[Macpartners] Apple Powerbook Display Scam

[Joey Gottinger]

Hi Matthew,

I've encountered this same problem with different users purchasing new G4
powerbooks over the past year. In two of the cases, the machines were
purchased at Cambridgeside Galleria. Apple each time, has maintained their
position of several pixels not functioning, as normal fault tolerance.

I know this doesn't help your current situation, but I now tell everyone
interested in purchasing an apple from one of their retail stores to turn on
the machine first, before leaving the store. This way, they can troubleshoot
any issues before even leaving. Since complaints are down, I'm assuming that
they're heeding the warning.


________________________________________
Joey Gottinger, Network Consultant
MIT Information Systems - DITR Team
400 Main Street, MIT Room E19-630
Cambridge, MA 02139

http://web.mit.edu/snoopy1/index.html
 
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-----Original Message-----
From: macpartners-bounces at MIT.EDU [mailto:macpartners-bounces at MIT.EDU] On
Behalf Of Matthew Walburn
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2004 4:18 PM
To: macpartners at mit.edu
Subject: [Macpartners] Apple Powerbook Display Scam

MacPartners,

I wanted you all to be aware of the following should you be considering
purchasing a new Powerbook. I'd also like to know what other experiences
people have had with Apple regarding similar matters.

My girlfriend and I purchased a new Powerbook G4 at the Apple Store at the
CambridgeSide Galleria this weekend. We went for the 15" 1.25 GHz model. As
you might imagine, we were pretty psyched. That is until we got home. That's
when we noticed that the screen had a broken pixel in the middle of the
screen, causing it to display green and only green.

We were bummed, but since the salesperson we bought it from told us we had
10 days to exchange a defective item, we weren't too worried. We went back
the Apple store the very next day to do the exchange.

"We don't consider that to be defective," the manager told us.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The thing was screwed up before we
even took it out of the box and we tried to return it within 24 hours. We
weren't given the option to examine the thing for problems before we bought
it. We weren't told about that little "gotcha" in the return policy. The
return policy didn't define defective as, "anything but 1 to 7 pixels out in
your LCD monitor... if that happens you're screwed." Who would buy something
with that kind of policy? Not us... 
so why are supposed to just accept a policy that was obscured from us?

"1 in 5 LCD screens manufactured today have minor pixel problems like that,
it's normal," was another justification he gave us.

That's strange... I've placed countless orders for laptops for people at MIT
and we have numerous LCD monitors in my department. None of them came to me
with bad pixels. If it's that prevalent of a problem maybe they should let
people know up front. They should probably say something like, "By the way,
I should let you know that you've got a 1 in 5 chance of getting a bum
display when you drop $3000 on a Powerbook... we won't be able to help you
if you're the unlucky one, care to roll the dice?"

These computers are too expensive for consumers to not get exactly what they
are paying for. No one buys a computer thinking that it might be slightly
defective. When you spend that kind of money you deserve perfection, nothing
less.

Does MIT have a point of contact with Apple that I can discuss this with? I
hate to think that we're stuck with this defective display that we spent all
this time saving for.

Any advice you all might have would be much appreciated.

-Matthew

--
Matthew Walburn, RHCE
Network Assistant - x. 3-4995
MIT Department of Mathematics

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