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Buyers beware - Apple won't replace defective machines, even when they can't fix them
- Thread starter aeolid
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Why does OSX allow users to install problematic software? Or at least, why doesn't it put up a warning?
Here's how that could work.
Third party developers submit their app to Apple for testing. If the app doesn't pass the test, the app is blocked from installation on that version of OSX. Thus, every serious developer would submit their app for testing, and all apps on Macs would be approved by Apple.
Or....
If the app doesn't pass the test, a warning is displayed when the user tries to install the app, where Apple washes it hands of that particular app. This gives the user the option to ignore Apple's advice.
If a Mac is brought to the Apple store with a problem, the first check is to test for banned apps. If the Mac has banned apps, it's handed back to user, and the repair doesn't proceed until user remove the app.
The majority of users would not install banned apps, and thus in most cases that entire set of issues would be prevented from ever happening.
Yes, it would help.
A replacement option would show the user that Apple will stand behind them if they are disappointed with their purchase (within some defined period of time).
If there is indeed nothing wrong with the Mac, it can be resold by Apple as a high end refurb. Maybe Apple will lose a few dollars on that transaction, but it will more than make it up with increased sales, because a no questions asked replacement policy should be very popular with buyers.
If there was such a policy, I would literally buy a new MacBook Air today. Seriously.
That's only a problem because Apple does not have a no questions asked replacement policy.
The solutions I've offered solves all such problems.
The real problem is that neither Apple or many of it's fan boy users want an actual solution, as evidenced by the fact that the only interest many or most Apple forum users have in such solutions is to argue against them. See this thread for details.
I ordered a new 27" iMac in January. It was plagued with serious issues from the very beginning and regularly crashes without warning. Needless to say, I've lost significant data, and cannot use the machine at all because it is too unreliable.
I started calling Apple Support within a couple of weeks of delivery. They put me though a series of time consuming but ultimately useless steps. Each one took most of a day, and it would be a couple of weeks before I had time to spend another day dealing with my defective computer, so after several operating system re-installs and one week at the genius bar wiping it and again reinstalling the OS - the problem has not changed but now they are saying that it's out of warranty.
Having spent months dealing with this and still not having a working machine, I've asked them to either replace it or issue a refund, but now they tell me that it is out of warranty, even thought they are still trying to figure out what the issue is. I've spent approaching hundreds of hours attempting to fix this problem, and re-setting up the machine after numerous re-installs. When I asked what my alternatives were, they actually suggested that I could sell it online!! They delivered a broken machine (that I paid nearly $3,000 for) and they have not been able to fix it, so they suggest I sell it (at a huge loss) to some unsuspecting person who will have even less claim to a warranty that I do.
I'm outraged and disappointed. Apple makes a lot of fuss about their customer service and reliability. It's all hype.
Buyer beware! If there is any indication at all that an Apple product is not working perfectly - return it for a refund IMMEDIATELY. Engaging with their support system is just a way for them to string you along until they wash their hands of the problem -- leaving you with a very expensive piece of junk.
details on the machine:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5
3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz
32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4X8GB
3TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
There has to be more to this story. But whatever.
Send email to tcook@apple.com. The issue then becomes automatically escalated.
The point that is being made here is the one that this thread and another thread begun by "R3DH3R0" (What to do with my next defective iMac problem?) are outliers to the point of straining credulity, to a stress point that (justifiably) breaks believability for many.
There is no conspiracy, no plot, or highly organized ring of Apple bashers or Apple supporters being asserted.
It is not necessarily the case that the situation being described here is impossible--because, well, it is not.
The case being described, in sum total, strains credibility, in both this thread as well as the one I mentioned. From the OP's inability to correctly represent "warranty" to many other details that by themselves are not directly germane but taken in total are utterly unique to the common experience of the masses.
The OP serves a rather telling self-indictment by selecting the title to this thread and yet NOT describing any interaction with Apple that would suggest the matter was ever broached.
That by itself equals a premeditated slam piece in an anonymous forum.
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I would agree that most Mac purchases likely go well, and that thus complaint threads are reasonably labeled "outliers". And certainly every reader is within their rights to judge the credibility of any particular thread for themselves.
However, it seems extremely unlikely that every such thread, which have existed on all the Mac forums for the last twenty years, is not credible. Such a proposal would itself strain credibility way past the breaking point.
Thus, we have credible evidence that some of our fellow Mac users are suffering and being treated unfairly by Apple. Thus, there is room for improvement in the customer experience.
I've put a clear and simple specific proposal on the table for improving the customer experience, a no questions asked replacement policy for some defined length of time.
Please observe how none of you have been able to show how such a policy would hurt Apple stockholders or customers, beyond the occasional burping of words like "ridiculous".
Please observe how even though posters can't show why such a policy would not be helpful, posters refuse to embrace such an idea, or even give it serious consideration.
This is credible evidence of a cultural problem in the Apple community, an embrace of a complacent rationalization of mediocrity and the Apple company line. This cultural problem is the ultimate cause of the OP's problem, and all those like it.
This cultural problem will also likely be a significant factor in some other company elbowing Apple out of it's position, because it's a very common phenomena for successful companies to get fat, happy, complacent and sloppy, which creates an opening for the competition. Steve Jobs warned of such a threat continually and with great passion, but apparently my fellow posters have not heard of Steve Jobs yet.
If my fellow posters would apply their articulate intelligence to solving these problems at their source, they would eventually succeed, and thus they themselves would be liberated from having to play the lemon lottery.
But when Apple executives read threads like this, and see that you are eager to line up with Apple against those that Apple has cheated, they see no reason to end the lemon lottery.
Posters in this thread are arguing against their own interests. It may be fun to play the debate game, but if you keep buying Macs sooner or later it will be you starting one of these threads, and then it will be you whom your fellow Mac users turn on.
Was this purchased directly from Apple or an online vendor such as B&H or Amazon?
Your failure to backup your data is not germane to this thread and Apple has no responsibility for your failing to secure your own data.
I had intended to address the remainder of the opening post, but the first paragraph is the clincher.
If the spontaneous crashing described is why data was lost, crashes taking place while work product is being produced . . . . . THAT begs immediate attention by the computer user. A condition such as that is not one that is pigeon holed into "when I have time to get around to it."
You state that this unit had problems from the very beginning, and yet, you did not address those issues until you were beyond the time envelope where you might have avoided all of this cluster and gotten a new unit, no hassle, no question.
No, either there is a misrepresentation of purchase date or the OP hasn't a clue regarding warranty on a very expensive computer.
Oh to be a fly on the wall for a conversation where someone at Apple actually says to an Apple Customer, "why don't you just sell this defective product online?"
The remainder of the original post is little more than constructed editorial opinion and slam piece.
It would be my opinion that there is much to this post that would nicely fit into the category of lies by omission and selective recall. It is very evident that the description of this scenario is less than even-handed.
Yes, but we are not discussing EVERY SUCH thread. We are discussing THIS thread, and I mentioned one other thread as an exemplar that strains credulity.
If a computer manufacturing corporation treated their clientele uniformly and that treatment was typified by that described in this thread . . . . . . . that corporation would be known as Microsoft.
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You are discussing this thread, I am discussing the larger pattern this thread represents.
Please link us to those threads where you found a report of someone being cheated by Apple to be credible.
If you can not do so, then it seems credible that no post by any poster would persuade you that such problems exist.
Ah, the old prove a negative with another negative.
How's that search for weapons of mass destruction coming along then?
How's that search for weapons of mass destruction coming along then?
A few of my posts have been deleted as well. Let's not worry about it, allow the mods do what they feel is best, and proceed to look for ways to prevent unhappy threads such as this one.
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Ah, the old prove a negative with another negative.
And so we see you are not able to point us to a complaint thread which you find credible. I mention this again not as a personal attack, but because it represents a larger cultural pattern within the Apple community which is relevant to threads like this.
Some people are going to support Apple in all cases no matter what, which they are of course entitled to do. But we need not confuse such posts with an objective examination of the evidence.
I'd concur on this. You may find you don't hit an issue until you stress the RAM, which memtest will certainly do. It could be that the supplied RAM is not quite hitting the rated timings or needs a little more voltage than is being supplied, leading to random errors and crashes. I'm surprised Apple haven't tried swapping the RAM though.
Would that be the post that you wrapped up with "you can't have it both ways kid" . . . . . that one?
'Cause, you're right. He can't have it both ways. But that hasn't stopped him from trying.
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I don't know if it is your intention, but . . . . . .you're really coming across as a jackass here.
There's no "evidence" here. It is an anonymous forum and you're treating a brand new member with no posting history as though they can speak no wrong or make an incorrect statement.
There are numerous threads in this forum that describe posters having issues with their iMac and (invariably) after reasonable attempts at resolving an issue, Apple elects to take back the faulty iMac and replace it with another brand new unit . . . . . sometimes, one with component upgrades.
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If you decide to bring the machine back into an Apple Store I would suggest crossing a bridge or tunnel into NJ (it's not that bad). There are several fairly close to the city. There you can park and maybe not get a Genius that only has two brain cells. I've been to the stores in the city and it seems they focus too much on getting people in/out than actual quality.
I'll second this. The Menlo Park Apple Store (Edison, NJ) and the Bridgewater Commons Apple Store (Bridgewater, NJ) are a bit of a hike from the city, but they are stock full of knowledgable and friendly Geniuses, who've never failed to resolve my gadget issues and make sure I leave happy. You'll likely have better luck there if you have access to a car and are willing to make the trip.
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Yes, wouldn't it be great if Apple has this feature on OS X?
Oh wait. It does.
Of course, the issue here is that a user can override the walled garden and install whatever they please, and if the software turns out to be bad, well, then they're in the same situation as if there were no such feature at all.
However... I prefer that. I have (grudgingly) accepted the walled-garden-with-no-exit approach on my iOS devices, but will not accept the same on OS X. There are too many low-level tools and software libraries I need for work that do not and will never show up in the app store, and not because the software is "bad."
If that means a less-savvy user who prefers not to educate themselves AND has made a deliberate decision to override the "safety mechanisms" might crash their Mac, well, their lack of self-education should never be cause to restrict those of us who know actually what we're doing. If that were the philosophy on OS X, I'd have to suck it up and run Linux, or go back to Windows.
You really should try to learn something about Steve Jobs.
Seriously, you should. Jobs cared more about an endless relentless uncompromising quest for perfection than he did about being everybody's buddy.
Whether that is an ideal life plan is another subject, and I don't claim that it is.
But whatever the case may be, what I'm typing here is very much in the spirit of Apple's founder, the person most responsible for you reading this on a Mac instead of a PC.
Many posters here think they are supporting Apple with their comments, and they are mistaken.
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Yes, but in such a case Apple would have fulfilled it's responsibility to warn the user BEFORE THERE IS A PROBLEM that the app may not play nicely with OSX. If a user ignores the warning, I would agree with my fellow posters the user is the problem.
Many or most users would respect the warning, thus avoiding those software conflicts. There's thousands of complaint threads that never need to happen, and Apple's brand is protected from false claims against it.
If Apple published a list of approved third party apps, simple to use software could be written to test any machine for unapproved apps, and in the case of a problem attention could be focused there first.
Apple has 80,000 very smart employees and about 3+ billion dollars a month in net income. They are clearly in a position to create lists of approved apps.
In every complaint thread like this, one or more people always say the problem is not Apple, but third party developers. Here's a chance to go a long way towards solving that problem.
Please observe how posters likely aren't interested in this solution now that they see it, and will likely argue against it. That's the inconvenient cultural problem driving of a great many of these issues.
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Memtest is a good idea, if you are suggesting that Apple run the test after it has taken back the problem machine and provided a replacement.
If you were saying that the OP should run the test, then what you're suggesting is that the OP's reward for giving $3000 to Apple is that he should now be required to work in Apple's quality control/repair department for free.
There's no reasoning with trolls. They'll keep posting their nonsense for as long as they can elicit angry responses. A quick check of one's posting history is a convenient way to reveal an agenda.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, "Apple, pay us to diagnose problems", blah, blah "Apple, give us replacement machines", blah, blah. All those words typed and still not one single constructive contribution or piece of advice to the OP in this or any of the other warranty claim threads regularly barged in to.
If you're going to single-mindedly grandstand, at least have the courtesy to set up the soapbox in your own thread.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, "Apple, pay us to diagnose problems", blah, blah "Apple, give us replacement machines", blah, blah. All those words typed and still not one single constructive contribution or piece of advice to the OP in this or any of the other warranty claim threads regularly barged in to.
If you're going to single-mindedly grandstand, at least have the courtesy to set up the soapbox in your own thread.
Golden rule: if in doubt return it, preferably within two weeks.
Items I've returned for refund:
- 2010 15" MBP with failed memory within one week. (Eventually became a class-action lawsuit on that model)
- 2012 Mini with HDMI blank screen issue. (Don't think it was ever resolved, i.e. an Intel GPU issue).
Luckily these were diagnosed early. Returned and never looked back.
Items I've returned for refund:
- 2010 15" MBP with failed memory within one week. (Eventually became a class-action lawsuit on that model)
- 2012 Mini with HDMI blank screen issue. (Don't think it was ever resolved, i.e. an Intel GPU issue).
Luckily these were diagnosed early. Returned and never looked back.
I taught the OP how to keep using Macs, never have this problem ever again, and save lots of money too.
Which I've already pointed out to you the last time you made this false claim.
I suggested a negotiation strategy the OP might use to resolve the issue he's having now. It's a strategy I've learned and benefited from in over 30 years of operating my own business, a realm which involves lots of negotiation.
I suggested a way that the whole software conflict issue might be taken off the table once and for all, which I now see Apple has already begun to implement.
I welcome any challenge to my comments whose goal is to improve the customer experience for Mac users.
I welcome any challenge to my comments which embraces the mindset that Steve Jobs used to push Apple to it's current success, an ethusiastic embrace of a chronic state of creative dissatisfaction whose goal is to continually reach for perfection and improve the customer experience for Mac users.