failures. 2 of them on my 1 machine!!!
 
Wow, looks like you had five different hard drives die on you. That is strange, I wonder if you had some wierd environmental conditions that caused the hard disks to fail. Do you check the SMART status on the drives periodically? The SMART status can be seen in System Profiler or Disk Utility. If it shows something other than "Verified", it is a warning of impending disk failure and time to do your backups.

Of course, now that you have an SSD, this is not applicable any more.
 
veo321 said:
Do you have secure internet it could be a hacker that your mac may be picking up some sort of virus, but yes HD's do die and some have bad luck so it may be a virus which is doubtful, but yet it may be just the model, Try Explaining to apple even though they aren't very considerate :D
Click to expand...

I wonder if there is some outside component to this as well. Because, the OP is experiencing the same thing with a couple Macs now. Coincidence??? or something else?


But, I really don't have the slightest clue...goodluck with the Air!
 
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crackbookpro said:
veo321 said:
Do you have secure internet it could be a hacker that your mac may be picking up some sort of virus, but yes HD's do die and some have bad luck so it may be a virus which is doubtful, but yet it may be just the model, Try Explaining to apple even though they aren't very considerate :D
Click to expand...

I wonder if there is some outside component to this as well. Because, the OP is experiencing the same thing with a couple Macs now. Coincidence??? or something else?


But, I really don't have the slightest clue...goodluck with the Air!
Click to expand...

It will be interesting to see. I wanted something with a SSD so that I could rule out bad hard drives. I guess SSDs still fail, but whatever. It is just weird. I've been working in IT for about 5 years now, with about 10 years experience with computers and I can't think of a single reason why it keeps happening.
 
I think your best be would be to sell it (After getting it repaired) then I would buy another one.

After the repair the computer may run like it should, but at this point you'll have a different one that hopefully gives you no problems.
 
synth3tik said:
I think your best be would be to sell it (After getting it repaired) then I would buy another one.

After the repair the computer may run like it should, but at this point you'll have a different one that hopefully gives you no problems.
Click to expand...

I just got a full refund for it and bought a 2.13ghz/128gb SSD MacBook Air. Thanks for the advice though.
 
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