A few days further down the road and we now have enough experience of Apple, both in France and California, to be sure that the company's policy is not to care. Officially, replacement is not an option and as far as we can see, even if the computer is never satisfactorily repaired, it will not be replaced if head office have anything to do with it. They will continue to cobble it up at apparently considerable cost without considering the lower cost, customer friendly, approach of a replacement.
We didn't intend to relaunch the MAC/Windows polemic. We really don't want to have to learn another OS and we like Macs. The question raised by other Prodig members is whether it is worth taking the risk of being the unlucky purchaser, especially when one considers the generally higher prices of Macs. When we buy a laptop it will probably now be a PC - a reluctant decision but from what we have read on various forums of the fate of the unlucky Mac laptop buyers, it is probably a sage decision. Stripping out all emotion, which we've more or less worn out anyway, we realise that the cosy image that we had of Macs was rather naive. The situation has got to the stage where the dealer is now replacing the motherboard again with number three. We've told him what we think the problem is and we have been ignored. Perhaps they don't replace superdrives either. I once worked for a farmer who was trying to dry wet rapeseed. Each time the fuse blew in the drier he replaced it with a heavier one. Eventually, a six inch nail was inserted and the fire brigade were called. Peoples' differing experiences suggest to us that it is the dealer that matters. A good dealer can probably fudge the Apple terms and put pressure on Apple to do him a favour. A dealer like ours, in every way incompetent, won't even try. Apple France suggested that the dealer might recover our files from the hard disk but pointed out to us that, if he does, there will be a charge. Even the Apple Customer Services lady seems to be on our side but her supervisor is not going to risk bending the rules in the face of promotion. We would be interested to hear the views of some responsible and competent Apple dealers vis a vis their contracts and terms with the company and how they manage to operate a more consumer friendly solution. Peter and Georgina Bowater =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
