AppleCare Question

[illegalprelude]

Hey you guys, I have my Apple Care on my PMG5 till end of May 2007. A recap on my situation

My Mac keeps having kernal panics. On the board, we tried everything, ram flush, deleting quicktime and all the good stuff.

I took it to Apple store once and we did a reformat and 3 days later same problems came up.

I took it in again (I just picked it up today) and they have had it for 10 days and they couldnt make it crash (although the person I worked with had seen it crash once on me at the store thus us just doing a reformat the 1st time)

They ran all forms of tests and stress tests and such and couldnt make it crash again.

My thing is this, this unit crashes on me while I do simple things and Apple cannot find a problem with this, where does this leave me? Can I demand a new G5? Can I tell them I want a new LogicBoard? or what

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/169118/ (this is when we and board went over all the problems and trial and errors)

 

[rdowns]

Are you using an external device at home that may be the cause of the problem? Tried using different USB ports or mouse and/or KB?

 

[cgratti]

Find out what makes it crash, try and repeat the crash. Did you recently install any new RAM? Have an external USB drives (HD, Card Readers, ect)?

 

[mklos]

I don't think you can demand a new PowerMac. What they want to do is confirm that its not something simple. No sense in them replacing a $2500 Mac for a simple problem with a device, bad RAM , etc...

 

[illegalprelude]

well thats the thing. everything is stock on her

1GB Ram from Apple (its been tested)
Mouse and Keyboard and Monitor are from Apple

iPod and iPod dock (from apple duh )
Other then that, I have it hooked up to a batery backup (OSX Certified) and I have 2 External Hard Drives (their usually off) and thats it

Problem is, it even crashed in the apple store with the Genius Bar and there, we had nothing hooked up to it, just unit with their keyboard mouse and monitor so I know for a fact its not my devices.

but I cant keep playing the let it crash game.

Its always on simple stuff, Safari and iTunes open and BOOM crash. I dont have weird plugins, I just did a reformat. its like we have gone through EVERYTHING u can think of. Hell even the Apple store as I said did tests on it and couldnt figure it out but they do confirm that I get these kernal panics and it crashes.

 

[Macky-Mac]

If they cant duplicate the problem they're not going to replace something just because you "demand" it.......they have to be able to confirm the problem first. If they're actively trying to find a problem at the store and not having it crash on them then you're going to have to put some thought into figuring out what it is that's different when you use it at home

 

[Selenolycus]

If they cant duplicate the problem they're not going to replace something just because you "demand" it.......they have to be able to confirm the problem first. If they're actively trying to find a problem at the store and not having it crash on them then you're going to have to put some thought into figuring out what it is that's different when you use it at home

Which, considering the price of AppleCare, is sort of ridiculous.

 

[illegalprelude]

but see, it crashed at the Apple store too so they know its not just something at home but when they do tests, it shows nothing. but believe me, if I could duplicate, I would be showing them that and I would solving this with aple but it seems that we cant duplicate it but I do get these random crashes. and when it does happen, it happens a few times in a row that day

 

[mmmcheese]

The only thing I can think of is heat, power supply and RAM. Most people don't have spare power supplies or RAM hanging around, so it's kind of difficult to troubleshoot it yourself. Maybe take it back to the Apple store and see if you can get them to try more things (like start swapping hardware...I expect they have RAM on hand, and maybe even a power supply. Sometimes things test fine, but are still faulty).

I can't think of anything else at the moment.

 

[illegalprelude]

The only thing I can think of is heat, power supply and RAM. Most people don't have spare power supplies or RAM hanging around, so it's kind of difficult to troubleshoot it yourself. Maybe take it back to the Apple store and see if you can get them to try more things (like start swapping hardware...I expect they have RAM on hand, and maybe even a power supply. Sometimes things test fine, but are still faulty).

I can't think of anything else at the moment.

Seems as if nobody can get down to the problem. and thats my real question, can I put pressure on apple on giving me a new unit or ripping this unit apart and replacing the internals? cause the crashes are getting rediculous

 

[generik]

If they cant duplicate the problem they're not going to replace something just because you "demand" it.......they have to be able to confirm the problem first. If they're actively trying to find a problem at the store and not having it crash on them then you're going to have to put some thought into figuring out what it is that's different when you use it at home

Maybe at the store they hooked the monitor to one of their own "known good" computers, and pretend to boot into Apple Hardware Test to completely bypass the user's home directory and desktop...

Hey! That's a possibility!

 

[illegalprelude]

Maybe at the store they hooked the monitor to one of their own "known good" computers, and pretend to boot into Apple Hardware Test to completely bypass the user's home directory and desktop...

Hey! That's a possibility!

 

[mmmcheese]

Seems as if nobody can get down to the problem. and thats my real question, can I put pressure on apple on giving me a new unit or ripping this unit apart and replacing the internals? cause the crashes are getting rediculous

My suggestion would be to take it back one more time...let them play with it...if they fix it, great. If they don't fix it, ask for the store manager and don't leave the store until you get a reasonable answer (replacing parts until they fix it is reasonable...a replacement is probably not that reasonable since it's not likely the entire machine that is causing problems).

Whatever you do, don't scream and yell and make a scene. Most people are reasonable and willing to help you if you're polite and treat them with the same respect you expect from others. Making a scene will just make them not want to do anything for you.

Hopefully this will get you somewhere. If it doesn't, then call Apple's customer relations and file an official complaint about the store/manager/Apple.

I hope everything works out for you.