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Apple replaced my iMac

eatmyjustice

eatmyjustice

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 24, 2008
41
4
Washington, USA
I made my first jump into the Apple world 3 years ago when I purchased the fastest iMac available at the time (24" Early 2008 3.06 GHz Dual Core). I don't normally buy extended warranties but also bought Apple Care. Although I work in IT and can google problems with the best of them, the thought that I could call Apple for the next 3 years with questions was appealing to me. About 18 months into my using my new Mac I noticed a slight discoloration on the left side of my screen, so I called Apple. They were unable to fix it over the phone and advised me to take it into the Apple Store. Since I live about an hour from the nearest Apple Store I elected to take my Mac to an authorized repair center (btw, they are no longer authorized). They couldn't find anything wrong. Since I was approaching the end of my warranty, I packed up my Mac and took it to the Apple Store last week. I made my appointment online but still had to wait about 30min for somebody to look at my Mac... It was incredibly busy there. The support guy documented my story and could see the discoloration right away. They wanted to test and evaluate the problem and asked if they could keep it for a few days so I went on home. Yesterday, the Apple Store called and asked if they could just replace my iMac. The repair cost had exceeded the value of the original iMac because they would have needed to replace the logic board, cpu, lcd, and power supply. They offered to move all my data but since I have a Time Machine drive I told them not to worry about it. I walked in Apple Store yesterday... It was, again, incredibly busy, and was handed my new iMac along with my old Hard Drive. (I has some boot camp data on it, so they just pulled it out of the old iMac and let me take it home). Needless to say, I'm still a bit stunned, but a very happy customer because they just handed me a new 27" 3.1 GHz Intel Core i5 iMac.

I don't know if my story is unique or not... but I'm an Apple Customer for life now.
 
eatmyjustice said:
I made my first jump into the Apple world 3 years ago when I purchased the fastest iMac available at the time (24" Early 2008 3.06 GHz Dual Core). I don't normally buy extended warranties but also bought Apple Care. Although I work in IT and can google problems with the best of them, the thought that I could call Apple for the next 3 years with questions was appealing to me. About 18 months into my using my new Mac I noticed a slight discoloration on the left side of my screen, so I called Apple. They were unable to fix it over the phone and advised me to take it into the Apple Store. Since I live about an hour from the nearest Apple Store I elected to take my Mac to an authorized repair center (btw, they are no longer authorized). They couldn't find anything wrong. Since I was approaching the end of my warranty, I packed up my Mac and took it to the Apple Store last week. I made my appointment online but still had to wait about 30min for somebody to look at my Mac... It was incredibly busy there. The support guy documented my story and could see the discoloration right away. They wanted to test and evaluate the problem and asked if they could keep it for a few days so I went on home. Yesterday, the Apple Store called and asked if they could just replace my iMac. The repair cost had exceeded the value of the original iMac because they would have needed to replace the logic board, cpu, lcd, and power supply. They offered to move all my data but since I have a Time Machine drive I told them not to worry about it. I walked in Apple Store yesterday... It was, again, incredibly busy, and was handed my new iMac along with my old Hard Drive. (I has some boot camp data on it, so they just pulled it out of the old iMac and let me take it home). Needless to say, I'm still a bit stunned, but a very happy customer because they just handed me a new 27" 3.1 GHz Intel Core i5 iMac.

I don't know if my story is unique or not... but I'm an Apple Customer for life now.
Click to expand...

Great story and yes apple has excellent customer support, one of the main reasons people justify spending more money on a Mac Computer
 
That is really a marvelous story that makes me consider buying the AppleCare before the one-year warranty on my Mac Pro and Air runs out.
 
What a wonderful story. Apple replaced my 2009 27" the other day with a 2011 i5. They tried to fix it when I brought but ended up scratching and denting it and I decided to overlook that as long as it worked. It still wasn't working so I brought it in and they said that it would make more sense to give me a new machine. I gladly accepted and walked out of the store with a new iMac :) Have fun with your new machine!
 
I just went through a similar situation. I'd gone through several repairs with an '09 i5. I bought the top of the line at the time of purchase, spending roughly $2200 when I picked it up. After having the logic board replaced, replacing the display and still having several ongoing issues, I called Apple Care and just asked outright if they wouldn't mind replacing it, due to the ongoing problems.

The support representative transferred me to an extremely helpful supervisor that agreed with my sentiment, and in under 10 minutes she had arranged to replace my unit with an upgraded model. Since I do a lot of tasks which are GPU intensive, I asked if I could have a few minutes to research the GPU, compared with my 4850 -- I was surprised to find that the 4850 was slightly more proficient in certain areas and asked if she would consider upgrading me to the top of the line i5 with the 6970, considering the differences in the GPU. She obliged without question, and I opted to pay the $200 dollars for the i7 upgrade.

They sent out the replacement through their advanced replacement program and I had my new iMac in two days.

Now they just need to go ahead and update the Mac Pros and I'll be the most satisfied Apple customer I can possibly be...
 
i had my 27 refurb replaced with a brand new one after some bad led screens.
apple customer service is great, in person and over the phone. saved over 260 dollars.
 
mac-ho said:
That is a very cool story. Didn't I see you at my last liars anonymous meeting??
Click to expand...

that is actually what they do. if it exceeds what it costs or is close to it, they will replace it. they did it to me after 2 failed led replacements.

btw those screens cost $500. wow

*edit*
BUT mine was the exact same model not a free upgrade.
 
Apple Care well worth the money especially with an Imac or Mac Book Pro.
If you never get to use it then consider it a blessing in desquise and if you do use it ............Its one less headache to worry about.
 
I had a similar story with my 24" iMac from a few years ago.

It was actually out of warranty by about a month when the hard drive failed. I took it in to an Apple store and they replaced it for free, no questions asked. I restored from my time machine backup and have been happy ever since.

Painless support is worth a premium to me.
 
mac-ho said:
That is a very cool story. Didn't I see you at my last liars anonymous meeting??
Click to expand...

Yeah, I see your point.

I know there are certainly cases of excellent customer service from Apple -- I've witnessed a few myself -- but I always get a little bit suspicious when a parade of brand new, or relatively new posters heap praises on a company or product in a public forum.

The flipside is, what's with all these imacs failing so terribly in such a short amount of time?
 
thekb said:
Yeah, I see your point.

I know there are certainly cases of excellent customer service from Apple -- I've witnessed a few myself -- but I always get a little bit suspicious when a parade of brand new, or relatively new posters heap praises on a company or product in a public forum.

The flipside is, what's with all these imacs failing so terribly in such a short amount of time?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what I can do to convince you two... but, it's a true story. I don't post much, but I hit this web site just about every day for news. I've been, for the most part, a "lurker" since 2008 when I purchased my 24" iMac. I just wanted to share my story with other users. Frankly, I'm still a bit stunned the whole thing.
 
thekb said:
Yeah, I see your point.

I know there are certainly cases of excellent customer service from Apple -- I've witnessed a few myself -- but I always get a little bit suspicious when a parade of brand new, or relatively new posters heap praises on a company or product in a public forum.

The flipside is, what's with all these imacs failing so terribly in such a short amount of time?
Click to expand...

Even though I don't know eatmyjustice I can vouch for the fact that AppleCare does replace Mac computers with new replacement computers if they are deemed too expensive to fix or if they have the same three failures within the 3 year period. Apple has done replacement Mac computers under my AppleCare.

Note sure what you are referring to when you say that iMacs have been failing so terribly in such a short period of time (LCD? Seagate HD? Lion?).
 
eatmyjustice said:
I'm not sure what I can do to convince you two... but, it's a true story. I don't post much, but I hit this web site just about every day for news. I've been, for the most part, a "lurker" since 2008 when I purchased my 24" iMac. I just wanted to share my story with other users. Frankly, I'm still a bit stunned the whole thing.
Click to expand...


Please don't take any personal offense by what I said. You may be telling the complete truth because, as I said, I've seen Apple do some crazy things in the name of customer service! They are definitely first class.

My point was to take such stories with a grain of salt. Not just in an Apple forum, but anywhere in public forums when people spring up from the woodwork to sing hosannas about any company or product. I wouldn't put it past a company to "encourage" their employees to post favorable stories and this one seems to have a large share of tagalongs that are either newbies or recent (last 6 months) joiners.

I am sure that Apple makes a lot of money off of AppleCare and loves positive publicity about it.

Peace.
 
Taz Mangus said:
Even though I don't know eatmyjustice I can vouch for the fact that AppleCare does replace Mac computers with new replacement computers if they are deemed too expensive to fix or if they have the same three failures within the 3 year period. Apple has done replacement Mac computers under my AppleCare.

Note sure what you are referring to when you say that iMacs have been failing so terribly in such a short period of time (LCD? Seagate HD? Lion?).
Click to expand...


There just seem to be an awful lot of people in this thread whose imacs went so far wrong as to need replacing under AppleCare.
 
Apple have just agreed to replace my 2010 27' mac with a brand spanking new 2011 model after several problems

In feb my optical drive malfunctioned and wouldn't eject so off went my mac for repair a week later it came back and hey it was fine

About 6 weeks ago my fan stated to work really hard and some problems with my display so I took it to my local store and they replaced my GPU logic board and LCD it was then returned and worked fine for a week or two, then last week the mac started to have problems waking from sleep and having to be hard reset and then would not start at all just clicking when switched on, a call to AppleCare planned a repair with hd failure, however I was not happy with that so this morning before the courier arrived I spoke to a guy at apple who promised if the mac failed again he would replace it!

About 30 mins later he rang me back and said after consulting colleagues and his senior team they had decided to replace the mac no questions asked I'm now waiting for my mac to be collected and the brand new shiny i5 one to be dispatched... Now that is the customer service I paid for... My AppleCare policy has been worth it's weight in gold I'm one happy customer!!
 
I had a similar experience with my G5(Dont remember the specs I do remember it was liquid cooled). I live 2.5hrs away from nearest apple store and was having problems with it. I wont go in to details about it but I later found out(after the replacement came) the reason why it was acting that way and it was a simple"I need to use a smaller harddrive".

Anyways, Apple sent out PC guys (even said we dont work on these very often) from 2hrs away to try and fix it, didn't work. Called Apple the next day and they said- send it to this address and we will send you out a new Mac Pro 1,1 3.0ghz, and they let me upgrade the GPU (I had to pay for that). Its still my work horse now with 2 Quad 2.66ghz though. Great serivce.
 
Good to see reports of good experiences with Apple warranty. Most the time people only report the bad stuff. Enjoy your awesome machine!
 
Great to hear that they replace your iMac with a brand spanking new one; I'm honestly hoping that they replace mine when I head to the Genius Bar this weekend to get my problem fixed for the second time lol (the first fix didn't work).
 
I wish their customer service here in Malaysia is just as good.

I had to argue with the guy on the phone about the stuck/dead pixels on my iBook screen before he asked me to bring it to an Authorized Service Provider and the guy over there also argued with me and only agreed to replace the panel after he called the guy who I talked to on the phone. It felt like they did it just because they want me to stop bothering them.

That was many years ago though, before online Malaysia store exists. I hope their customer service here is much better now.
 
I had an early 2008 iMac with AppleCare. After about 14 months I started having issues (I can't even remember what they were) and took it to the local Apple store. They said the replaced the logic board and power supply, but it didn't fix the problem. They called me back and said they decided to simply replace the iMac with a new one. They originally wanted to replace it with one that had the integrated graphics, but since my original one had a dedicated graphics card, they agreed to replace with the dedicated graphic card. I did end up having to purchase a new AppleCare for the new computer.
 
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