Apple Should Be Ashamed

keith969

Skinnerpfc wrote: »

So the moral of this story is do not buy Apple computers if you want it to last more than 2 years or if you would like to repair it without taking out a mortgage.

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All electronic consumer goods can break, Apple is no different. Did you ask John Lewis if they would repair/replace it? They should be the first to contact, only use a local company at a last resort.

I still have an Apple computer that I bought in 1994 and it still works fine, not that I use it much now.

gonzo127

i agree i dont know what they have to be ashamed for, anything can break, and in fact most surveys do have apple as the most reliable systems, but even with this, in the last report i read http://www.computerworld.com/article/3012211/apple-mac/apples-macbook-air-takes-laptop-reliability-crown.html

apple still have a 10% failure rate within the first 3 years, with other companies having between 15 and 20% failure rates within the same time frame.

Granted this is comparing apples and oranges as it takes all the cheap laptops of the other companies into comparison, which with the old adage of you get what you pay for, should always give the other companies a higher failure rate, and which to my mind considering the year 2 and 3 failure rates being similar across all brands backs this up that its the cheap ones that usually fail in the first year, but once you have got past that you have the same chance of a failure no matter which system you have

wba31

Skinnerpfc wrote: »

So the moral of this story is do not buy Apple computers if you want it to last more than 2 years or if you would like to repair it without taking out a mortgage.

My original 2009 MacBook was still working fine in Jan this year when I changed the HDD for an SSD and replaced the battery. still works to this day.

My December 2013 iMac still works fine today, and because i bought AppleCare if anything happens before December it's covered. If not then it's a choice i made.

Before i had my MacBook i had an £800 Sony Vaio that suffered motherboard failure after 18 months. It's just one of those things, I am not anti-Sony or anti-Windows because of it.

AndyPix

But a sony vaio motherboard would have cost you around 50 squid off ebay.
And you could have fitted it yourself, or at least paid someone £20 to do it for you ..


Making it worth repairing.


I think the essence of why "Apple should be ashamed" is because they take active measures that this kind of thing isnt possible with apple, for the sole purpose of extorting more money from you.


Like someone said above - it makes it cheaper to actually buy a new mac rather than repair the broken one.
That has to be morally wrong surely

Fightsback

PC commodity boxes may not look as pretty but when something goes wrong they are a lot cheaper to fix.

This is also a good example of why you should avoid buying all in one desktop solutions. IMO the terms "Apple Products" and "Money Saving" are mutually exclusive which that opinion has just been reinforced by the ridiculous iphone7.

agarnett

Apple products are of course a bit of a special purchase. They are sold very much as must have quality and premium products, but (to now veer to the other end of the lo-cost versus premium spectrum) they have degraded their customer support message over the years just as much as Ryanair have improved theirs and over a similar period!

Once upon a time when they were building their massive market share, it was common knowledge that you could walk into an Apple store with a problem and walk out twenty minutes later like as not with a replacement, very few questions asked. But not for the last four or five years, yet their price-pointing is still at a level where we might expect much more, as in the old days.

The question of what is a reasonable no fuss guarantee period for these things is surely one that needs disussing, especially in the UK. In Europe two years for any kind of electrical equipment has been standard for years, without need for it to be added to by John Lewis type automatic extensions.

I have never quite understood (since we are in EU as I type this!) why UK standard guarantees are just 12 months.

I bought an iPad online for my aged parents from John Lewis and I think (I am still not entirely sure because the paper trail was ambiguous) that I got a promotional deal that gave me a total of three years. It was one reason I bought it. John Lewis is seen by me (and many) as "a cut above" when it comes to service, so it is unfortunate that the OP didn't realise that they should probably have been the first port of call, irrespective of the guarantee strictly being expired.

The problem now is that who knows who has fiddled with it and whether they may themselves have damaged it subsequent to the original problem.

I am currently in the middle of a slightly similar situation with a car with a simple gearbox problem. I took over the car from a friend who bought a brand new car - I have known and driven this one on and off for some years so I knew exactly what was wrong with it when I took it over.

My friend had been quoted up to £2,000 for a new gearbox from a main dealer.

Then there was a quote from the same repairer I am actually using, who has serviced the car for some years - that was about £1,000 for a reconditioned gearbox fit.

Then a back street repairer known to other friends of the family with motor trade connections was approached to fix it, and to refurbish the front brakes (disks and pads) all for £650. Moneysaving we thought.

Turns out the guy refurbished the brakes but never even had the gearbox off, and apparently advised that the gearbox was only noisy because it was low on oil, so he'd topped it up and said the oil would work its magic and quieten down with use - he voluntarily reduced his bill to £450. When I heard that I was extremely sceptical. Turned out to have been a very expensive brake repair and no further forward with the gearbox.

Should we have gone to the main dealer in the first place and suffered the bill but been reassured it was money well spent? Obviously although the fault is a very well known fault with the particular brand and gearbox, the guarantee was long expired.

So should we then have let the regular guy change the gearbox? We know him fairly well (I trust!), but to a moneysaver, £650 still sounded better than £1,000 and we had afterall been recommended to the cheapest repairer by trusted friends.

The problem of course did not get better with new oil alone - it persisted - I had diagnosed exactly what it was - a failed shaft bearing - not an easy repair because the gearbox has to be taken off and opened, but common enough for an experienced repairer.

So after I had taken over the vehicle I drove it for the best part of a year very gently and short journeys only. The gearbox noise got steadily worse and oil escaped through the damaged bearing to the clutch, making it slip a bit. I even half-planned to do the job myself with bearing parts and a clutch kit from ebay but I am a bit old to lay under a car on jacks and besides, I havent the space or the exact tools.

It came up for an MOT so I decided to get it tested (it passed) and then to see about getting the gearbox fixed. I re-approached the usual repairer/service guy but deliberately tried a new tactic and he bit. I asked for a new clutch and the bearing and oil seal replacement, not a new gearbox. £600. Lovely - booked it in.

Should've been ready yesterday. But ...

The repair had gone swimmingly, my diagnosis had been exactly correct, the box and car was reassembled and tested and then ... stuck in reverse gear after returning from the test

I now have everything crossed.

I am entirely in the hands of the trusted repairer (Let's call him John Lewis for luck!) who quite likely will make a serious loss on this job if he doesn't charge me for extra time. He was venturing that the original fault may have damaged more than the bearing I asked him to replace, but he very kindly volunteered that he had striped the gearbox on the bench and cleaned and reassembled it and checked it, and that it is a known very simple affair so he wasn't sure what went wrong until he has taken it apart again.

Most customers would only have one choice in this example - who to ask to replace the whole gearbox.

With a little bit of knowledge we can do better deals with those third party dealers who are prepared to get their hands dirty and take a little bit of risk themselves (that they may make a mistake).

I have yet to learn if my gearbox decision will turn out well for me. Wish me luck for later this afternoon!

The Apple repair and the car repair may seem miles apart, but in both cases it boils down to decisions and taking logical steps about who you can press and using a little knowledge of what actually the fault might be, and also how far you can twist commercial organisations' arms, and ultimately of course, who you can trust - I'd blindly trust John Lewis if I could persuade them to fix my out of guarantee Apple, but persuading them is the first hurdle. If no dice with them, I'd trust my instinct and hope I'd chosen the right third party repairer - hopefully an approved Apple repairer (some are surprisingly small businesses and offer a great service which I think depends a lot on their own relationship with Apple.)

Overall, I think the OPs thread title is fair though. Apple themselves created their own hype based on no fuss no question replacements, and then quietly withdrew.

Most people expect better of them when their devices fail after only two years.

I use a five year old iPhone which has been fixed three times by my son using parts from eBay. It is indeed the quality and robust product I decided 5 years ago to buy him as an 18th birthday present, and the faults were breakages caused by dropping.

When we bought it, my son's girlfriend had already had excellent service from Apple when she had dropped her iPhone 3 maybe 7 years ago now, and they had simply (and memorably) replaced it, so we thought doing the deal at the Apple Store, by we might be buying into the same sort of deal. I even bought my daughter one at the same time. When my son first dropped his, things had changed - Apple told him sorry, there would be a set price repair now, not a free replacement, and like me with my gearbox, he used his iPhone with a cracked screen for over a year before he became clever and brave enough to try fix it himself, inthe full knowledge that Apple would no longer want anything to do with it after he'd fiddled with it.

Moneysavers have to be very canny to navigate all the potential differences in approach to major corporates and their shifting sands marketing messages. With my iPhone4 story above, I can't agree that Apple are necessarily "not moneysaving" but you need to be canny to make them so.

Over the past 7 years, Apple have changed their tune on this kind of thing - they know full well that a large proportion of their market carry round false impressions of how good their service now is, based on how good it used to be when Apple wanted to expand rapidly.

That is why it is a shame ...

[Deleted User]

I have a Mac Mini which cost me £330 for a refurb. This runs better than any PC or Laptop I have ever had. It's quiet, smooth and virus free and it looks good too.
Never will I go back to a PC or Laptop which gave nothing but trouble with constant slowing down because of 'updates' that you are never quite sure are genuine or not.

discat11

AndyPix wrote: »

I think the essence of why "Apple should be ashamed" is because they take active measures that this kind of thing isnt possible with apple, for the sole purpose of extorting more money from you.

There you are, all you have to do OP is to prove Andy's assertion and you're laughing.
It's all a scam from the beginning designed & intended to extort money.

How on earth 'extortion' becomes involved I am unsure (the use of threats or force to obtain money illegally) but I'm sure Andy will let you know.

On the other hand it could just be one of those things like others have said.

Fightsback

agarnett wrote: »

Apple ...

Please could you be more succinct as I fell asleep after the first paragraph

AndyPix

agarnett wrote: »

,snip massive irrelevant post

You're going to have to go on the ignore list, it takes too long to scroll past your massive walls of text.


Shame really because i find you quite amusing