Apple to issue refunds for sparky, prematurely dying products Apple has agreed to give US and Canadian customers two separate settlement offers to make charges of faulty and misrepresented products go away. Canadian owners of older iPods can get a CDN $45 (credit) rebate over claims the battery life in its devices were much shorter than advertised. Americans who purchased replacement …
"but then again, what do you expect from a lousy company like Apple? Wonder if there is still any Apple mindless Drones to say that Apple Make high quality product? Here is a news flash: They never did."
High horse alert! Please stop pretending like people are actually going to take you seriously.
Really don't think I qualify as an Apple fanboi, and this settlement doesn't appear to be over-generous, but I take issue with the remarks about Apple products not being high-quality.
- Having resisted the iPod because it was tethered to iTunes, I eventually bought one because after my old player died the only players in our local Currys which didn't feel like they'd break in about two seconds were the Apple ones, which felt reassuringly solid. And just seemed to be better thought-out.
- When I came to buy a speaker dock for the iPod, the one which sounded best in the shop was the now discontinued iPod HiFi. Not only does it sound great (though the "audiophile" description is way over-exaggerated), it's built like a tank. And beautifully designed too.
- Having been really pleased with the above, when my XP laptop (Sony) started to break down I decided to dump Windows and get a Mac. Not only were the Apple Store staff exemplary - they even saved me £500 by showing me that a MacBook would more than meet my needs so there was little point in going for a MacBookPro - the MacBook is again reassuringly solid, beautifully designed and thought out. Interesting that a recent PCW group test rated the MacBook highly for its hardware, even resorting to putting Windows on it and finding it perfectly capable. That was before the recent upgrades to the MacBooks which make them even better value.
- I've since bought a Time Capsule and wireless Mighty Mouse, both of which are equally solidly built, well thought-out and well designed.
You may not like Apple or its products (each to his/her own), but everything I've bought so far has been high-quality by multiple criteria.
Apple ALSO just settled the Canadian Class Action Lawsuit on their BIG LIE about iPud battery playing life (they claimed 8 hours, really 3) and usable longevity (dies just after the warranty date, surprise!) for a lousy CD$44. A similar lawsuit in the US that the A-holes at Apple originally settled on, Stevie RENEGED on paying it to date three years later!
There are dozens times 20 of other lawsuits on many Apple crumby products with flaws, something the AppleTards cannot rebuke with evidence from any of the big 5 PC makers. Go ahead and try!
Apple and Stevie is the most disreputable company, yet the AppleTards always vote like Democrats (vote early and vote OFTEN) whenever there is a satisfaction survey ..... apparently, the surveyors never survey all the millions involved with all these Class Action Lawsuits against Apple.
Go ahead AppleTards, flame .... but never rebut with any evidence. You never have any.
"More specifically... a Store Credit cannot be used to purchase or obtain a refund on iTunes content..."
How exactly can you PURCHASE a REFUND? By definition, a refund means credit/cash/value is being returned to you (which, to any logically-thinking person, is the exact opposite of a purchase). I know Apple has always been different, but this takes the cake. Then again, I'm sure a number of Apple fanbois would be perfectly happy to pay Apple in order to receive a refund.
Hmm, I'm going to try and be logical here Webby (hence the icon). May I call you Webby?
If I've remembered correctly you've dealt with many thousands of Apples (say 15000?) in your school district. This means it's 15000 times more likely that you've encounted a problem, than Average Joe Appletard (with exposure to say just one Apple).
This surely makes sense to you yes? This is why you are so misunderstood. This overexposure to Appletardness has clearly made you mad as a hatter.
A warning people, if you feel you're getting to much Apple exposure, stop and think, before you get Phreaky....
Since I work at a printing company we have many Apple machines (PC's too) not hundreds - but still quite a few.
Since 1989 I have never had any of the Apple hardware stop working, except a PSU once. I have had 2 x HP, and 1 Packard Bell PC die within the first year of use.
We are still using Apple hardware daily that was made over 10 years ago.
I have owned 4 iPods so far, and 1 had a very poor battery life (3rd gen or 4th possibly?), but my current 5th gen video still lasts over 15 hours playing music and it was bought as soon as they were released, so not bad really.
All I can go on is my own (possibly biased) experience, which points to Apple hardware (generally) being very well put together and highly reliable.
Obviously this is anecdotal, so doesn't really mean anything. I wouldn't class myself as being 'under a spell' about how great Apple is, but from what I see - it's pretty good.
ps. Webster - you really need to lay off the coffee you know.
Having used windows, linux, and solaris laptops for years as well as apple ones. I have found Apple ones to be reliable. So I guess that makes me an Apple-Tard for only caring about getting my work done.
As far as battery life is concerned --- I have never had a product from anyone that met its advertised "average" usable battery life. The absolute worse was a Sony cordless phone that the vendor fixed by shipping me progressively higher capacity batteries until the warranty ran out :) Perhaps what we need here is some optional extended battery pack that can be worn disguised as a large pair of earrings or the ever-popular euro man purse?
Phreaky doesn't state it well at all, but he's right. As much as Apple fans hate to admit it, Apple do in fact make some models that are unmitigated junk. Some have had 30% failure rate in the first year. I work at a surplus presently, and I can assure you some Apples (at about 5 year age range) have a rather astounding failure rate (Dell GX270s do as well -- in the Dell's case due to blown caps.)
Other models are great and last practically forever. bygjohn's right, some Mac models are a pain to open up and work on, but I don't think anyone would accuse an Apple product of being flimsy. They have a unique appearance and are solid.
As for this settlement? "Funny money" you have to spend with Apple, and THEN excludes a bunch of stuff, seems pretty crap to me. But it's par for the course -- my parents got a class action $10 certificate from Iomega over dodgy Zip drives. Which excluded using it for Zip disks etc. etc., basically knocking out anything under about $120 or so. They weren't too unhappy about it -- they had the 1st gen Zip that actually didn't crap out, but the $10 cert would be a real slap in the face for people who did get shoddy products.
...for sourcing products from the renegade province !! They should have sourced good Made-in-China products !! Everyone else does and have no complains about the hardware quality. The same happened over the exploding(?) laptop batteries a few years ago that was the pride and joy of the NON-suicidal bombers !!
Class action lawsuits are a complete waste of time for everyone apart from lawyers. Of course consumers don't benefit, and manufacturers are pressured into settling whether they are at fault or not (costing money which they could more usefully spend on product development or customer support for example). But the lawyers get rich. 100,000 consumers might get a useless $50 voucher which they most likely don't redeem but the lawyer who brings the case gets 30% or more of whatever the total settlement is as their fee (and THEY get cash, not vouchers!).
So Apple are admitting there is a problem and offering a small cash settlement to those who have incurred a fault. I think that is noble and rightly so, only receipt holders qualify. This is more than some manufactures offer. True the sum offered is only going to cover some or maybe all of the cost of a new charger but again what more do you want? Oh wait we are talking US and Canada here, yea, enough to clear the mortgage, change for a Hum-Vee and burgers for life yeaaa compensation culture!
" Yea Ma take that ole' Apple thang back to tha mall see if youl can get us enough for a new RV'
I got my first gen ipod.. circa 2001. Lasted till about 2006 of near constant usage. I used it as a music player during the majority of the day (8 hours or so total), then I'd get home and use it as a portable hard drive (woo 5gb!). Finally, in about late 2005, my battery life started dying so that I'd only get about 2 hours a day out of it, and then in early 2006, it became pretty much unusable as the battery would die even while it was off.
I've had many MP3 players in my day, several before the ipod, and several after.. I was always happiest with my ipod. Even iTunes isn't -that- bad, especially compared to the utter shit that is the crap a sony I briefly had, shipped with. (You know the one, sold as an MP3 player, but doesn't support MP3s.. needs to be converted by the SLOWEST algorithm I've ever seen).
I also bought a Samsung video mp3 player, worked ok except for the screen sucked, battery life sucked - but it -was- linux compatible (via a hidden usb drive feature).
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