hassle over "open box" macbook pro purchase

Hi I'm not sure if this is the right forum, but I was surprised today to find myself at loggerheads with Apple on this issue and thought I would seek some objective advice from other Apple users.

I bought an "open box" Macbook Pro (early 2011) at Best Buy on Dec 23. The Best Buy folks said it came with full manufacturers warranty (as I would expect) and I would be able to upgrade to Lion for free (as I would expect).

Well, when I went to get the free Lion upgrade, I was asked to send proof of purchase... which I did - I sent a photo of the cash register receipt.

Then when I went to look up the warranty status - same thing, it asked me to sign on with Apple ID and send in proof of purchase.

A couple days went buy and I got no replies so I called. What I ran into surprised me. The rep "Charles" told me "the problem is you have bought a used computer and we do not know the original purchase date. The best I can do is make it 90 days from the shipping date".

Well this feels pretty wrong. It eliminates my 90 day period of phone coverage, and clips about 7 months off my overall warranty... and it is arbitrary.

I honestly kind of like the computer - I want to update to Lion and buy applecare and live happily ever after.

But... the Apple people are dug in that they will not input the purchase date as Dec 23. Told me to ask Best Buy about it.

Best Buy was shocked that my purchase receipt was not sufficient and did not have a solution to offer.

I sent Charles an email asking him to escalate to his supervisor but I don't know if he will.

As it stands I will have to return a perfectly good computer to once again be wiped, discounted, and resold... and the poor guy who buys it is going to run into the same hassle.

Hi... welcome to the forum right... but what I want to know: is this standard Apple customer service practice? It seems they are badly undermining their retailer by acting this way.

I got the computer at a hefty discount about $1400 including tax. So I could just buy applecare, buy lion, accept the lost months of warranty, and move on.

But I'm so angry that Charles gets to make such a damaging decision - that he will assign a May purchase date on his whim instead of accepting my receipt.

Is this typical Apple customer service? Is Apple right to treat a Best Buy open box sale exactly the same as a craigslist or ebay or back alley private party used computer sale?

I've moved this post to our "off topic" forum here in "Schweb's Lounge" as it does not belong in "Switcher".

Apple customer service is second to none. Consumer Reports, PC Mag, and many others have consistently rated it number one. Having said that, your complaint should not be with Apple, it should be directed at Best Buy. Open box items are used items, plain and simple. Sometimes, parts are missing, manuals missing, disks missing, etc. Other times, everything is in place but the fact remains that it was used.

You purchased a second hand machine. A machine that someone used and returned to Best Buy for whatever reason. Why would you expect Apple to honor it as new? You knew what you were buying when you bought it. And you purchased it at a very good discount.

Of course it's your choice if you wish to return the machine to Best Buy - that's up to you. As long as the machine is in excellent condition, if it were me I would keep it as it's likely you won't find another at that price.

Honestly, I agree with what chscag said. It doesn't surprise me how many times Best Buy can falsely claim advice to buyers, but then again, they are almost all teens who are just there to make their quick buck and seem smart.

Also, from my own experience, I have never bought an "open box" item that has retained it's original warranty. This is completely different from a refurbished item, which I believe might have somehow gotten confused here somehow with the Best Buy rep.

In my opinion, if your bad experience, loss of 90 days worth of warranty and warranty features, far outweighs the price savings and experience with the MBP, then simply return it and never trust Best Buy.

Coyote, this is DIRECTLY from Apple's terms and conditions:

This offer is not valid on the purchase of used, auction, or demonstration equipment, except for Apple-certified refurbished products purchased directly from the Apple Online Store that do not include OS X Lion.

Click to expand...

Apple - OS X Lion and Lion Server - Up to Date Program

Third from the bottom sir.

Doug

chscag makes all very good points, and probably better than any your about to read from me..
heres my thoughts.
I find it very presumptuous on your part that you would think Apple would honor your purchase date from BB on 12/23rd with regards to THEIR warranty.

I can see BB issuing/selling you a warranty and holding true to a product they sold (the warranty).

Apple makes a perfectly valid point. They don't know when it was actually bought from them, so why would they just give you a year of the standard applecare.

The best example i can draw a comparison to would actually be applecare.. but I will go to the 2nd thing that comes to mind.

If a used car you just bought had a manufacturers warranty of 100,000 miles and you bought it from the first owner at 50,000 miles. Would you expect the manufacturer to give you 100K on top of the 50K (in your situation that doesn't directly correlate but hey.. w/e)? No you wouldn't not with out at least paying for it first.

What surprises me is that the serial number.. which isn't specific to any person who would have purchased it before you or their iTunes email but rather the Mac Pro itself.. is that apple doesn't have a sale date from their store/online/whatever to the first owners based off of the serial number.

I have an iMac purchased from ebay, the person who owned it before me registered the applecare and i saw the ending date was one year after he purchased it

good luck

Ttaylor394 said:

chscag makes all very good points, and probably better than any your about to read from me..
heres my thoughts.
I find it very presumptuous on your part that you would think Apple would honor your purchase date from BB on 12/23rd with regards to THEIR warranty.

I can see BB issuing/selling you a warranty and holding true to a product they sold (the warranty).

Apple makes a perfectly valid point. They don't know when it was actually bought from them, so why would they just give you a year of the standard applecare.

The best example i can draw a comparison to would actually be applecare.. but I will go to the 2nd thing that comes to mind.

If a used car you just bought had a manufacturers warranty of 100,000 miles and you bought it from the first owner at 50,000 miles. Would you expect the manufacturer to give you 100K on top of the 50K (in your situation that doesn't directly correlate but hey.. w/e)? No you wouldn't not with out at least paying for it first.

What surprises me is that the serial number.. which isn't specific to any person who would have purchased it before you or their iTunes email but rather the Mac Pro itself.. is that apple doesn't have a sale date from their store/online/whatever to the first owners based off of the serial number.

I have an iMac purchased from ebay, the person who owned it before me registered the applecare and i saw the ending date was one year after he purchased it

good luck

Click to expand...

The issue isn't about a warranty, it's about providing proof of purchase for a supported item in order to make a claim for a free upgrade to Lion. A Warranty would only come in to play if the item needed to be returned or exchanged. And if purchased from BB, it would need to be returned/exchanged there, not at Apple. You can't get One to One service when purchasing from BB either. Apple Care is another story. That is honored.

But again, this is about the free upgrade to Lion, and the answer I provided is pretty much the key here.

Doug

I don't see what the problem is. You purchased a used machine knowing full well that it was an "open-box" product - and received a healthy discount because of that. The same scenario would apply to just about any other product. That is, after all, why you received the discount. Frankly, I'm surprised that Best Buy acts surprised that Apple is treating it this way.

If anything, your concern should be directed at Best Buy. If they really feel Apple is treating your wrongly, they should go to bat with them on your behalf. But frankly, there is no issue here - it is what it is - a previously used machine. Had it been sold as a factory refurbished machine, that would be another story, but it wasn't.

Thanks I put the question here hoping to get some different perspective and I got it. You all are making sense - perhaps both Best Buy AND I together scrambled up the "open box" vs "factory refurbished" rules.

I don't care about the price of Lion. I'm more concerned about the length of warranty.

So I'm not sure whether I'll keep the machine or not because I'm a little bit worried about having a warranty hassle in any case since they are basically leaving the original purchase date a mystery.... and that is where things don't add up for me.

Apple can't say "original purchase was May 21, 2011 and the warranty clock starts then". They don't have any evidence of original purchase. So they apparently have a policy that lets them assign a date 90 days form the date it was shipped to the retailer.

Now... what if this computer is open box because it was a store display and has never been sold? Then what date should apple be assigning for warranty purposes?

Thanks for all the thoughtful replies I understand where you all are coming from. I guess I had been hoping and assuming a more cohesive and seamless experience - that Apple and Best Buy would be working together instead of pointing the finger at each other.

So, here is how it all wound up:

I went ahead and purchased Lion. What's $30 in the big scheme right? Downloaded it overnight (I have slow internet) and by the time it was downloaded, I got the email from Apple granting me the free upgrade and code. Of course this is just a white elephant at this point, but it is kind of ironic. SOMEBODY at Apple took the "right" view and sent me the software upgrade. Cheers for that somebody, whoever it is.

The Applecare rep has just declined to reply to any followups and I have no confidence that he escalated the issue. I've sent him a couple emails asking to clarify the date he would start applecare if I bought it, and I just got silence. My experience with Apple service is, unfortunately, disappointing when it comes to plain old customer service. I'm glad their good reputation precedes them and I hope it holds up for others. Obviously here on this board the prevailing opinion is that the warrant start date should be an arbitrary one assigned by Apple (remember Apple has no documentation of an earlier retail sale than mine on this machine and none of us know if indeed it was EVER sold previously - it could have been a floor model.

For me, Apple was a disappointment from a customer service perspective mainly because of a couple mannerisms by the rep when we were discussing the issue.

The good news is that the Best Buy store manager told me there would be no problem getting support up to a year after my purchase date I only have to take it to Best Buy and if it is a service coverable under Applecare, they will see to it that I'm covered (fixed by Apple if need be). Kudos to Best Buy for putting a little customer service first and really imo having their eye on the bigger picture. I don't know if they are going to have to subsidize a repair to meet this commitment - it probably won't come up anyway - but they did stay consistent with the sales rep who sold me the machine. Good job Best Buy in Folsom CA!

At the end of the day, what was frustrating is that Apple seems to have an "Apple against the world" attitude on this one and Best Buy is included in the "rest of the world" as far as they are concerned. It seems that if you have a huge retail distribution partner like Best Buy, you ought to grant them a little latitude to take returns and resell them as new (or, as may well be the case - sell a store model as new).

So anyway - Best Buy DID indeed say it was covered like a new one and they are standing behind it. Apple is evidently not on the same page with Best Buy on this and it is kind of "weird" to me as a customer but there it is. Truly Apple is treating Best Buy like some sort of gray market vendor on this imho (and I know the sensibilities on this board are that the computer is used and Apple is within their rights in refusing to register the computer to me as a new purchase - and that's ok).

If their machines weren't so good, and the experience with cloud so good (we have two iPhone 4S, two iPads, and a macbook air to go along with my macbook pro) - I'd have bailed on this deal, but I guess Apple and I are stuck with each other.

OK, end of this issue. And thanks again to the folks who replied I appreciate it. Here's hoping for a long happy experience with this macbook pro.

Now to change the subject: Who is the best vendor for RAM and a Solid State hard drive? I have the "low end" 2.0 GHz i7 early 2011 macbook pro with 500MB hard drive. Is it worth putting in a solid state drive and more RAM?

Just out of curiosity, what date shows up when you enter your machine's serial number on the Apple Site?

https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do

You should have one year of warranty from that date. You should also have one year from that date to add Applecare. If no date shows up, then I would verdure to say that buying Applecare and adding it on is not an option, as the date of Applecare coverage is also based on that same date.

coyote95667 said:

Now to change the subject: Who is the best vendor for RAM and a Solid State hard drive?

Click to expand...

These guys are pretty darn good:

OWC

- Nick

Jaygray said:

Just out of curiosity, what date shows up when you enter your machine's serial number on the Apple Site?

https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do

You should have one year of warranty from that date. You should also have one year from that date to add Applecare. If no date shows up, then I would verdure to say that buying Applecare and adding it on is not an option, as the date of Applecare coverage is also based on that same date.

Click to expand...

This is part of my entire frustration with Apple. NOTHING comes up on this screen. It says "please submit proof of purchase".


Please validate your product's purchase date.
Apple is unable to provide information about your service coverage. Please sign in with your Apple ID and provide your product's date of purchase so that we can display your coverage information.
What's an Apple ID?


I have submitted proof of purchase and Apple insists on disregarding it. But they cannot replace my proof of purchase with some "other" proof of purchase by a previous buyer. This is exactly why I find their stance so high handed and arbitrary. They have precluded me from buying applecare... they have created a scenario where the computer was basically "never bought". It is absurd...whack.

I guess they will use "ship to retailer date plus 90 days" ... I guess.

Perhaps if/when Best Buy has to ship it to Apple for service, that is the time when they will go to bat and say my purchase date is indeed the original purchase date.

But yeah, the fact that I can't register my computer, and cannot get that "effective date" populated - I blame that on stubborn people at Apple. Luckily Best Buy provided a remedy.

Nick - Thanks for the tip on OWC I think I will buy some ram from them! I'm not sure how big a solid state drive to get for my processor though so maybe I'll do one thing at a time... ram first.

BestBuy is twisting Apple's own service and rules, and you are upset at Apple?

You bought a used computer at BestBuy. Apple own rules state that you don't start your coverage from "your" purchase date, but the date of which the first user bought it. If you have a problem, you should take it up with BestBuy for CLEARLY lying to someone who...doesn't know the difference.

I also think yo are overcomplicating this.

This all says a LOT about BestBuy, an authorized Apple vendor that abide by Apple's rules. They should know their policy before lying to a customer.
I honestly have a hard time understanding why aren't ticked at BestBuy. They should offer you an extended warranty of their own since it's used, and they are the ones selling it. From the second it's sold as "open box," it's considered used, and out of Apple's hand. If you expect Apple to validate a proof of purchase, you will have to get more info from BestBuy. They won't validate a second purchase on the same computer, unless you have proof of purchase of the first time someone bought and activated the warranty...which is why they have the standard 90 day policy.

As for the RAM, OWC and Crucial are the only two I recommend.

Did you even try to register it using your receipt? Put in where you bought it and when etc? It's worth a try.

The biggest deal on this one is the fact that it was an open box.

I can see the frustration, I genuinely can, but the computer was already opened. Even if it was just a display model there is wear and tear that begins from the moment the thing is turned on. The battery beings the slow march to death, as does every other component... Apple makes a great computer that will last a very long time, but thinking that something like this:

It seems that if you have a huge retail distribution partner like Best Buy, you ought to grant them a little latitude to take returns and resell them as new (or, as may well be the case - sell a store model as new).

Click to expand...

will ever be the case with any electronics manufacturer is like hoping for it to rain gold.

Honestly, I am glad to see that you got most of it resolved, because even with the purchase of AppleCare and Lion out of pocket that is one heck of a great deal.

Without going into too much detail (I'd be guessing at some of the details anyway) I want to sum this up by saying that - when the smoke cleared - I am very happy with both Apple and Best Buy. It is all resolved to my complete satisfaction and I am VERY HAPPY WITH APPLE.

I just bought the 8mb memory kit at owc. I could not pull the trigger on a solid state hard drive because I am not sure whether I want to use the optical bay for backup and all that. But I do know I want more memory because I did manage to max it out just a while ago loading up my song and photo libraries while surfing safari and reading email. Kinda wish I'd bought 16MB but it is a big leap in cost to go from 8 to 16 so hopefully the 8mb will do me.

This issue is resolved with Best Buy and Apple thanks guys. I'll head over the the other message board areas now

Glad to hear things turned out best for you. You're certainly welcome to join in any and all discussions. It's a great community.