Hi everyone:
I've been having issues over the entire time I've had my MacBook Pro and have tried to resolve the issue with both the Geniuses and the telephone support. After getting flat-out refusals to offer a resolution, I've emailed the sjobs email with the following email explaining my situation. Please let me know what you guys think and what you think my chances are...
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To whom it may concern,
I am writing to you because I want to escalate what I consider a very serious issue regarding my MacBook Pro that I purchased in late 2007. While I know that this is not by any means a recent model, I feel I have no choice but to follow through on my complaint after having escalated this issue through the proper channels and not getting a satisfactory resolution.
My MacBook Pro first had an issue that caused the bottom half of my display to show illegible, distorted video. This was an intermittent problem that randomly occurred about 50% of the time beginning about 1.5 months prior. I made an appointment at that time at the Genius bar on St. Catherine Street in Montreal. Unfortunately, the Genius could not reproduce the issue and therefore said that there was nothing to be done. He suggested making another appointment once the issue became more "apparent". This left me in the position of using my MacBook Pro with an external monitor most of the time - which, as I use my laptop for work on the go in the multimedia and film industry was not at all convenient. In fact, I ended up not using my laptop for most of that period due to the fact that I needed it on set and on-site with clients and could not reliably depend on the display working. I also began having issues with the hard drive (bad sectors that could not be repaired with the Disk Utility) which I noticed as I would continue to monitor the display daily until the issue remained reliably enough to ensure that a repair would be guaranteed. On April 10, 2008, the entire display/clamshell was replaced. I figured that I could use a larger hard drive and so purchased one at that point and had it installed to replace the faulty one at that time.
After a year of reliable service, my MacBook Pro suddenly could no longer power the optical drive. Once again, being in the industry that I am in, my optical drive is very important to me! Once again, in went my laptop for repair and on May 27, 2009, the drive was replaced and the laptop returned to me once repaired.
Up until this point, I figured that this is what basically could be chalked up to "these issues can happen once in a while"... and thanked my lucky stars that I had Apple Care.
A few months later, my battery suddenly refused to hold a charge - in fact it would suddenly shut down after 15 minutes on battery power. Knowing that my batter was well-calibrated and showed no indication of failure, and having less than 220 load cycles, I brought it in for replacement under AppleCare. The Genius refused, saying that the battery was showing "normal" wear and tear. Having owned a multitude of laptops previously, I knew that this was not normal and tried to escalate it through your support channels. I ended up paying for the replacement myself.
Then, in July of last year, my display once again started showing distorted video. I once again brought in my laptop for repair and began to wonder if I had unfortunately purchased one of the few lemons that make it out of Apple's manufacturing facilities. This issue was diagnosed as a complete logic board failure and needed to be replaced. Once again, no laptop for work (thank God I had backups!) and now had the growing feeling that my laptop was definitely a lemon.
This week, I turned on my computer to find a "Service Battery" message appear on my Snow Leopard's battery icon. I had the sinking suspicion that the same issue I previously had was once again manifesting itself. Unfortunately, I was correct in that the battery would no longer power the laptop for more than 15 minutes before just shutting down. I brought the battery to an Authorized Apple reseller to have it diagnosed (once bitten, twice shy) and the diagnostic showed that the battery was "bad". Once again, there were under 200 load cycles on the battery. This leads me to believe that the issue is more than a simple "bad battery" as this has happened twice in 2 years (and having paid for the first replacement myself!). Based on the fact that 2 batteries have failed suddenly in the exact same way and under 200 load cycles, I am guessing that the issue may have to do with the way the laptop charges the battery and is causing the battery to burn out suddenly and completely.
I have spoken with both tiers of support on your support line, and in both cases have been told that my repair history is within the norm. Please let me know if you also feel that this many repairs (two of them quite major repairs!), the time required to go back and forth with your retail stores, support staff and authorized resellers, and finally the fact that your client doubts the reliability of your product is the norm. Having bought many Mac and Apple products in the past, initiating a Mac Pro buying spree at my job, and also giving Apple great word of mouth, I still like to think that I just happened to get a lemon and that this is not indicative of Apple's quality assurance process or the quality of it's end-products.
After the continuous problems I've had with this laptop, coupled with the obvious disconnect regarding customer service, I respectfully request a replacement to my laptop (currently running with NO battery and awaiting a simple battery replacement that may or may not fail quite soon). My AppleCare will be finishing shortly, and with the major issues this machine has had, I could not in good conscience continue using Apple products in my work or personal life knowing that this level and frequency of failures is the "norm" for such an illustrious company.
I look forward to hearing from with and to coming to a successful resolution of this issue.
I've been having issues over the entire time I've had my MacBook Pro and have tried to resolve the issue with both the Geniuses and the telephone support. After getting flat-out refusals to offer a resolution, I've emailed the sjobs email with the following email explaining my situation. Please let me know what you guys think and what you think my chances are...
- - - - - - - - - - -
To whom it may concern,
I am writing to you because I want to escalate what I consider a very serious issue regarding my MacBook Pro that I purchased in late 2007. While I know that this is not by any means a recent model, I feel I have no choice but to follow through on my complaint after having escalated this issue through the proper channels and not getting a satisfactory resolution.
My MacBook Pro first had an issue that caused the bottom half of my display to show illegible, distorted video. This was an intermittent problem that randomly occurred about 50% of the time beginning about 1.5 months prior. I made an appointment at that time at the Genius bar on St. Catherine Street in Montreal. Unfortunately, the Genius could not reproduce the issue and therefore said that there was nothing to be done. He suggested making another appointment once the issue became more "apparent". This left me in the position of using my MacBook Pro with an external monitor most of the time - which, as I use my laptop for work on the go in the multimedia and film industry was not at all convenient. In fact, I ended up not using my laptop for most of that period due to the fact that I needed it on set and on-site with clients and could not reliably depend on the display working. I also began having issues with the hard drive (bad sectors that could not be repaired with the Disk Utility) which I noticed as I would continue to monitor the display daily until the issue remained reliably enough to ensure that a repair would be guaranteed. On April 10, 2008, the entire display/clamshell was replaced. I figured that I could use a larger hard drive and so purchased one at that point and had it installed to replace the faulty one at that time.
After a year of reliable service, my MacBook Pro suddenly could no longer power the optical drive. Once again, being in the industry that I am in, my optical drive is very important to me! Once again, in went my laptop for repair and on May 27, 2009, the drive was replaced and the laptop returned to me once repaired.
Up until this point, I figured that this is what basically could be chalked up to "these issues can happen once in a while"... and thanked my lucky stars that I had Apple Care.
A few months later, my battery suddenly refused to hold a charge - in fact it would suddenly shut down after 15 minutes on battery power. Knowing that my batter was well-calibrated and showed no indication of failure, and having less than 220 load cycles, I brought it in for replacement under AppleCare. The Genius refused, saying that the battery was showing "normal" wear and tear. Having owned a multitude of laptops previously, I knew that this was not normal and tried to escalate it through your support channels. I ended up paying for the replacement myself.
Then, in July of last year, my display once again started showing distorted video. I once again brought in my laptop for repair and began to wonder if I had unfortunately purchased one of the few lemons that make it out of Apple's manufacturing facilities. This issue was diagnosed as a complete logic board failure and needed to be replaced. Once again, no laptop for work (thank God I had backups!) and now had the growing feeling that my laptop was definitely a lemon.
This week, I turned on my computer to find a "Service Battery" message appear on my Snow Leopard's battery icon. I had the sinking suspicion that the same issue I previously had was once again manifesting itself. Unfortunately, I was correct in that the battery would no longer power the laptop for more than 15 minutes before just shutting down. I brought the battery to an Authorized Apple reseller to have it diagnosed (once bitten, twice shy) and the diagnostic showed that the battery was "bad". Once again, there were under 200 load cycles on the battery. This leads me to believe that the issue is more than a simple "bad battery" as this has happened twice in 2 years (and having paid for the first replacement myself!). Based on the fact that 2 batteries have failed suddenly in the exact same way and under 200 load cycles, I am guessing that the issue may have to do with the way the laptop charges the battery and is causing the battery to burn out suddenly and completely.
I have spoken with both tiers of support on your support line, and in both cases have been told that my repair history is within the norm. Please let me know if you also feel that this many repairs (two of them quite major repairs!), the time required to go back and forth with your retail stores, support staff and authorized resellers, and finally the fact that your client doubts the reliability of your product is the norm. Having bought many Mac and Apple products in the past, initiating a Mac Pro buying spree at my job, and also giving Apple great word of mouth, I still like to think that I just happened to get a lemon and that this is not indicative of Apple's quality assurance process or the quality of it's end-products.
After the continuous problems I've had with this laptop, coupled with the obvious disconnect regarding customer service, I respectfully request a replacement to my laptop (currently running with NO battery and awaiting a simple battery replacement that may or may not fail quite soon). My AppleCare will be finishing shortly, and with the major issues this machine has had, I could not in good conscience continue using Apple products in my work or personal life knowing that this level and frequency of failures is the "norm" for such an illustrious company.
I look forward to hearing from with and to coming to a successful resolution of this issue.
