No it isn't. If this had been a customer that needed to run 10.6.8 due to some specific business critical need, a new iMac is not a positive outcome.
It is "OK" and "acceptable" customer service to make good on mistakes. But the mistake basically removes it from the "great" / "fantastic" status. Giving away something for "free" in this case ( and back handed passing along the costs to other customers ) is far more misdirection away from what would have been great. Minimally should have been precise and confessed up. "We blew it. We will make you whole".
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My problem is far more with the "amazing" / "great" / "fantasic" histronics here. It is acceptable but not amazing.
Apple's realtively standard policy is to trade up customers. It doesn't happen all the time but it happens enough. They don't put alot of effort into improving some parts of their support operations. The cover for this by doing periodic "give always" like this and buying broader goodwill with the stories that leak out. The same higher than necessary fault rates continue without improvement.
It continues to draw folks in because folks think they have a chance to hit the lotto far more than the service quality if far above average.
Then they would have *asked* if that was the case, and you could always say "no".
The guy *asked* for a new iMac, and they replaced it for him. They could've quite easily ordered him a new LCD - the LCD was still functioning fine (so he could have used it whilst , and they're not on back-order so even if they state that, it will normally be in in 2-3 days.
So instead, they took his 3 year old Mac, and replaced it with a brand new better machine. Completely free of charge. That is more than acceptable to me. That is pretty damn awesome.
And as for them not confessing up - that's exactly what they did??? The scratch could have come from 2 places - the factory, or the genius doing the repair (those LCDs are damn easy to scratch). It's not like they said the scratch wasn't there.