Wasabisoft

UPDATE THE SECOND: Tried turning it on this morning…. it’s completely dead now. Get the disc making it’s, “I’ve got power” noise but no screen or anything.

UPDATE: AAAAAAAND it’s dead AGAIN. Playing ffxi and the screen shut off. No sounds nothing. Dead. I force power off and it comes up to the Apple loading screens and goes out AGAIN. I left a message for the rep. I am really, really annoyed with this. This will be a 5th repair. This is “THE WORST SERVICE” I have ever had. Apple really appears to not know how to fix anything…

Or in my case, not so much that I love it(hence the quotes in the title), but that it’s a necessity. Once again, my macbook pro had to be sent in for repairs. Twice. Again. That puts me at 4 repairs on this one laptop in the span of a year. You’d think they’d just replace it by now, but apparently not.

You all remember last time, and again this time was a similar problem plus some. A bubble formed again a few inched from the last one and my dvd drive was starting to quit working from time to time after the laptop was on for awhile. So I called them and they were just as confused as last time about the bubble (rehearsed confusion? it can’t be they had never heard of it as he claimed as it was documented on the notes from last time I sent it in). I set the mac partition to auto boot so they can’t blame all this on me bootcamping into windows and it gets shipped out, a week later I get it back. They left a note with the ram pulled out of the machine telling me that the 4 gigs I installed were not rated for use in their laptops. Like they are super high and mighty and require ram that costs 200 dollars more than what I paid for these sticks and does the exact same thing. Regardless, I’m happy… until I turn it on.

There’s STILL something in the screen. This time it looked like a piece of stubble from shaving. I called again and was this time escalated to Apple Care (which they said I was getting a lot since you normally have to pay out the ass for Apple Care, aka the REAL tech support). He sounds like he’s quite familar with the bubble problem as he’s not surprised by it at all though he couldn’t believe the hair in my monitor, telling me there was no way it was possible to get something between the lcd and the protective screen. He even went so far as to have me take a picture of it for him so he could see for himself. So he finally says he’ll ship me a box and keep in contact with me to make sure I’m happy.

I use the laptop as normal while waiting for the box playing a game I’ve recently gotten back into (Final Fantasy XI). During one of the more intense battles, the screen just turns off, fans still running but no response from the system. The only way to get anything to happen was to force a shutdown by holding the power button. I thought maybe the screen saver came up since I play ffxi with a controller. So I boot it back up and start playing again. Within 5 minutes it does it again. By this point I’m pissed. This is an incredibly similar problem I had last time I sent it off when it came back, tho this time it didn’t kill the laptop entirely upon shutting down. I also notice on this reboot on black screens near the bottom there’s a blue area like the screen it being pressed against slightly.

The next day I call back and leave a message with the rep I talked to. He calls me back a day later, I explain to him the new problem and once again, he doesn’t sound surprised at all. He just mentions that the top part of the case may have been damaged and the screen not properly reconnect to the main board. He says they’ll replace the entire top half of the case and that it will be expedited. I get the box and ship it off.

Then begins the wait.

It takes a week this time for them to receive it. Shortly after receiving, it goes into waiting for parts. They knew what needed to be replaced… plus it took a week for it to get there. I found that a little annoying. But what I found more annoying was it took another week for them to get said part. I figured, well they probably don’t keep entire top case halves lying around.

An odd thing about apple returns is they send out the email that the product is being shipped back, but not until after the delivery was already attempted. And also state it was shipped the same day. I’m not entirely sure, but there’s no way that something shipped from Houston, TX and made it to Huntsville, AL by 11:30am. Anyway, I open the box and take the laptop out. I’m not hopeful after noticing that the top half of the case is the exact same. What did they have to wait on? I boot it up, screen seems normal. At least that was replaced. No blue tint at the bottom, Wooo! Put it through the ropes partaking in campaign battles in FFXI once again. No crash. Fans sound different. Louder. But they may have been replaced. Still gets warm when playing ffxi, but it doesn’t die.

I’m still annoyed with their service, especially since once again, I had to ship off the laptop twice to fixed the problem. And it was the SAME problem as last time. I do know however that I will not be purchasing a new laptop from apple again. I won’t be in the market for one for sometime. Hopefully by the time I am building one myself will be a feasible operation. My desktops have never had the problems I’ve had with this machine.

And now you know… the rest of the story.