17" iMac gray screen of death

a friend of mine got a17inch imac1.6ghz with panther and half gig of ram though macmall. he told me that it worked at first but he would have lots of crashes. now all it does is come up to the gray boot screen with the apple and the spiner thingy. it just keeps spinning and spinning never ta boot up. macmall told him there isnt anything they can do. they are sending him some sort of disk that is supposed ta check the system or something. is this how it is. does macmall just say too bad and let this guy have a $1700 turd. seems like he should be able ta get a new one. also, do any of you have any suggestions ta what might be wrong with his iMac, or how ta fix it? after i got my old ibook, i told this guy how great apple was and he had ta get one. now he wants ta dropkick his mac and get Dell. please dont let this happen! thanks for any help

MacMall should do something, but if they refuse to he can always just go to Apple with the problem. After all, they still have the one year warranty on it and shoud be able to help him out.

This is one reason why I don't like dealing with resellers. Sometimes, if not most of the time they are pretty decent to deal with, but they can be a PITA at times.

he said he did talk ta apple and they told him to get apple care and then they would help. this just seems crazy

MacMall bites when it comes to customer relations. One of the guys with that company lied to me, he did not follow thru on his statement to me. Thats all I will say about that. I will never do business with them again if it's an Apple product I'm looking for, it is Apple I will go through.

how long ago did he purchase the iMac?

If it was within a year then Apple has to take care of it under warranty.... If it was beyond that then Applecare won't do him any good becuase you can't add it over a year after purchase.

it was less than a year. ill tell him ta call apple again and let um have it.

Don't 'let um have it'. Give them the s/n and try to work it out.

Fallooza said:

it was less than a year. ill tell him ta call apple again and let um have it.

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The only way they're going to deal with you is if you give'em $50 for a one timer. If it's a hardware issue, they'll fix it under warranty but you won't get the $50 back. Personally, I think this 90 days telephone support with a 1 year warranty is total BS. I like Apple, but c'mon, is it a 1 year warranty or not? Recently my 4x superdrive quit in my 15"pb and I ran into this situation with Apple. I just said FI and bought a 8x DL super drive third party. Hope you get yours working.

ed724.

ed724 said:

The only way they're going to deal with you is if you give'em $50 for a one timer. If it's a hardware issue, they'll fix it under warranty but you won't get the $50 back. Personally, I think this 90 days telephone support with a 1 year warranty is total BS. I like Apple, but c'mon, is it a 1 year warranty or not? Recently my 4x superdrive quit in my 15"pb and I ran into this situation with Apple. I just said FI and bought a 8x DL super drive third party. Hope you get yours working.

ed724.

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thanks he said something about $50. if he pays the50 they will fix it, or get him a new one?

Depends on what's wrong with it. They are going to have him try several things to make sure it's not a software issue. Then go from there. I believe once you pay the $50 they will work with you until the issue is resolved or they decide he needs to send it in for repair. The 1 year warranty will cover any hardware issues.

ed724

ed724 said:

Depends on what's wrong with it. They are going to have him try several things to make sure it's not a software issue. Then go from there. I believe once you pay the $50 they will work with you until the issue is resolved or they decide he needs to send it in for repair. The 1 year warranty will cover any hardware issues.

ed724

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thanks a lot. you have been very helpful. ill tell him just ta pay the 50 bucks

warranty extension

If you purchased your iMac over one year ago but less than two years and you used a credit card, you may automatically have a two year warranty. You can have any authorized Mac dealer fix the computer and get reimbursed from the credit card company. Check the fine print of the credit card agreement.
Several years ago I had a mother board completely go out on a G4, 2 months past the warranty. I took it to an authorized Mac repair station, had the motherboard replaced ($1000) and the credit card company sent me a check for $1000. Purchasing with the credit card saved my life.

disillusioned said:

If you purchased your iMac over one year ago but less than two years and you used a credit card, you may automatically have a two year warranty. You can have any authorized Mac dealer fix the computer and get reimbursed from the credit card company. Check the fine print of the credit card agreement.
Several years ago I had a mother board completely go out on a G4, 2 months past the warranty. I took it to an authorized Mac repair station, had the motherboard replaced ($1000) and the credit card company sent me a check for $1000. Purchasing with the credit card saved my life.

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thank you too