Awhile back Seattle Rex had put everything down on a 17” MacBook Pro. He spent $4,500 on what was the best machine at the time. With the inclusion of Apple Care, the device cost $5,100. Unfortunately for him, that particular MacBook Pro which he received was defective. The Nvidia graphics processor on his laptop began to show signs of the defect shortly after his AppleCare expired and after a few more days, it reportedly died completely.
When it happened, the defect was already well documented and Apple had even issued a tech note to replace defective models as they failed. After doing his own research and learning about the existence of the defect he thought that Apple would exchange his as well since it fit the profile of what was explained in the tech note. He soon found out that he would be wrong in thinking that because Apple refused to fix his laptop for free and to rub salt into the wound, they charged him $600 in repair fees because the Apple Geniuses couldn’t turn on the MacBook Pro to confirm that the graphics card was defective.
As far as Rex was concerned, the notion of that was ridiculous since the defect was what made the laptop die in the first place. In light of that he said, “A $4,500 laptop that fails in 3 years and 3 months if defective. Period.” Over the following months, he continued to push the issue on with the Cupertino tech giant because he wanted the company to acknowledge the fact that his very pricey laptop was defective and all he wanted was it to be fixed for free as the others were.
He spoke with various levels of Apple representatives and when all else failed, he filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau after which he filed a small claims lawsuit against the company demanding the Apple make things right. Rex won his case against Apple and received a favorable verdict and this just shows how far one might have to go to attain satisfaction even from a company that has an excellent track record when dealing with defective products. The only reasons that Apple would usually use to not service your defective laptop is it may exhibit a novel or undocumented defect; your Mac’s defect may be hard to articulate or detect or the less important one that you get stuck with an Apple Genius who is having a bad day. That said, congratulations to Rex for his efforts finally paying off.
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