Two bad hdds from Apple, should I complain?

[umiwangu]

Last year sometime (I think it was December), my friend emailed and said his Macbook had crashed. Since I'm the resident computer "guru" (only because I know a bit more than everyone else here), people often ask me for advice before they do anything else. I did a search online and saw that some Macbooks were having a higher rate of hdd failures than others, specifically, the Seagate hard drives with firmware 7.01. It turns out he had this hard drive, so I told him he might as well take it to our only authorised Apple shop and have them send it down to South Africa for repairs. Thankfully it was under warranty and less than a month later, he had his Macbook back.

Then, just two weeks ago, he called again, saying it looked like his hdd had crashed. I took a look at it and saw that Apple SA had replaced his old f/w 7.01 hard drive with another 7.01 hard drive. So I had to take it into the shop again (still under warranty, extended AppleCare) and it will be back here in Malawi within a month or so. (And yes, the hdd was completely gone.)

Now, this wouldn't be so bad if we lived in the west somewhere and had an Apple place within an hour, heck even 3 hours. But, this repair will take at least 3 weeks, possible 6.

Should I complain to Apple? I mean, they went ahead and replaced the original defective drive with another defective drive! Thankfully he had backups, so data is not an issue, but he's now without a laptop for 4 to 6 weeks, which is ridiculous...

Any thoughts?

(and feel free to move this if I posted in the wrong forum)

Thanks!

 

[merl1n]

They had a rash of those drives. I had two fail in my PowerBook within 8 months of each other and both were those Seagate drives.

I don't think he will have a problem again after they replace it this time. I think Apple has purged their stock of them.

 

[umiwangu]

I would sure hope they've gotten rid of all of them...

 

[brand]

What do you hope to accomplish by complaining? Both times Apple has honered the warranty and replaced the hard drive for free.

 

[umiwangu]

The main thing is that they replaced the first one with a drive that was pretty much guaranteed to fail. And it takes at least a month to replace it. We don't have 5 day turn-around over here....