Is Apple's behavior ILLEGAL?? - iMac Pro Repair Pt. 2

[Thaldor]

12 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

To be fair Linus said in the video that there were places available to fix, but not locally. I don't see how that situation is different at all to mine.

How I understood with local they ment that some local company could still ship it somewhere to be fixed. I don't believe you personally mailed or even less took the Samsung Ace to the Germany?

 

Quote

What would be better for a video is a clear view of what is the situation and what will happen. Some articles (as in the video) claimed it would cost too much to repair anyway. Linus disagrees (as it should be) but then got quoted more than it would cost for a new unit to repair. Somehow through connections he bought a new logic board and CPU + RAM for ~2k. Theres a lot of mud in the video.

I believe there is already companies that buy iMac Pros just to salvage them for spareparts so they can sell the parts with much lower price than Apple sells them without return-pricing. Probably there's one or two companies already who solely go through graiglist and other sources to get their hands on broken Macs and have come across few iMac Pros already (I can believe there's quite few of them when some poor graphics person goes and tries to render something huge with imac Pro that almost instantly turns heater and after 50% done goes thermonuclear). Just like mr. Rossmann there's a lot of people who actually know how to use a soldering iron and have access to the circuit diagrams or just enough knowledge on circuits to fix broken Macs and probably quite few of them make a nice income also on selling refurbished parts even from totalled Macs.

 

Also what Macinsider quoted the repair to cost was just astronomical, $5200 only for the parts and "The fastest and the most precise technician ever" 3 hours of labour ála $100/hour. That's quite far away from the $3400 the parts costed. Either way I cannot get my head around (just like Linus can't) why Apple has used socketed RAM and CPU if they are replaced as whole. Only reason for that could be artificial price bumping because they can put more air to the price when there's more money involved and make a good puck out of returned parts just because the RAM and CPU are mostly intact and can be removed very easily and sold again as "new" and no one would at any moment even notice that they were actually used parts.

 

Quote

It is also sad that not much will come of this. Apple's target audience is people who look at a Mac and see a nice sleek, robust design. The average consumer. If you aren't into tech you see the Mac as a very well designed tool. It has a great aluminium chassis most companies don't have. It looks very futuristic and should last you a long time. These are the people who will lose, these people don't have connections as Linus does. 

And this is jsut the why I think this is extremely bad behavior from Apple. I can understand why linux community is what it is and some parts of it even now days you get mockery and laughing if you go and ask "simple" questions, because even today most of the people who start to use linux are more on the techliterate side and have some smell about what they are doing. Even at professional level some part of Apple users are more on the techilliterate side (my friend at school around 2011 didn't even know what speed ment in RAM or what CL# he should buy, not even talking about changing the sticks through back then still used RAM hatch under iMacs, and he was going to be IT-engineer just like me... He paid me around 150€ from sending him a link to RAM sticks he should buy, going over to his place, apending 15 minutes to change the RAM and drink a cup of coffee while the iMac was booting), no bad feelings to Mac users and I'm not generalizing, because as much as I have come across techilliterate Mac users I have come across around as much techliterate Mac users, but those who go and buy $5000 AIO computer and actually expect it to perform as well cooled computer ain't the brightest part of the user base and with that a company that has this bad customer service that even techliterate people actually need the support of their community to get their machine fixed, is just BAD. Like how much can AASPs and especially Apple overcharge customers for minor repairs like changing a bad stick of RAM or bad stick of SSD and how easy it must be for them to do that.

[Egg-Roll]

29 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

I can understand why linux community is what it is and some parts of it even now days you get mockery and laughing if you go and ask "simple" questions, because even today most of the people who start to use linux are more on the techliterate side and have some smell about what they are doing.

To be fair unlike windows (at least) to install 99% of the apps it has not changed in well over 10 years... So VLC is still sudo apt-get install vlc just like in 2007... Also by now most of the common questions have been asked or wiki'd about so google is still the best resource for basic issues, unlike when I started using Linux which was actually very fun to do imo. This can also go for computer assembly and basic windows issues too, possibly a bunch of other stuff because 10 years additional worth of internet history is still far better than 10 years ago, esp how wide range it is now...

 

Simply put if you can't google you shouldn't be using Linux

[Egg-Roll]

21 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

My only problem with Linux is trying to get it to work properly.  Not that I don't know what I'm doing it's just more of a refusal of Linux.  It works fine on my rpi 3, but on my Haswell build it doesn't like to work for some reason.

It could be hardware based issues, have you tried a different flavour? Ubuntu refused to work/install on my previous build, but Fedora worked flawlessly till the updates broke just before the wifi card... (replacement was not Linux friendly)

 

But when I started using Linux even with Ubuntu's easy to use packaging and setup, various things still didn't work as intended, more specifically wifi and dvds, eventually got it working with hours of driver searching removing adding etc...

[Delicieuxz]

I don't know if this has been brought up in the thread already, but at 6:55 in the LTT video Linus says that Apple denied LTT warranty service because a 'warranty void if removed' sticker was broken

 

But those stickers have been found to be illegal and an instance of predatory practices.

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/243839/ftc-gives-manufacturers-30-days-to-remove-warranty-void-stickers

 

"Warranty language that implies to a consumer acting reasonably under the circumstances that warranty coverage requires the consumer to purchase an article or service identified by brand, trade or corporate name is similarly deceptive and prohibited" - US Federal Trade Commission

 

 

So, if the removal or breaking of that sticker was the basis for Apple not granting LTT return-pricing for their needed parts, then, yes, Apple's behaviour is illegal.

[Egg-Roll]

@Delicieuxz Mentioned on page 2

 

14 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Ya, fedora works here and there, but it was Ubuntu that I was trying to get to work.  Ubuntu seems to be buggy as of late.   I might try it again later, but I'll have to pull out another cable from my G2's box since the one I have set up in there is powering quite a few drives as is.

I blame the Unity move, I actually never updated mine past 10.04 or 10.10 (at that time I was running a P4, also if I did I installed Gnome back lol)... Never cared for the new UI, but with GNOME back I might just give it another try I do have a unused 75gb partition on my install disk 

 

Actually I should still have a few good old install discs from way back then lol... Maybe stickers too  Ah, good times...

I'm assuming your are referring to sata data cables, can't you pick them up for $2 a peice or something?

[handymanshandle]

2 hours ago, Arika S said:

 

on both sides.

I couldn't put it any better.
 

I would really love to make a rebuttal against some of these people but like I don't have the damn energy.

 

It's honestly frustrating because on both ends it relies on dishonesty. I'm the kind of person that would have a mac laptop, and a windows desktop with a secondary drive with a linux install for dual boot and switch between Android and iOS. I really don't care.

 

Now currently I'm running a windows machine and my phone is an S8+ and I think my next phone will be an iPhone. Largely because I don't like Google's data practices.

[Zodiark1593]

29 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

I don't know if this has been brought up in the thread already, but at 6:55 in the LTT video Linus says that Apple denied LTT warranty service because a 'warranty void if removed' sticker was broken

 

But those stickers have been found to be illegal and an instance of predatory practices.

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/243839/ftc-gives-manufacturers-30-days-to-remove-warranty-void-stickers

 

"Warranty language that implies to a consumer acting reasonably under the circumstances that warranty coverage requires the consumer to purchase an article or service identified by brand, trade or corporate name is similarly deceptive and prohibited" - US Federal Trade Commission

 

 

So, if the removal or breaking of that sticker was the basis for Apple not granting LTT return-pricing for their needed parts, then, yes, Apple's behaviour is illegal.

The bit that might be the loophole is that Apple charges the AASP for the parts, not the customer directly. The AASP then charges Linus for the part(s) and labor.

 

As this wasn't a warranty repair to begin (Linus made that very clear in both videos), FTC's ruling is of little relevance.

 

 

Next LTT video: Two men wearing black suits hold Linus at gunpoint, and kindly asks toe audience who among them had divulged classified information to Linus.

[mrchow19910319]

youtube drama 101....

 

look i am not saying, what apple did was 100% right, but just like @CTR said. they have the right to refuse to fix your shit if you messed up. (tearing off the sticker and such) 

 

apple is clearly trying to do EVERYTHING themselves. when it comes to a product, there are upperstream services, like the design of it, then sales , then there are lower stream services, like repair and such. 

 

apple wants all the profit, which includes the repair profit in their pocket. 

because they want money. 

big deal. 

 

but at the same time, every time I went into an apple store, either demanding software services or hardware services, they delivered it, 100%, without any trick or playing games with you. 

 

last but not least, all those people who provided help on reddit or at this forum are simply awesome.

[mrchow19910319]

6 hours ago, Arika S said:

 

on both sides.

we've officially reached the state that people create a topic just let others fight against each other.. 

 

[Tcrumpen]

12 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

The lesson learned here is that you shouldn't let idiot employees fuck with expensive hardware unless you're prepared to pay an idiot tax when the manufacturer doesn't bail you out.

Technicians do fuck up from time to time. It's a fact of life no technician is ever going to complete repairs 100% without making the odd mistake here or there. Also considering Linus hired him he would know about his technical abilities he wouldn't ask someone who didn't know what they were doing to repair a $5000 piece of professional equipment

[ProprietaryModules]

I currently work as a tech at a canadian AASP (wont specify which one for obvious reasons), and i can confirm pretty much all of what linus said in the video, though theres much more that wasn't mentioned in the video like:
- what an apple certification really is and how easy it actually is to get one

- the poor quality training received directly via apple, even for newly released products

- the draconian and unfair metrics system imposed on AASP's

- apples extremely tight control over AASP's (even down to the looks and placement of things) and our lack of power and say for certain situations

- their awful methods of dealing with defects in their products

- their absolutely awful, confusing and broken aasp-oriented backend called GSX (imagine itunes interface on meth, plus poorly coded so throwing exceptions is a daily problem)

- the uselessness of a lot of their diagnostics tools and methods(sometimes vague, pointless, and occasionally forced to use it (using potential metrics penalties))

- the dwindling repairability of older units (especially as the retina models become vintage)

- their awful support for basic hardware problems on iOS devices (parts that are easily replaceable that apple deems as "whole unit replacement" for no good reason) and their desire to remove repairability as much as possible to the point where it requires specialized machines to do basic tasks (the horizons machine, which costs 20K USD and is an overly-engineered gloried hydraulic press [which does a few other generally unnecessary tasks] with ridiculous levels of security around it)

- the Apple Repair Depots (which house some truly awful and lazy technicians)

-  the ever-dwindling margins of apple sales and repairs (usually 3-10%), which makes sustaining an AASP quite difficult

- the awful internal design for a lot of products (Louis explains these much better than i ever could)

- The truly 1984 level methods of handling situations with customers and trying to convince them to buy new products (it really is a bit unsettling just how hard they push this and how much time they devote to educating employees to do this)

- The questionable "eco-friendly" methods they claim to have (such as parts recycling) 

Also, for reference, i looked up one of our Imac Pros (which has the same config as linus's rig) and this would be how much Apple charges us for various parts in an imac pro, before taxes and shipping, and aasp markups(to match apple prices). Remember, exchange pricing = damaged/non-working part that we send back to get discounted price, strock = full price that apple charges for the part

- Logic Board (8 core, vega56) - $1157 exchange, $5017 Stock

- Display - $578 exchange, $900 stock

- Power Supply - $36 exchange, $50 Stock

- 1TB SSD - $1039 exchange, $1429 Stock

- 8GB DDR4 ECC Stick - $174 exchange, $232 Stock

- Rear Housing - $423 Stock

- Stand - $45 Stock
 

 

[MGE Dawn]

12 hours ago, CTR said:

Apples repair service structure is a very bad and very predatory, especially against the Authorized service providers, BUT IT IS NOT ILLEGAL. You guys decided to take it apart and you broke the warranty stickers and so apple or any of their service providers are not liable to help fix your iMac Pro.

Okay, just one problem: Apple is based in California, and what's legal for them to practice is dictated by where they're based. Ergo, since it's unlawful to use warranty stickers in the States, Apple is legally in the wrong.

12 hours ago, CTR said:

This title is complete and utter clickbait making a sensational clam to sell ads that would probably make you enough money to buy another iMac Pro.

Pretty sure LMG could afford to acquire another machine without doing that... thing is, something tells me that they don't WANT to buy another machine outright, for hopefully obvious reasons and on principle.

12 hours ago, CTR said:

If I see another video of you ranting away because of your $5,000 computer it will tell me that you and LTT have gone from a trusted tech reviewer to a man who makes unsupported claims to make money.

Dude... one Apple sheep is barely a drop in the pond for a producer the size of LMG, compared to the rest of their following. And the claims ARE substantiated, by some ridiculously thorough research to boot. You'd know that as well if you spent a couple minutes actually READING; I mean, it's not like FTC rulings aren't publicly available, right?

12 hours ago, CTR said:

If you want to fix it so badly go buy a 5K iMac Screen.

Well, what do you know? A suggestion that literally nobody has thought of or suggested to Linus! /s

12 hours ago, Nena360 said:

Steve Jobs most be ashamed of this company! =3=

I tell you, he be spinning in his grave at approximately 120,000 rpm from the way his successors are running his company...

[darknessblade]

warranty void if removed stickers are becoming illegal in many country's around the world.

 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ftc-warranty-stickers-illegal/

apple will of course bribe the FTC with a few billions of USD

[Dredgy]

2 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

they have the right to refuse to fix your shit if you messed up. (tearing off the sticker and such) 

.

Actually they don’t have the right to refuse to sell you spare parts, in fact they legally have to have spare parts available for sale. If they don’t offer spare parts for sales, then they do not have the right to refuse repair.

 

Warranty void if removed stickers are illegal/non-binding in most countries and since this isn’t a warranty repair it doesn’t matter. 

[Psilopat]

So I got an idea watching last video, what if Linus purposefully broke a Surface Studio to get the same damages, then try the customer support/exchange like with Apple, without using Linus brand. 
I think it would show the position of Apple regarding customer support, what other are doing, and the differences.

Regarding the matter of Apple, this is clearly anti-customer, it could almost be OK to prevent parts from being available outside of Apple all seeing eyes, only if Apple would be competent enough to fix one of it's most pricey product themselves, or at least offer full exchange not for free of course, but I mean the price difference between cost and retail price should take this kind of accidents into account. 

[JoostinOnline]

13 hours ago, LeapFrogMasterRace said:

Next time they show lous rossmann in a video I am unsubbing 

I really hope he's in the next video, just because you said that.

[TechyBen]

13 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

I didn't compare. I'm saying these situations are more common than the video makes out. 

True. Common, and knowing how to treat consumers/customers are two different things though. At work I assumed we could not repair customers stuff, customer came in screaming and shouting (not my customer, different sale) and 1 week later, device that was "unrepairable" was repaired. Amazing what can actually be done when the channels and cost absorption exist.

 

So I got an idea watching last video, what if Linus purposefully broke a Surface Studio to get the same damages, then try the customer support/exchange like with Apple, without using Linus brand. 
I think it would show the position of Apple regarding customer support, what other are doing, and the differences.

Regarding the matter of Apple, this is clearly anti-customer, it could almost be OK to prevent parts from being available outside of Apple all seeing eyes, only if Apple would be competent enough to fix one of it's most pricey product themselves, or at least offer full exchange not for free of course, but I mean the price difference between cost and retail price should take this kind of accidents into account. 

 

Louis Rossmann did this already. He poured water on his Thinkpad to see how waterproof it was. It lasted for ages, then eventually died. He phoned customer support, they sent it off, checked it, repaired, then sent him the bill "zero dollars". THAT IS SERVICE. Apple? I'd like to see how they help when a key gets stuck on the keyboardOHWAIT.

[D13H4RD]

Wait, the iMac Pro is aimed at professionals who likely work in an enterprised environment, no?

 

And I reckon a lot of people have watched the Snazzy Labs video, correct?

 

Which begs the question: Why doesn't Apple have that level of support that companies like Dell offer for their professional/enterprise-level products? Such as onsite next-day repairs. Because, you know, the people who have these sort of machines want them up-and-running ASAP

[Peskanova]

If this hapened to msi - lenovo - hp or even dell , this topic will be one sided but when someone touches apple first he needs to cross a mass parade of white knights , no matter what subject is , and the fact we all now is very simple , This part is on eol(end of life)? yes: no support,  no: they should provide suport till end of life , thats the reason we are buying brand new products. Apple is doing things bad on the customer side, the best analogy is like PUBG (the br game) the way they are handling the company is like an abusive or toxic relationship , such a great tech(or game) you want to stay there but that way of handling the company pushes you out despite if you love it or not .

[Peskanova]

5 minutes ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

Wait, the iMac Pro is aimed at professionals who likely work in an enterprised environment, no?

 

And I reckon a lot of people have watched the Snazzy Labs video, correct?

 

Which begs the question: Why doesn't Apple have that level of support that companies like Dell offer for their professional/enterprise-level products? Such as onsite next-day repairs. Because, you know, the people who have these sort of machines want them up-and-running ASAP

Dude I work for a engineering design and manufacturer company and if we have a problem with some siemens or rockwell plc , that week we had the salesman fixing that issue and you can laugh at apple price vs siemens cpu prices.

[Tcrumpen]

1 hour ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

Wait, the iMac Pro is aimed at professionals who likely work in an enterprised environment, no?

 

And I reckon a lot of people have watched the Snazzy Labs video, correct?

 

Which begs the question: Why doesn't Apple have that level of support that companies like Dell offer for their professional/enterprise-level products? Such as onsite next-day repairs. Because, you know, the people who have these sort of machines want them up-and-running ASAP

Because to Apple "Pro" doesn't mean professional in the regular term, it's basically a "Pro-sumer" product. Not that this is a way of giving Apple a way out of the situation

[Cheezers]

I wanted to comment on this as an AASP. (been a member of the forum for a while but never really logged in much.)

 

Obviously take this post with a grain of salt. this is only my experience, and no, I will not be giving my name or the company I work for, just to say that it's a fairly large repair shop somewhere in Silicon Valley. 

 

Working under Apple, is an absolute nightmare. 

What Linus said about parts charges, and fines is all true, as you would expect it to be but, he missed a few things. 

 

Broken parts.

There's a sort of Orwellian atmosphere that pervades dealing with Apple, Apple knows they have the power, and imo they abuse it thoroughly. For instance, upon sending a part back, even though it's broken, if Apple decides there has been excessive tampering, they charge you for it.

If the part is not sent back on time, they charge you for it. This usually isn’t a problem but when you’re busy, it can be a bit frustrating.

if the packing slip is incorrect in any fashion, they charge you for it. (even though we get parts from them all the time with mislabeled packing slips.)

 

 

It's no secret that Apple products are difficult to repair. I mean this about more about their laptops over their phones. Provided you have the part, iPhones are a cinch.

 

But, I would argue that most people who buy Macs, for a variey of reasons, aren't in the business of taking them apart. Thus I can only assume that the only reason Apple makes minute changes to location of flex cables from model to model, sometimes sticking a bit of adhesive under flex for no apparent reason, that the only people their trying to trip up, is their own technicians. Or perhaps, a very draconian way of keeping anyone but Apple certified techs from daring to touch a computer. Regardless of the reason, I've seen a few techs regrettably let go because of nothing more than a lapse of memory one too many times, which resulted in a torn flex cable, which resulted in a full logic board replacement. 

 

Its almost as if Apple spends the majority of their engineering dollars developing ways to purposely make everyhing they can as fragile as possible.

If you do have a problem with a repair the only option is to talk to Apple support through their Global Service Exchange system. Where you will be subjected to, sudden undocumented warranty changes. One support person will say this can be covered under warrant, the other will say no. It’s pretty shoddy all the way around honestly.

 

we also deal with Lenovo, I have nothing to say about them other than every experience has been positive.

 

Anyway, not sure if there are any AASP's on the forum here already or what. I assume there are, but if anyone has any questions feel free to ask.

 

In closing, im a cog in the wheel. no one important. So I think I'm relatively safe here. 

I'm also vety happy Linius put up these videos. In my honest assessment, Apple, if not doing something criminal with these policies, is extorting and abusing every repair shop (provided similar experience of course) that does business with them. Not to mention their customers.

 

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

18 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

1. that's actually illegal, says the FTC
2. LMG was willing to shell out for out-of-warranty costs earlier on. no one ever demanded for cost-free repairs
3. bye

 

18 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

...Apple seems to be willing to sell stuff to their customers but not willing to repair it at reasonable prices if at all. I'm sure they'll find a way around the FTC too...

 

17 hours ago, nicklmg said:

...Actually that would technically be illegal based on a recent ruling by the FTC: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43724348 It goes against their policies, sure, but those policies are deemed "likely to be illegal" by the FTC...

 

17 hours ago, MasterMalice said:

Apple is going against A US Supreme Court Ruling that was against John Deere...

 

12 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

...But those stickers have been found to be illegal and an instance of predatory practices.

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/243839/ftc-gives-manufacturers-30-days-to-remove-warranty-void-stickers

 

"Warranty language that implies to a consumer acting reasonably under the circumstances that warranty coverage requires the consumer to purchase an article or service identified by brand, trade or corporate name is similarly deceptive and prohibited" - US Federal Trade Commission...

Guys, Linus is in Canada, not the U.S. The U.S. FTC has no authority in Canada.

 

Some one mentioned that, because Apple is headquartered in California, the FTC ruling applies everywhere. That isn't true. If a company is making products to be sold exclusively in a country that doesn't have laws or rulings similar to the U.S. FTC, Apple can continue the practice as long as those products are shipped to and sold in that country.

[ItsMitch]

This thread is so sumSmash right now... 

[JoeCoke]

So happy to see Linus doing collaborations with Louis and Wendell! Two of my absolute favorites! It's just nice to see Wendell recovering after the whole Tek Syndicate thing, Level1Techs is actually doing better than the TS channel now.