Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!mart Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware From: mart@csri.toronto.edu (Mart Molle) Subject: Re: Worthless Warranty Message-ID: <1990Mar21.014309.10015@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto References: <50816@cc.utah.edu> <7306@goofy.Apple.COM> <1945@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> Date: 21 Mar 90 06:43:09 GMT Lines: 88 In article <1945@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> mjkobb@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Michael J Kobb) writes: >In article <7306@goofy.Apple.COM> dwb@archer.apple.com (David W. Berry) writes: >> I probably shouldn't respond to this, but this complaint is >>already getting really old. [. . .] >> Now Apple goes from a 3 month warranty >>to a 1 year warranty, offers some retroactive warranty and gives lot's >>of other folks a real break on an extended warranty and the crackpots >>come out of the woodwork complaining that the extended warranty >>wasn't applied to every machine Apple ever made. I guess I should >>just file this whole discussion under "Some people can't be satisfied" >>and forget it... > >Okay, first of all, I'm not a crackpot, and I resent your implying that I am. Sorry, I have to agree with David Berry. You're acting like a crackpot... >Second: I feel that everybody who has complained about this issue is 100% >justified. The fact that car buyers don't complain that the car companies are >screwing them over as loudly as we do when the computer companies screw us >over is not a valid excuse. Why? You knew about the warranty situation when you bought your machine. If you wanted the longer warranty (which, apparently, you didn't), you could have paid for AppleCare. Now, in effect, Apple *lowers* the price of all their machines and simultaneously *forces* you to buy AppleCare. If the two actions were not coupled, would you have rushed out and bought the year's worth of AppleCare? I doubt it. Car prices drop whenever a new model is announced. Would you expect GM to mail you a partial refund if you bought a Fiero *eight days* before it was unexpectedly cancelled??? >Third: I am easily satisfied. I am 100% satisfied with every non-Apple >peripheral I bought with my IIx. The shortest warranty there was 1 yr. The >longest was 5. I am not, however, satisfied when Apple tells me that machines >bought 8 days after my machine (which is still under warranty for about >another day now) have a 1-year warranty, and mine doesn't! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Face it, if the company that makes your disk drive (or whatever) decided to lengthen their warranty, and make it retroactive to 8 days after you bought yours, you'd be mad a them too. What are you going to do when you discover that somebody else bought the same car you did at the same dealer, maybe even on the same day, and PAID LESS MONEY for it??? > As I said before, >it seems at least reasonable that machines that were still under warranty at >the time the extension was announced would be included. More reasonable is >that machines that were <1 yr old at the time would be covered. But, no. I >guess Apple feels that their machines are such junk that they'd lose too much >money fixing all of the additional ones that would be covered if they did >that. More likely the case that they'd lose too much money in the paperwork to administer the mass change. In any big organization, it costs $20-50 just to push one piece of paper (a purchase order, say) across all the necessary desks before it comes into force. At some point, N more weeks/days of warranty coverage doesn't mean much to the customer, even though updating and checking all the paperwork would cost Apple a bundle to administer. I think they were more than generous with their offer. >Three-and-a-half: You'll note that not too many people are complaining that >they bought a IIx three months before the IIfx was announced, and they should >be offered a free upgrade (although it would apply to me...). That's a >product upgrade, with additional functionality, and most of us understand ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >(with hardware) that that's how it goes. However, Apple has repaired what was >a serious deficiency in their policies, and have done so by coming out with an >all-new deficient policy. That is cause for complaint. But longer free service is clearly a product upgrade, too, as anybody that's owned some computer hardware for any length of time will tell you. Why should *that* kind of upgrade be treated any differently than a hardware upgrade? Face it. Apple used to have one policy wrt warranty (if I don't think I need a warranty, I don't have to pay for it). Now they have another. It will change the equation in terms of who will buy which systems from them as opposed to other vendors, and thus somebody at Apple thinks it will make their products more competitive, and hence make the company some more $$. But it is *not* a "deficient" policy being replaced by a "good" one. >Okay, my hands are tired. Enough. Mine too. Mart L. Molle Computer Systems Research Institute University of Toronto Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4 (416)978-4928