by Fawksie on Mon Apr 09, 2007 2:46 pm
There are bugger all non-certified repair centres left, so if you send it to, say, ScotSys, the warranty won't be invalidated. My first machine died outright and Apple paid for it to be shipped to their service centre, where the mainboard was replaced. Later, still under warranty, it developed a horrible backlight flicker. Apple refused to do anything, said that there was no way the machine should ever have been brought to their centre in the first place, and that any future work under warranty should be carried out by the local Authorised Service Provider. I brought it to MacSys in NI, who didn't have a single engineer on the premises the day I was there. They ended up keeping it on the bench for observation for over two weeks, during which time they responded to my phonecalls with increasing levels of rudeness and lies, making me obtain a service authorisation from Apple twice, telling me that they had no obligation to fix the machine despite it being brought to them as an ASP, under warranty, and threatening to bill me for their time. Eventually they left a message telling me that they weren't going to do the work and demanding that I come and remove the machine from their premises. After more argument it was eventually sent to Apple, who replaced the display. Except they didn't just replace the display, they swapped my entire top half for a second-hand one complete with gouges, stripped every external case screw and fucked up the reassembly, putting pressure on the optical drive and destroying it. And the flicker remained. It was sent back to be reinstated, and after two months of bitching and fighting with them, they replaced the entire machine. Then it had a RAM failure, within warranty, and they wanted me to send it to ScotSys, out of my own pocket. More wrangling ensued and they ended up paying for it.
In brief, Apple build quality and service is abysmal, expect nothing but grief from the cunts.
The fox is a crafty and deceitful animal that never runs in a straight line, but only in circles.