I had a feeling my latest visit to the Genius Bar wouldn't go as great as I would hope.
I just took my 2.33Ghz 15" MBP in to have a faulty left fan and SuperDrive looked at. Wouldn't you know it, as soon as I scheduled the appointment the Superdrive started to eject properly! When I got there, I intended to just have them start it up, see that the fan wasn't working and acknowledge that Yes, that is a manufacturer defect! However, I wasn't so lucky.
The "genius" behind the counter gave my machine a quick look-around and noted a very slight (less than 1mm) bowing on the top of the superdrive slot, and a very slight (think .5mm or smaller) bowing on the bottom of the DVI port. Now, both of these are very understandable considering my palms have been resting on this machine for the last 1 1/2 years, and I tend to use an additional DVI monitor quite a bit - there's alot of plugging and unplugging going on. That's where the term "normal wear and tear" would come into play, would it not?
Alas, my troubles didn't end there. He also noted that on the bottom of the palm rest that there was a very small (4mm) deep scratch. Okay, that's not too bad considering the laptop is a year and a half old. **** happens, ya know? So he went on for about 10-15 minutes, checked if a fan was in stock, essentially gave me no hints as to what was about to happen...
After being led to believe that my fan would be taken care of, he gave me the verdict... instead of acknowledging that the non-functioning fan is a manufacturer defect, he opted to suspend my AppleCare warranty until I paid $650 to have the top and bottom cases replaced.
At that point, I was absolutely shocked. Never in my years and years of dealing with tech support and warranties have I heard of something like this happening. Dell, HP and IBM, companies I have dealt with regularly, have never refused to fix their mistakes because I scratched a machine.
The Genius never did explain to me why a small bow on the top of the superdrive would affect a fan on the exact-opposite corner. I promptly asked for a printout of the repair quote and got out of there before I freaked out.
Now I'm sitting at home, on the phone with AppleCare. So far I've had the good fortune to speak with Lisa from tech support, who has been with me for the past 40 minutes. She's never heard of something like this happening, so we're going from department to department trying to get something worked out for me. If it weren't for her soothing voice, I'd probably be beating the crap out of an old Pentium II about now.
I acknowledge the fact that my use of the machine has caused the small cosmetic defects, and all I want Apple to do is acknowledge the fact that the fan in my machine is faulty and replace it under the warranty that I paid for. I'm not asking them to fix my mistakes (scratching the case), nor am I asking them for an entirely new notebook... some accountability is all I seek!
What are your thoughts about this? Feel free to chime in with your own war stories.
I just took my 2.33Ghz 15" MBP in to have a faulty left fan and SuperDrive looked at. Wouldn't you know it, as soon as I scheduled the appointment the Superdrive started to eject properly! When I got there, I intended to just have them start it up, see that the fan wasn't working and acknowledge that Yes, that is a manufacturer defect! However, I wasn't so lucky.
The "genius" behind the counter gave my machine a quick look-around and noted a very slight (less than 1mm) bowing on the top of the superdrive slot, and a very slight (think .5mm or smaller) bowing on the bottom of the DVI port. Now, both of these are very understandable considering my palms have been resting on this machine for the last 1 1/2 years, and I tend to use an additional DVI monitor quite a bit - there's alot of plugging and unplugging going on. That's where the term "normal wear and tear" would come into play, would it not?
Alas, my troubles didn't end there. He also noted that on the bottom of the palm rest that there was a very small (4mm) deep scratch. Okay, that's not too bad considering the laptop is a year and a half old. **** happens, ya know? So he went on for about 10-15 minutes, checked if a fan was in stock, essentially gave me no hints as to what was about to happen...
After being led to believe that my fan would be taken care of, he gave me the verdict... instead of acknowledging that the non-functioning fan is a manufacturer defect, he opted to suspend my AppleCare warranty until I paid $650 to have the top and bottom cases replaced.
At that point, I was absolutely shocked. Never in my years and years of dealing with tech support and warranties have I heard of something like this happening. Dell, HP and IBM, companies I have dealt with regularly, have never refused to fix their mistakes because I scratched a machine.
The Genius never did explain to me why a small bow on the top of the superdrive would affect a fan on the exact-opposite corner. I promptly asked for a printout of the repair quote and got out of there before I freaked out.
Now I'm sitting at home, on the phone with AppleCare. So far I've had the good fortune to speak with Lisa from tech support, who has been with me for the past 40 minutes. She's never heard of something like this happening, so we're going from department to department trying to get something worked out for me. If it weren't for her soothing voice, I'd probably be beating the crap out of an old Pentium II about now.
I acknowledge the fact that my use of the machine has caused the small cosmetic defects, and all I want Apple to do is acknowledge the fact that the fan in my machine is faulty and replace it under the warranty that I paid for. I'm not asking them to fix my mistakes (scratching the case), nor am I asking them for an entirely new notebook... some accountability is all I seek!
What are your thoughts about this? Feel free to chime in with your own war stories.
