Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Getting off Apple's wild ride

O

OllieXD

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 17, 2011
14
0
So, for christmas 2011 my parents bought me the 13" 2.4 ghz mbp... they bought it with a view to it seeing me throughout university and beyond. We were promised by the apple store worker a laptop that i could use for gaming and work also. (i was assured that there were almost as many mac compatible games as pc ones, i didnt really know any too much about macs at the time so i accepted what the guy said)... but instead i have had a year and a half of pc hell.

After 6 or 7 months my laptop broke, a mere 5% of the length i was promised it would work for. So i sent it off for repair, but when i got it back everything had been wiped off my laptop (including 75% of a 5000 word essay i had been writing for school) and i had been given Lion also, this annoyed me to an extreme level, as i had not given permission to be upgraded or expected them to wipe my hard drive.

Now, about a year since it last crashed i have had no end of problems... the computer takes over 20 minutes to load up, i'm lucky to get more than 2 1/2 hours of battery life when not charged, and now it will rarely connect to the internet, so much so that it took me 17 relogs to get here to post this thread (the family ipad, computer, my dads laptop and my sisters netbook have no problems whatsoever). So i have decided enough is enough and i will write some sort of a complaint letter to apple demanding answers for all these false promises.

Now that that is out of the way i want to know, how are apple at dealing with complaints?

Also, i bought one of those wires that connects it to the tv, and that broke within a month, and the apple store near me, when presented with the receipt and the wire refused to give me a new one
 
you've obviously been unlucky with your product.. the majority really loves their MacBook.

i have never had any major problems, but with PC on the other hand.. wow, blue screen, extremely slow even after 3 months, numerous windows suddenly not answering, hell, i think my ctrl + alt + delete keys we're the most used on my keyboard. Always have to format, defragment, having to get repairs by a third party shop etc.

The guy that claimed that theres just as much games to mac as PC had no idea what he was talking about, thats the exact reason why so many of us mac people use bootcamp and / or have a desktop gaming rig with windows.

i think you should give mac another go.
 
Sorry to tell you, but computers break. If it breaks during the warranty period, Apple fixes it for you. They did that. The fact that you lost your data isn't Apple's fault...it's your responsibility to back up your computer. If you send your computer in for service anywhere, they'll never promise that you'll have all your files when you get the computer back. It sucks, but it's your responsibility to be prepared in case something happens. As for why they upgraded it to Lion, I don't know...did you ask?

Your post isn't very clear...have you been having problems for the past year, or did they just start happening. If it's been ongoing, have you taken it to Apple to have it looked at? If you've taken it in, have they tried to repair it? What's your battery health? There could be a lot of explanations for what's happening, but without more info we can't try to help. I'm not sure you want help trying to figure it out, though...

As for not replacing your cable, they're usually very good about that kind of thing, especially so soon after purchase. Which leads to the question, how did it break? Was it from some sort of misuse, because that's usually the only time Apple wouldn't replace it.
 
The thing is, i use my computer mainly for gaming atm, but i have such a small library of games i can play, will apple perhaps give me a new macbook pro 2011?
 
OllieXD said:
So i sent it off for repair, but when i got it back everything had been wiped off my laptop (including 75% of a 5000 word essay i had been writing for school)
Click to expand...

I personally know that Apple make a big deal of asking you if you have everything backed up whenever you take any product in to be repaired, no matter if its an iPhone or Mac. It is also printed on the reciept they give you.

It does sound like you have been unfortunate the particular machine you have (I have machines from 2005 that are still running without a problem) and as you have already had one repair they will most likely go out of their way to help you.

Biggest piece of advice I can give is to go in and talk to someone nicely and calmly. Its not their fault your having problems and you'll be much more likely to get what you want that way.
 
Sounds like you need to be more careful with your toys! I had my MBA for a year and sold it for $750...it was in perfect condition and worked great still. Apple products work fine as long as you take care of them, much like everything else. They are built tougher, but they aren't military grade. You can't throw them in a bag with other things and expect them to come out shiny. You can't wrap wires up and bend them without them breaking. I don't know you or your situation, but it sounds like you abused your device and paid for it. Now you are blaming apple for your mistakes.
 
My MacBook Pro has been going for three years now, and is perfectly fine. I just did a clean install with mountain lion and it's running like new!

When things start to slow down more, in a few years or so, I'll bang in an SSD and boom.

Regarding the 5000 word essay, you should have backups. Hopefully you learnt your lesson. Use Time Machine, which is included with every Mac.

Also, wait 'till later Education when you have 30000 word final assignments. That will put things into perspective.
 
gentlefury said:
Sounds like you need to be more careful with your toys! I had my MBA for a year and sold it for $750...it was in perfect condition and worked great still. Apple products work fine as long as you take care of them, much like everything else. They are built tougher, but they aren't military grade. You can't throw them in a bag with other things and expect them to come out shiny. You can't wrap wires up and bend them without them breaking. I don't know you or your situation, but it sounds like you abused your device and paid for it. Now you are blaming apple for your mistakes.
Click to expand...

Err, it doesnt leave my desk in my room, so i guess someone comes in and hits it with a golf club while im not there
 
Zeov said:
you've obviously been unlucky with your product.. the majority really loves their MacBook.

i have never had any major problems, but with PC on the other hand.. wow, blue screen, extremely slow even after 3 months, numerous windows suddenly not answering, hell, i think my ctrl + alt + delete keys we're the most used on my keyboard. Always have to format, defragment, having to get repairs by a third party shop etc.

The guy that claimed that theres just as much games to mac as PC had no idea what he was talking about, thats the exact reason why so many of us mac people use bootcamp and / or have a desktop gaming rig with windows.

i think you should give mac another go.
Click to expand...

Ya you have to remember that the Apple guys are sales men at the end of the day. Yeah you might get luck and meet an honest cool one but for the most part they just want to sell. So do your homework.

As far as the computer, sounds like you got a lemon. If you can eloquently present your case to Apple, I’m sure they will be willing to compensate you, they are knows for good customer service and since they probably have some left over stock of old MBPs they will probably be more willing to hook you up with a new or refurbished better MBP than the one you had.

But remember BE NICE! It never pays to be a prick, justified or not.
 
OllieXD said:
So, for christmas 2011
Click to expand...

So why haven't you taken it back to apple again for repairs? If you got it for Christmas 2011, that means that it's only 8 months old and still within warranty.

Obviously try and back it up before, but that's quite common sense to do so, just unfortunate that you didn't do this the first time.

As for the rant in regards to software update and your HDD being wiped. Obviously that was part of the process of actually fixing it in the first place. They're not going to instal an old OS.

Get it repaired but also if you want, send a letter to apple's head office.. That's what I did in the past but that took a LONG time to resolve but mine was quite a serious case in relation to a store manager.
 
OllieXD said:
So, for christmas 2011 my parents bought me the 13" 2.4 ghz mbp... they bought it with a view to it seeing me throughout university and beyond. We were promised by the apple store worker a laptop that i could use for gaming and work also. (i was assured that there were almost as many mac compatible games as pc ones, i didnt really know any too much about macs at the time so i accepted what the guy said)... but instead i have had a year and a half of pc hell.

After 6 or 7 months my laptop broke, a mere 5% of the length i was promised it would work for. So i sent it off for repair, but when i got it back everything had been wiped off my laptop (including 75% of a 5000 word essay i had been writing for school) and i had been given Lion also, this annoyed me to an extreme level, as i had not given permission to be upgraded or expected them to wipe my hard drive.

Now, about a year since it last crashed i have had no end of problems... the computer takes over 20 minutes to load up, i'm lucky to get more than 2 1/2 hours of battery life when not charged, and now it will rarely connect to the internet, so much so that it took me 17 relogs to get here to post this thread (the family ipad, computer, my dads laptop and my sisters netbook have no problems whatsoever). So i have decided enough is enough and i will write some sort of a complaint letter to apple demanding answers for all these false promises.

Now that that is out of the way i want to know, how are apple at dealing with complaints?

Also, i bought one of those wires that connects it to the tv, and that broke within a month, and the apple store near me, when presented with the receipt and the wire refused to give me a new one
Click to expand...

apple B&M stores can vary widely in CS. I personally avoid the closest one to me for that very reason. Their online CS has been good...so far. Try escalating it with them.
 
OllieXD said:
The thing is, i use my computer mainly for gaming atm, but i have such a small library of games i can play, will apple perhaps give me a new macbook pro 2011?
Click to expand...

Why would they give you a new laptop based on how many games are available?

If you want to get technical about how many games you can play on your mac computer, you can play every OSX and Windows game on the computer.

Install windows and you will have access to hundreds and thousands more games.

With regard to your problems, each time a problem arises if you are within warranty you should take it back to apple, there is no use building up a long list of problems and then taking to the internet to moan about it, you have left it too late now if your 1 year warranty is up.

I have a 2009 Aluminium macbook that is running Lion now and still works as good as the day I bought it!
 
OllieXD said:
So, for christmas 2011 my parents bought me the 13" 2.4 ghz mbp... they bought it with a view to it seeing me throughout university and beyond. We were promised by the apple store worker a laptop that i could use for gaming and work also. (i was assured that there were almost as many mac compatible games as pc ones, i didnt really know any too much about macs at the time so i accepted what the guy said)... but instead i have had a year and a half of pc hell.

After 6 or 7 months my laptop broke, a mere 5% of the length i was promised it would work for. So i sent it off for repair, but when i got it back everything had been wiped off my laptop (including 75% of a 5000 word essay i had been writing for school) and i had been given Lion also, this annoyed me to an extreme level, as i had not given permission to be upgraded or expected them to wipe my hard drive.

Now, about a year since it last crashed i have had no end of problems... the computer takes over 20 minutes to load up, i'm lucky to get more than 2 1/2 hours of battery life when not charged, and now it will rarely connect to the internet, so much so that it took me 17 relogs to get here to post this thread (the family ipad, computer, my dads laptop and my sisters netbook have no problems whatsoever). So i have decided enough is enough and i will write some sort of a complaint letter to apple demanding answers for all these false promises.

Now that that is out of the way i want to know, how are apple at dealing with complaints?

Also, i bought one of those wires that connects it to the tv, and that broke within a month, and the apple store near me, when presented with the receipt and the wire refused to give me a new one
Click to expand...

Apple is very very receptive to complaints and they always want their customers happy. You should definitely call Apple or talk to a store manager. Did you vet your complaints or concerns when they originally wiped your hard drive? I would have been furious if I wasn't warned (you were warned I bet), but also know that you should always back up your data.

Unfortunately, I believe a little abuse or misuse may be causing some of your issues. Apple stores don't usually send your laptop anywhere to be repaired. The work is usually done in house. I'm surprised to know that your data was lost without you knowing. It sounds like your hard drive failed (quite possible), there isn't anything Apple could do about your data. All they would have done is replace your hard drive and install the latest OS, which it sounds like they did as a courtesy to your troubles. Apple does not build your hard drive, they only purchase and place in your MacBook. It is fully your responsibility to backup your data. Laptop Hard Drives fail quite frequently in my experience, but that failure rate is associated with how the laptop is treated. Vibrations, movement, dropping, placing on a surface hard and sitting the MacBook on your lap all degrade a traditional hard drive. Granted, that degradation is miniscule, but depending on how much force was inflicted, damage will result. On the other hand, it may have just been a faulty hard drive.

This all could have been prevented by backing your data up.

When it comes to your battery, again, users can cause serious degradation in battery longevity. So, you've had the computer for approximately 8 months. If you've run the battery daily for a significant amount of time you'd maybe be seeing loss in the battery capacity. You can verify this by installing Coconut battery and taking a look at your load cycle count.

EDIT: If the MacBook sits on a desk plugged in at all times, the battery will go bad. It MUST be exercised as a muscle is. Without exercise, the battery will fail very quickly. That may be causing your issues.

You can take a look at this thread. You can see come reference they've lasted 900 load cycles and others have a dead battery after 280. Batteries vary quite a bit, but how their treated can really make a difference. Keep in mind that this battery could have been defective from the beginning, but I don't believe that to be completely true based on the fact you describe it was once higher, and has degraded to 2.5 hours.(Which is usable) It's under warranty, so if you're having serious issues, it will be remedied.

I would consider these factors and be interested in what work Apple actually performed in the first place. These issues can all be caused by unintentional abuse or actual defects in the product. Look into what I've described and then consider giving Apple a call or going to a store and explain your frustrations in a calm manner to a manager. Staying calm and expressing your dissatisfaction will be the best way to get results if the complaints are warranted.

EDIT: As for the Apple branded adapter, you must have strained the cable or twisted it or something, because if it's under a year old and magically stops working they will replace. They've done it for me before. They're not unreasonable.
 
Last edited:
OP, can you answer any of the questions that have been asked? Have you taken it in for service more than once? What's your battery health and how many cycles does it have? How was the cord damaged?

And as sazza85 pointed out, if you got it for Christmas 2011, how has it been a year and a half of hell? Christmas was only a little over 7 months ago...
 
OllieXD said:
So, for christmas 2011 my parents bought me the 13" 2.4 ghz mbp...

After 6 or 7 months my laptop broke, a mere 5% of the length i was promised it would work for.

....

Now, about a year since it last crashed i have had no end of problems...

....

Also, i bought one of those wires that connects it to the tv, and that broke within a month, and the apple store near me, when presented with the receipt and the wire refused to give me a new one
Click to expand...

First, if you believed someone when they told you your computer would last over 11 years (if 7 months is 5 % of total use), then you are a very dense individual. It's extremely unlikely any professional salesperson misinformed you that severly. Also, your parents bought it for you for Christmas, and you also were able to talk to the sales employee? Doesn't really add up... but I wont really harp on that inconsistency.

Hmmm lets see 6 or 7 months later, it "broke", and then you've been using it a year since then... so 6 months + 12 months = 18 months. And you got the computer Christmas 2011, so you've had it for 9 months... And so you came back in your magical time machine to warn us of Apple's evil ways...? Interesting.

Because you "presented them with the receipt" does not mean that you did not already void any return possibilities. Did you "present them with the receipt" and also bring a defected product back? Was that defect casued by manufacturing issues, or by user error issues?

I get that your upset, but let's get serious. I mean, c'mon, Apple employees don't just sit around all day looking for ways to screw you.

----------
sweetbrat said:
OP, can you answer any of the questions that have been asked? Have you taken it in for service more than once? What's your battery health and how many cycles does it have? How was the cord damaged?

And as sazza85 pointed out, if you got it for Christmas 2011, how has it been a year and a half of hell? Christmas was only a little over 7 months ago...
Click to expand...

I did the full mathematical analysis...And the results are in.... It's definitely been shorter than a year and a half since Christmas .
 
sweetbrat said:
OP, can you answer any of the questions that have been asked? Have you taken it in for service more than once? What's your battery health and how many cycles does it have? How was the cord damaged?

And as sazza85 pointed out, if you got it for Christmas 2011, how has it been a year and a half of hell? Christmas was only a little over 7 months ago...
Click to expand...

yeah, i was a little confused about the Christmas timing too.
 
Auzburner said:
EDIT: If the MacBook sits on a desk plugged in at all times, the battery will go bad. It MUST be exercised as a muscle is. Without exercise, the battery will fail very quickly. That may be causing your issues.
Click to expand...

This is not true.

LiON batteries are fine being on the charger all the time. Its storing them unplugged that has to be done carefully.
 
ZipZap said:
This is not true.

LiON batteries are fine being on the charger all the time. Its storing them unplugged that has to be done carefully.
Click to expand...

You're wrong. From Apple's webpage http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html:
Standard Maintenance
For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time. An ideal use would be a commuter who uses her notebook on the train, then plugs it in at the office to charge. This keeps the battery juices flowing. If on the other hand, you use a desktop computer at work, and save a notebook for infrequent travel, Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month.
 
sweetbrat said:
You're wrong. From Apple's webpage http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html:
Standard Maintenance
For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time. An ideal use would be a commuter who uses her notebook on the train, then plugs it in at the office to charge. This keeps the battery juices flowing. If on the other hand, you use a desktop computer at work, and save a notebook for infrequent travel, Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month.
Click to expand...

I just found the same info and then saw you posted the same quote. Thanks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back