PB Woes

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padrote

Guest
I have a 12" PB with the following specs:

1ghz
10.3.9
256 megs RAM
i forget how big the HD was

I purchased it last February and at the time did not purchase the extended Apple Care (my mistake). Having owned a whole variety of Apple products with a high-degree of reliability I did not think that I had a reason to worry. I mean I had a g4 cube, things couldn't get worse, right?

Here are the problems I've had in chronological order:

1- CD drive fails. Cannot insert a disc, sent back to Apple for repair under warranty.

2- Speakers start to make noise like there's static interference. Then computer dies, but I manage to wake it up, back up my most important files and get to an apple store. Apple tech says, "wow, I've never seen any problem like this." Can get the problem to repeat by playing a song in iTunes until computer shuts off on its own. Diagnosis was a faulty logic board and repaired under warranty.

3- This weekend with no warning at all I've got the usual Safari, iChat, iTunes, etc. open and then eveything slows down. Try to force quit things and it tells me finder isn't responding. I shut down the computer, restart it and it won't get past the "spinning gear" and the HD starts making sounds like sand being ground into a metal plate. Tech at Apple store tells me it's probably my HD and then not only manages to recreate the sound (computer never started back up again) but it got wors to the point that other people were looking at my machine in wonderment and she says, "wow, I've never heard one THIS bad before." this obviously lifted my spirits. So it's out of warranty and I'm out $335.97 to have Apple fix it.

My primary question for the forum is what avenue I can pursue to address this issue with Apple. While I was, in fact, out of warranty I've 3 pretty serious and 2 unique hardware failures on a computer that has been stored in a case since day 1, never abused or dropped, kept immaculately clean and never been opened up by anybody than presumably certified techs at Apple. My feeling is that I got a bit of a lemon and in the time that I've owned this computer I have been directly responsible for 3 people buying Power Books and been nothing but a positive PR person for Apple. I feel as though they should stand behind their product to a greater degree in this case but I don't just want to send an email to their generic support department and I'm not trying to get anything for free, but I do feel as though this issue should be addressed in some way.

Any thoughts?

If not, that's fine too. I realize I'm new and asking a lot.

Thanks
 

rman


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I am a little confused here. You stated you purchased the powerbook last February. Is that 2004 or 2005? Because if it is 2005, you still have about six months of coverage left.
 
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padrote

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Feb of 2004. Sorry for the confusion...

rman said:
I am a little confused here. You stated you purchased the powerbook last February. Is that 2004 or 2005? Because if it is 2005, you still have about six months of coverage left.
 
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Alone2Gether

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Why don't you just purchase AppleCare Protection Plan now and call Apple like a week later explaining them your problems and tell them to fix it?

The AppleCare Protection Plan cost around $350 (pretty much the same price you'll be paying if you get it fixed) and it will last for 3 more years.
 

rman


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Alone2Gether said:
Why don't you just purchase AppleCare Protection Plan now and call Apple like a week later explaining them your problems and tell them to fix it?
The problem is you have to purchase Apple Care with in the first year. Now that the default warranty, has expired all he can do is pay to get it fixed or replace it himself.
 
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I'm very confident that Apple will deal with you in some way. They're very good with making their customers happy, and I think you should call them and talk to a customer relations person. I've had some things arranged to my satisfaction in regards to my computer (even got some extra expensive stuff from them for the computer breakind down). I'm pretty sure they can arrange some sort of exchange for a new PB or something of that sort (maybe give you applecare for free?).

Good luck,

Oleg
 
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PaRaGoNViCtiM

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This is a bad situation. I feel for you dude. I would stay in contact with Apple, and keep pushing them to help you out. I've seen that if you're persistant with them, they WILL accomodate you, however, if you are not persistant they will not. Don't be rude, just be firm.
 
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AppleCare has saved me twice.

With my powerbook after the original warranty it would have cost 750 bucks to do the repairs on the case

With my iMac having about a week left in the original warranty (still have APP but it didn't really come into play for it) it would have cost 974 for repairs.

So applecare paid off itself for me
 

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