stuart@ihlpe.ATT.COM (S. D. Ericson) (03/07/89)
[Careful, this one is long, and somewhat fiery!] I've heard complaints in the past about Apple's measly 90-day warranty, and I always agreed that it was too short. Especially now that I've been burned. I, like so many others, am going to pay for Apple's lack of quality. Uhm, anybody got a cheap Mac II color monitor? In April of '87, I was one of those eager people who scrounged up enough cash to order a Mac II system as bare as possible, so I could afford it. The only extras were the color monitor (and 8-bit color). That's right, not even an extra floppy or a hard disk. Well I did buy an extra meg for a ramdisk. Since this was going to by my 10-year system, it had to have a bus, and I could splurge for a bare system. Well, the color systems didn't come out early, and I finally settled for gray-scale in august, with a guarantee of a trade-in policy for color when the monitors started ship. Finally, in late February of '88, I got the color monitor upgrade. What a beauty! However, a LOT of things had changed since I bought the system. I was terribly busy both job and house shopping. I found a house, and I got a new job that had me traveling. Consequently, I wasn't using my wonderful Mac II system very much. Late summer, about the time I got engaged, the monitor started acting weird. As it was already out of the (choose optional adjective: wimpy, stupid, short) 90-day warranty period, and things were BUSY, I decided to wait until I could afford the $150 or so I figured it would cost to fix. It was probably just a bad connector somewhere, according to the advice I was getting from friends and usenetters. No big deal. Didn't want to spend much, especially with wedding expenses rolling in... Well, I got married, and the job started settling down, the savings were being replenished, so I thought I'd finally get the 'ol Mac fixed. The dealer says "$400 for a new tube." A *tube*!?!! How could *I* have broken the tube? It's not as though the tube is completely shot - it does work, initially, but it has this strange snapping or discharging action. Some of you may even recall my asking about that on the net last year. And $400 is a lot, especially when I'd been hoping to finally get a $500 harddisk after a year and a half. When I called the apple customer inquiry line to get more information, the representative merely kept repeating that "The customer is responsible for all costs after the 90-day period." Well, I was not too impressed. For one thing, she had no explanation for how a tube could get broken. "Ask your Apple dealer." Well, so many of them just do board swaps that no Mac-owner could depend on any REAL response. (There are, hopefully, *good* dealers that could give such technical help besides "maybe you dropped it.") Has Apple ever heard of factory recalls? Were the early RGB monitors faulty? (mine has a Nov '87 date even though I got it in late feb '88) I sure treated my computer with care, so it wasn't due to negligence or abusive use. Additionally, I didn't have control over when I got the monitor. The customer representative from Apple kept saying I should have used it for the first 90 days to check it out. Well, if I could have gotten it in September of '87 with the rest of the system, I would have REALLY burned it in, with the rest of the system, and the problem would probably have surfaced withing 90 days. That is a LARGE reason for a 1-year warranty - Many Mac users will not use the mac for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 13 weeks to burn it in. I sure wish I had. As I see it, the broken tube is a quality defect. Tubes shouldn't go bad quickly. How many Sony TV's lose their tubes in 7 months? Apple should be able to write this one over to sony as bad parts. But instead, I am having to spend $400 + labor to recover a $999 monitor (Nice $1399 monitor, Stu) when I hardly have used it at all. Thanks Apple. I *do* love your Macintoshes, but I'd rather buy software and peripherals than have to fix a defective part. I feel as though I've been betrayed by the Mac, which I've been such a strong proponent of. (See, I'm so hurt that I ended a sentence in a preposition :-) Sorry, I guess that got a bit long. Maybe someone out there at Apple or elsewhere can explain why a tube goes bad, and why it's my fault. Does anyone know if I can replace it with a used Apple RGB for about the same price? Seems more reasonable... if (flames_were_on = true) then turn_off_flames(it_is_about_time); Stuart "I want my Mac back" Ericson "Member of the 1-year warranty club" -- Stuart Ericson AT&T Bell Laboratories USEnet: att!ihlpe!stuart IH 2H210 ARPA: stuart@ihlpe.att.com 2000 N. Naperville Road Voice: (312) 979-4491 Naperville, Il 60566-7033
macman@ethz.UUCP (Danny Schwendener) (03/10/89)
>I've heard complaints in the past about Apple's measly >90-day warranty, and I always agreed that it was too >short. The warranty period in all european countries, as far as I know of, is one year. But this might be because the duration of a warranty is anchored in these countries' trading laws. -- Danny Schwendener ETH Macintosh Support