iBook logic board program
Thursday, January 29, 2004 at 8:38 AM | Mac | 1

After lots of reports of logic-board failures on iBooks, along with threats of class-action lawsuits (background from Wired), Apple has announced a program to cover logic-board failures for the next three years, replacing faulty boards at no cost to the customer, and refunding any service costs already incurred. Some people will be delighted to hear this; some of them went through quite a few replacement iBooks that exhibited the same problem. Must have been frustrating.

Still, based on Apple’s past behaviour regarding noisy Power Macs (see previous entry) and iPod batteries, it might be a mistake to characterize this as an action taken “under threat of a class-action lawsuit,” as Macintouch does. Rightly or wrongly, Apple seems to have a practice of not commenting on repair and replacement programs until they’re in place and ready to roll, which means they’re silent on the issue longer than they could be. As a result, they don’t move fast enough to satisfy their customers, who know about the problems long before the program is ready. To be fair, Apple isn’t likely to know that it’s more than an isolated issue until they get complaints by the truckload, but they’d benefit from a quicker response.

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Comments

Charlotte, July 19 at 12:17 PM:

I had my computer sent in 3 weeks ago because the display just shut down. When I talked to an Apple repair guy, he told me that the display went cause I left it on all the time and burnt it out. They told me that it was going to take 3-5 days to fix but I wouldn’t have to pay anything. On day six I was told that I blew my logic board and that it would take 5-7 days to fix. On day 8, I called and they told me that the repair would have to take 7-10 days to be done. I was really upset cause my iBook is my baby and to not have her for so long and to be run around like this was really frustrating. Finally on day 16, I got my computer back. Now it works fine, but I was surprised to find out that this was not an isolated incident. I feel as though I was lied to. The whole time I’m being told that my computer crashed because of my doing. When I asked for more information or what I can do to prevent something like this from happening again, I got no other information then to extend my Apple Care Protection Plan. I was pleased by the overnight service and whatnot but I feel as though they could have been a bit more truthful, accept that it was their fault, and properly inform consumers about the problem. I think for a business to say hey we messed up and here’s how we are going to fix it, is a lot better then looking as though you aren’t responsible for the problem in the first place. I love my iBook and will remain a mac user for life. But this will keep me a little more wary for the future.