
I Took Apple To Court And Won, Twice - jasoneckert
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/cgi7ro/i_took_apple_to_court_and_won_twice_water_damaged/
======
gregschlom
In my opinion the main takeaway here is that in both cases the OP was able to
win their case thanks to the diagnostic of a third party repair shop -
precisely the kind of business that Apple is trying to kill with its
unrepairable products

~~~
widowlark
This is super concerning

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jedberg
Maybe it's because I live in Silicon Valley, but my repair experience with
Apple has been quite different. I took my six year old laptop in for a recall
on the video card, which required a logic board replacement. They did that at
no charge. In the process, they broke the power unit, so they replaced that
and my six year old battery, both at no charge. They also replaced the top
case at no charge while doing the second repair because they said they damaged
it during repair. I never even saw the damage or had to complain.

It took three weeks, but in the end I basically had a new laptop, except the
screen.

~~~
LeonM
> Maybe it's because I live in Silicon Valley

That may be the reason. I live in the Netherlands and I have had consistent
terrible experience with Apple store repair service.

> It took three weeks, but in the end I basically had a new laptop, except the
> screen.

For professional use, that is just unacceptable. If you rely on your computer
for income, you can't wait that long.

That is the reason why any Apple product will never be 'pro'. Regardless of
how nice the hardware is, if it breaks I need a repair or replacement device
_immediately_. IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50
devices).

Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They
send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give
you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If only
Apple would offer that.

~~~
zenexer
> For professional use, that is just unacceptable. If you rely on your
> computer for income, you can't wait that long.

This may be an unpopular opinion, and I don't mean to sound dismissive or
suggest that waiting 3 weeks is normal, but I do think it is incredibly
unprofessional to rely on a single device like that for work. If it's truly an
indispensable part of your job, you should have a backup--that goes for
anything, not just computers. It could be a 10-year-old hand-me-down or a
cheapo Chromebook, but you should have a backup plan.

> Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They
> send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give
> you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If
> only Apple would offer that.

When I was first getting started as a programmer, I made most of my income by
doing tech support, rather than actual programming. A large percentage of the
cases were people hiring me to deal with the likes of HP, Dell, and Lenovo
because their "on-site same day repair services" were absolute garbage about
50% of the time. You could get a laptop with a DoA hard drive, but they'd
refuse to replace it unless it failed their specific check, which was always
inadequate. It was normal to argue with them for 6+ hours about it. You could
put a fresh drive in to demonstrate that the issue was gone, but they'd still
refuse to do anything. It wouldn't matter if it BSODed consistently with a
fresh installation on their drive but not on the drive I was using for
testing, or if the SMART results were the worst I'd ever seen--no test fail,
no replacement.

> IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices).

It varies widely depending on location. If you go to a large, busy Apple
store, they tend to have a lot more parts on-hand; it doesn't need to be in
Silicon Valley as long as it's big. If they need to order parts, they'll give
you the option to hold onto your device until the parts arrive. I've gotten
apologies when a repair took longer than 24 hours. I tend to prefer the
Microsoft store method, though: when I've had issues with Surface-series
devices, they've never attempted to repair it there; they just hand me a new
one. It's hard to beat that. (I guess Apple's approach is better if you need
to recover your data, but I never save anything valuable on a single device.)

~~~
edoceo
Not everyone can afford a second machine.

~~~
coldtea
An ordinary Joe, student, sure.

But if you're a professional and depend on one being available at all times,
it's part of the cost of doing business.

What if your machine was not faulty and repairable, but stolen, broken because
you've dropped it, etc? There would be no warranty/repair at play there, and
no replacement unit.

So, a professional should always account for a backup machine as a, well,
backup as part of the cost of doing business.

If they can't afford a second machine, they can ask themselves if they can
afford weeks without a machine and customers waiting for work to be completed,
more...

~~~
darkpuma
> _it 's part of the cost of doing business._

I think the point you're missing is that it needn't be a requirement of doing
business, unless you insist on using Apple products. And, even if I have a
full closet of old computers (I do) that doesn't mean I find it enjoyable to
switch back to old hardware for a week or more, when the alternative is
somebody coming _to me_ within a day to fix it on site. If I enjoyed using
that old hardware, I probably wouldn't have the new hardware would I? Surely
any typical Apple user prefers using their brand new $2000 computer over their
old computer that would struggle to get a tenth of that on ebay.

~~~
coldtea
> _I think the point you 're missing is that it needn't be a requirement of
> doing business, unless you insist on using Apple products._

I don't think I'm missing any point.

Comparably spec'ed laptops from PC vendors are of similar price. And even a
desktop tower-style PC soon goes to more than $2K with good enough components
(if you're a video or audio pro, for example -- a sysadmin could get away with
a $300 PC barely able to run SSH). At best you save the Apple premium (let's
say 20%), but there's still a cost for a second unit, and you should consider
it part of the cost of doing business.

> _And, even if I have a full closet of old computers (I do) that doesn 't
> mean I find it enjoyable to switch back to old hardware for a week or more,
> when the alternative is somebody coming to me within a day to fix it on
> site_

Who said anything about "old hardware"? Your backup should just as well be a
twin machine to your main driver, that you buy in pairs as backup.

This all is common (and obvious) practice for businesses -- who buy spare PCs,
or lease their equipment and can have new ones on demand. It should also be
common practice for an individual developer/designer/pro computer user working
in an one-man-shop.

~~~
darkpuma
Why should it be a common practice for individual developers when it's
_completely unnecessary_ with the right (cheap!) support contract? What you're
suggesting seems insane to me, like setting money on fire to stay warm instead
of simply buying firewood. Is it about _' flexing on plebs'_ or something?
Eating cake when you're out of bread?

But let's pretend good support contracts don't exist because if it's not Apple
it must not be real... If I'm going to pay the full price for duplicate
hardware, I may as well wait until the day it breaks then walk into an Apple
store and buy whatever they have in stock at the moment. I'll be walking down
to the Apple store to get the broken one fixed anyway, won't I? And on the off
chance that the computer never breaks I've just saved myself $2k that I can
use to buy a bunch of cocaine and throw a party to celebrate _reliable_
consumer hardware. That sounds like a lot more fun than owning twinned
computers, no? You're invited.

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thenaturalist
What a "peculiar" behavior on Apple's part. The fact that they base their
arguments on a moisture paper which seems to be extremely easy to refute and
spend more money on lawyers than they would have needed to actually fix this
within an established company program just seems... stupid?

Whomever is in charge seems not to have learned from this as well.

~~~
wpietri
It depends on how success is measured.

Let's suppose that the UK repair operation is manage separately. Let's call
that exec Joe. And suppose further that the person in charge measured by
metrics like "doesn't spend any more on repairs per sale than the US operation
does", implying that spending less is better.

Joe making a rule something like "refuse any warranty repairs if a moisture
sensor trips, even if the damage is unrelated" is a pretty easy way to keep
repairs down. Some people may sue, sure, but probably not many.

And let's assume further, as is common, that Apple's lawyers are all on staff
and under their General Counsel. That means they're a fixed cost, and not
directly on the budget of the repair operation. That is _not_ one of the
metrics Joe is evaluated by. Maybe they won't need to add any new lawyers to
handle the extra load; maybe they will. Further, any relationship between
repair rules and legal costs will be hard to spot, given that it's delayed by
time and filtered through many people.

So at worst, Joe might down the road have to face some sort of complicated
analysis from the head of legal complaining about increased costs. But he can
point to repair cost savings, so it'll be difficult to say whether on net he's
making or costing Apple money.

I would guess the bigger risk for Joe is not legal expenses but the PR problem
from writeups like this or an eventual decline in something like a Net
Promoter Score metric as more people feel put off by Apple. Those, however,
are also pretty long feedback loops. So Joe gets an immediate reduction in
repair costs versus the possibility of a problem a year or three down the
road. Many ambitious execs are perfectly fine with that; they're hoping to be
in a new position anyway in a couple of years, so it may be the next guy's
problem.

And really, Joe may not have a problem at all; as this article makes clear,
having to sue the company wasn't enough to keep the guy from buying another
Apple laptop. That's not a great incentive for anybody to change behavior.

~~~
Gravityloss
Well that's not a good way to run a company - it's basically designed to be
customer hostile.

~~~
Latty
Tell that to ISPs and, from what I hear, cable companies in the US—I’m sure
there are other examples too.

“Customer hostile” seems to be a perfectly “good” way to run a business if you
goal is raw profit. Doubly so in the US with essentially non-existent consumer
protection law.

~~~
Gravityloss
That's an incentive for the customer to select another company.

~~~
wpietri
Only if they can.

In the US, people generally have at most a couple of ISP choices, and the
general pattern of duopolies is to offer basically the same thing with minor
differentiators (e.g., one will be 10% cheaper and 10% worse). Many airline
routes are minimally competitive.

This is not getting better with ecosystem lock-in effects. As TFA mentions,
this guy had such a bad experience that he sued Apple, and he still bought
another laptop from them. That's because Apple intentionally killed off the
companies that built MacOS compatible hardware, and never allowed anybody else
to build IOS phones or tablets.

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bigbaguette
Good on him for taking the time and energy to get through it. Apple is still
waging a war on its own customers.

They wouldn't replace a faulty magsafe charger that suddenly died and that was
still under warranty. The "genius" (that term is so ridiculous) at the store
claimed that accessories were not covered, which is very very wrong under
European laws.

He then left me waiting and went asking his manager. This took a good 20
minutes and when he came back, the employee was adamant that the only way out
of this was to pay 100€ for a new charger. I had to pull law excerpts, raised
the tone of the conversation and started making a fuss.

Then the mood magically changed when the other customers started noticing the
argument and I left with a brand new charger.

This was a terrible customer experience.

------
radcon
Everyone should be required to watch Louis Rossmann's videos before buying a
MacBook. Apple has probably scammed people out of hundreds of millions of
dollars just by using fake excuses like "water damage" to avoid fixing things
under warranty.

For example, a computer Apple said had "been in a bathtub" when it was really
just a manufacturing defect:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2r-g8EaTfY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2r-g8EaTfY)

FWIW, my experience with Dell has been the complete opposite. I complained
about a couple issues with an Alienware laptop (processor whine, low battery
life) and they had a tech at my house the next day with replacement parts.
Probably the best service I've ever gotten on any type of product.

~~~
oflannabhra
I just don’t like Rossman. I’m sure there are solid technical criticisms that
he makes, and I personally agree that Apple is too draconian re: repairability
(both in design and policy). However, I absolutely cannot trust someone who
has such a financial incentive, or as deep a history of twisting facts to make
Apple look bad.

Beyond that, there is something entitled about earning your entire income
repairing another company’s devices while also demanding they make proprietary
parts and knowledge available to you.

I wish there were a critic of Apple’s repair policies that had less of an
agenda than Rossman.

~~~
Someone1234
> Beyond that, there is something entitled about earning your entire income
> repairing another company’s devices while also demanding they make
> proprietary parts and knowledge available to you.

Apple won't let third parties produce Apple compatible parts (or sell parts
sold to Apple also to non-Apple repair centers). Even if Apple just got out of
the way, and offered no help/supply chain, it would be a stark improvement.

But instead they've been using hardware DRM to effectively make third party
repairs impossible. If you replace a part with an identical part, you need
Apple's software to authorize the change otherwise it won't boot.

~~~
benologist
Apple are actively fighting to prevent third parties being able to lawfully
repair their devices.

[https://www.macrumors.com/2019/04/30/apple-right-to-
repair-c...](https://www.macrumors.com/2019/04/30/apple-right-to-repair-
consumer-harm/)

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la_barba
Apple pulled the liquid damage bullshit on my ipod. The device wasn't worth
much so I declined and got a el-cheapo sansa. Apple is also trying to shut
down independent repair, so in the future, there might not be a third-party
repair shop who can expose Apple's lies..

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w0mbat

      > There's no need for LIQUID CONTACT, or WATER DAMAGE 
      > to trigger the 'sensor' but just humidity, caused 
      > for example, by taking the laptop from a well-heated 
      > room outside, in the winter.
    

This is backwards. Water condenses on cold objects in hot humid rooms. In
Winter the condensation would happen when you take the laptop inside, not
outside.

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crazygringo
Just a counter-anecdote, but I've only had good experiences.

Just yesterday I picked up my out-of-warranty MacBook Pro whose battery was
starting to show problems after 3 years... turns out it was originally a
faulty battery and they replaced it for free -- the whole top case including
the keyboard.

Last year my out-of-warranty iPhone had battery swelling so it was unsafe to
swap the battery, so for the $29 price of a battery replacement they gave me a
brand-new iPhone.

Fraying cable on earphones? Replaced them for free as well a couple of years
ago. Lost the rubber buds at another point? I stopped in, they just gave me an
extra pair no charge.

Maybe being in NYC has something to do with it? But service at the Apple store
has been so far above and beyond any other company I've ever dealt with, it's
been a no-brainer to pay the "premium Apple tax" in the long run for me.

I wonder how much discretion managers in stores/countries have to be generous
or stingy, though, or if they explicitly have different internal policies
around these things.

~~~
HNisCurated
Considering the Apple tax is 2x the price, why not get a regular product and
replace it with a new product when it breaks?

Maybe the product doesn't break, and you save money, and don't have to deal
with Apple.

Or the product breaks, and you get the latest and greatest instead of a year
old referbished.

------
mnm1
Yet another reason I don't plan to buy any Apple computers ever again,
especially laptops. They used to have fantastic service. If the logic board
was faulty under warranty they would honor that. This humidity sensor seems to
be there specifically for Apple to pretend like there's water damage when
there isn't so they don't have to fix their shit hardware. And not honoring
their replacement claim and misdiagnosing the problems are likely intentional
too. The hardware is garbage and the support is abysmal. I don't care how
great osx is, it's not that great considering the above facts. I would expect
similar treatment and winning small claims cases in the US is much harder.
Then you have to actually collect the money yourself. And we have no consumer
protection laws. Fuck Apple. If this is the kind of company they run, a
fashion company that makes shitty consumer electronics, I have no interest in
wasting thousands on their garbage.

------
jammygit
I hear this about Apple support a lot lately. 10 years ago, I heard only good
stories. Has something changed?

~~~
awakeasleep
Yes.

10 years ago, an 'Apple Genius' was a relatively skilled role, and was
permitted decision making discretion.

In 2011 Apple Store employees went on a strike, and due to the skilled labor
nature of the role, Apple was not able to quickly hire replacements. Apple had
to cede to some labor demands.

Ever since 2011, Apple has been putting a TON of energy into removing the
skill from the Genius position.

1- Removal of troubleshooting from the role. Almost ALL genius work is now
following a flow chart on the iPad, without involvement of the brain. People
that have been hired in the past few years have no understanding of what is
going on beyond the iPad workflow.

2- Removal of discretion from the role. A genius's ability to help you is now
based on advocacy. Meaning, if they feel sympathy for you, all they can do is
ask their manager to make an exception.

3- reducing the scope of the role. Stores have been reconfigured in a way that
makes figuring out whats going on more difficult, and reduces the ability to
find a workspace or access tools.

4- probably incidental but the scope of repairs possible has decreased, too.
When your choice is to replace the screen, top half, or bottom half of the
laptop there isn't much to think about aside from where the screws are.

~~~
bscphil
> Ever since 2011, Apple has been putting a TON of energy into removing the
> skill from the Genius position.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying. Is your point that Apple's response
to organized labor was to try to make sure that those employees are easily
replaceable in the future? That sounds tremendously counterproductive. Though
perhaps it's the exact sort of shortsightedness we should expect from large
corporations today.

~~~
kevin_b_er
Yes. Apple, like any major US corporation, is in a fundamentally adversarial
position vs their employees. The corporation seeks maximum profit at the
expense of the worker and the workers seek a decent living. However, the need
to extract wealth from the worker to further enrich the richest is of a
greater need to a corporation than the wellbeing of the workers.

This is not unique to Apple by any means.

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
Re water damage: Louis Rossmann had a video up where he was repairing someone
Mac. He was looking through his microscope while narrating, showing us what he
sees. Said something like, "Oh, there is it. No water? Riiiight... People lie.
People lie all the time. If Mother Theresa could get away with lying, she
would."

~~~
oldtkme9393
Right before Sprint bought Nextel, dooming both companies, I worked in what
they called a “repair store”, taking apart phones and replacing bits and
pieces (rubber keypads, boards, displays, most of the gadget)

We saw this all the time: my phone never got wet. Crack it open with the ol’
spudger, find a blue-green mess.

Had one lady bring hers in smelly like pee: her cat.

Had another pull it out of her cleavage: full of salty crystals and moisture.

I never went off that stupid paper, since the moisture of the PacNW air during
rainy season is enough to set them off.

But yeah people treat their expensive, sensitive gadgets like shit

~~~
ubercow13
Is the moisture in the air in humid places enough to actually do damage too,
though?

~~~
darkpuma
The last time I was in an Apple store I was in Seattle getting a MBA battery
replaced. The Apple employee told me there were indications of water exposure
but no apparent board damage, so the humid Seattle air was probably to blame.
Thankfully for me, they didn't refuse to replace the battery because of this.

But that experience leads me to believe those water indicators are
considerably more sensitive than the electronics themselves. If I had gone in
there complaining about some weird issue instead of simply wanting a new
battery, would the lack of apparent corrosion on the board still lead that
Apple employee to conclude that the board wasn't water damaged?

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laurencerowe
This is very different to my experience. Around 10 years ago the battery on my
Macbook Pro began to expand and come apart. There had been a replacement
programme but it had expired about a year previously. I took it to the Apple
Store (Oxford St I think) where an employee took a new battery out of its box,
gave it to me and sent me on my way. I guess everything having to go away for
repair now means there's less opportunity for store employees to do the right
thing nowadays.

------
La-ang
Apple stinks inside and out. I'm dazzled to learn this is their practice
towards consumers who contribute to their large profits. As I have dumped
Rotten Apple long time ago, these stories reassure me all along that there is
no need to go back :D

------
Circuits
I can't help but wonder why the OP continues to purchase Apple products? Why
fight this battle if you don't have too?

