Apple: Gazing Deeply into the Gift Horse’s Mouth

[Update (2/8/2005): I’ve just been notified by Bill Catambay, Editor in Chief of The Macintosh Guild that detailed instructions for a do-it-yourself inverter board replacement are now available via the MacGuild website. Bill says that the fix is pretty simple, costs about $130, and the replacement part is advertised as being more reliable and, we hope, longer lasting than the Apple replacement. YMMV, of course, but you might want to check it out.]

[Update (9/22/2004): The repair described below went bad today. It lasted about nine months. I’ve just ordered a new NEC monitor (with a three year warranty) to take the place of Apple’s.

Apple just repaired my out-of-warranty 17″ LCD monitor and waived all fees; they even paid the shipping costs and sent me a box to pack it in. And, boy, do I feel awful.

Some history is in order. It’s a long narrative, so grab another cuppa before clicking the continue link.

Last September, my 14-month old Apple Studio Display monitor suffered a “brain cloud.” All the symptoms matched up with Apple’s own description of a bad backlight. At that time, the monitor was two months past the warranty expiration date. Apple has a schedule of flat fees for repairing monitors, and the cost for mine would be $509, plus $49.95 for shipping. That’s outrageous, especially when you think all that’s needed is a new fluorescent lightbulb.

I went to the Apple website and found a discussion thread where scores of other people had found themselves in a similar situation: a few weeks or a couple of months after the warranty expired, their monitors dimmed. New folks were showing up almost daily to report the same problem. It was beginning to appear that Apple had a quality control or systemic problem on their hands. But no one had been able to get Apple to either acknowledge the problem, or provide some relief in the area of repair cost.

Someone suggested writing Apple, to at least get on record about the problem, in the hope that the company might begin to take notice. They suggested using PlanetFeedback.com to draft an email to Steve Jobs, Apple’s Messiah CEO. I figured it couldn’t hurt — probably wouldn’t help, but couldn’t hurt — so I did just that.

On September 14, I sent an email to Jobs. It was nothing special. I didn’t use a single exclamation point, but I did point out my disappointment with the product and Apple’s apparent lack of sympathy to it. And, I did promise that I wouldn’t buy another Apple monitor, nor would I recommend to anyone else that they do so.

A month passed, then six weeks. No response from Apple, but the discussion board thread was now up to 150+ messages and growing.

Then, during the last week of October, I got a call from someone identifying himself as representing Steve Jobs, in Apple’s Executive Relations Group. I was out of town when the call came in; he left a message on my machine saying that if I didn’t return his call that afternoon, he would call back on Monday (this was on Friday). I picked up the message on Sunday, and thought, “yeah, right.” But, sure enough, on Monday afternoon, the same man called me again and we discussed my situation.

Again, I think I was very calm and logical — although in my mind I was a raving lunatic, slowly being blinded by eyestrain trying to cope with my darkened monitor — and I tried to focus on two things: the apparent frequency with which this seemed to be happening to others, and the exorbitant flat fee charged by Apple for repairs.

He didn’t do much talking…just asked a few questions and mainly listened to me. Then he said he’d visit with their engineering department and get back with me. However, he didn’t hold out any hope that they would provide me with relief in this situation.

A week later, he called back and said that he had decided to make “a one-time exception” and repair my monitor at no cost. He put me on the line with a repair coordinator, who got all the information needed to set up the repair order, and to ship a packing box to me. The box arrived the next day via Airborne Express. This was on a Monday. I packed the monitor, called Airborne, and it was shipped back to Apple that same evening. On Friday morning of that same week, the monitor arrived at my doorstep, repaired and working like new.

The repair order said that the AC/DC inverter and the logic board had been replaced, so this was more than a simple backlight replacement. That was interesting because the message board threads were beginning to lean toward the inverter as the culprit, as more people researched the problem (and a few found 3rd-party repair shops willing and able to work on the monitors. Incidentally, those repair shops were doing these repairs for about $150, vs. the $500 Apple was charging.).

And get this. The Apple rep even called back last week to make sure I was happy with the repair!

So, there I was, the recipient of apparent and unexpected corporate beneficence. So what if I didn’t understand why they had deemed me worthy of such largesse? Well, I’ll tell you.

I felt bad and a little guilty — survivor’s syndrome? — because so many others in the same situation were not getting the same relief from Apple. I debated whether or not to post my experience to the discussion board. On one hand, if I kept quiet, I wouldn’t be leading folks to develop unrealistic expectations about getting similar treatment. Also, while the Apple rep hadn’t asked me to keep it quiet, the way he kept referring to this as a one-time exception seemed to indicate that this really wasn’t something that the public would benefit from knowing about.

On the other hand, however, how could I not tell folks that there was, indeed, something that might convince Apple to make another exception, even if I didn’t know what that something was? And, truthfully, I was a little ticked-off at such apparent arbitrary behavior by Apple, even if I was the beneficiary. I know; that sounds really stupid, but it’s how I felt. So I did it. I posted my experience on the discussion board. And, interestingly, rather than getting upset about it, the people who responded seemed to take some hope from it. “If Apple made one exception, perhaps they’ll make another.” Several decided to send their own letters to Jobs, the way I did.

I don’t know how this will turn out for the others in this situation. I hope that Apple will at least review its service fee schedule, and revise it to be closer to market. And I hope that someone is looking seriously at the idea that they might have a systemic problem with their monitor parts, assembly or design, and that a solution will be found to eliminate future occurences.

The one lesson I got out of this is not to assume that nothing can or will be done simply because you’re dealing with a big company. If you can approach the company not as an irate maniac but rather as a partner in the attempt to identify the problem and locate a solution (as hokey as that sounds), I think you’ll have a much better chance of arriving at a happy outcome.

Will I buy another Apple monitor after this experience? I don’t know. They’re still priced higher than the competition, and their performance specs fall short in some areas. But there’s a much better chance that I’ll continue to be a customer now than there was back in September. And maybe that’s the best they can hope for.