a544@mindlink.UUCP (Rick McCormack) (12/20/90)
In an article, Jon Rosen of Locus Computing, replying to an article by Bryan Emery, sez: > >>Just for information, I got a call last week from a company called ICC >>(International Computer Corp - I think) that sells Macintoshes. He said >>that he had LC's in stock at that time and the price was $1,425 for >>the LC 2/40 and $595 for the 12" color monitor. Total: $2,020. It >>doesn't appear that the student discount gives you much!!! >> >>Bryan Emery > >The student discount gives you a warranty, which this may not. >Apple's policy has been to support retail sales thru dealers >and to prohibit sales thru the mail or over the phones. This >is one of the privileges dealers get in return for the costs >of a dealership. > > This is gibberish... I do not think it would be legal for > Apple to dishonor a warranty (which is included printed on a > form in all of their products) based upon the dealer from > whom you purchased your machines... Warranties are given to > the consumer by the manufacturer and I believe that if Apple > failed to honor the warranty of any legally obtainable > machine, they would be subject to severe sanctions by any > court that heard the case... > > There is NOTHING ILLEGAL OR IMMORAL about buying a computer > from any source that has obtained it legally... Illegal in > this sense means having stolen it... If a dealer violates > its contractual agreement with Apple not to sell to mail > order companies, this is not illegal, only a contract > violation... Since the consumer has no contractual > relationship to the original Apple dealer, they should be > held harmless in this transaction... > > Jon Rosen Sorry Jon. Apple is only one af many companies that refuse to honor warranties. They do so on the basis that authorized dealers charge enough to offset warrantee charges, they have authorized parts to make repairs and they train their technicians to be at least competent. Hewlett Packard ran an advertising campaign across Canada last year telling people that if they bought printers (especially) or other HP items from unathorized dealers, that HP would NOT honor warranties. No-one said it was illegal or immoral, just that it could be a wrong move. I have seen IBM computers sold "grey Market" that had mostly third party innards, and some of those were shoddy - some were "as good as" IBM. IBM refused to honor warrantees on one of these machines - they said take it back to where you bought it and have them diagnose and repair it. They wouldn't sell parts to the shop - the shop had to buy them from a real dealer at retail. That can boost the cost of maintenance. :-) As for the customer having no contractual relationship with the original Apple dealer - precisely! Apple maintains that Apple has no contractual relationship with the purchaser of grey market goods. "buy it from us, get a warrantee. Buy it from the grey market, no warrantee." Simple, legal, effective and clearcut. ______________________________________________________________ | Rick McCormack | IMAGISTICS BUSINESS THEATRE TECHNOLOGY | | Vancouver, BC | Information transfer - with a purpose. | | CANADA | ________________________________________ | | AOL: Rique | INTERACTIVE COMPREHENSIVE ENLIGHTENING | |________________|____________________________________________|