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HELP:Applecare void because too many dents?

pianodude123 said:
I'm very sorry if you all think this laptop was treated poorly. No, it was not abused or neglected. It was taken every day with me back and forth to work, in a PELICAN CASE, the strongest in the world...
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Yes, it was.

I lugged my 1.5 ghz g4 15" back and forth about a mile one way twice a day - sometimes on a bus crammed with mentally deficient undergrads, sometimes on foot. sometimes in a brenthaven sleeve, sometimes just tossed in the lightly padded compartment of an ebags messenger. Usually with 2-4 O'reilly nutshell handbook sized books stuffed in the bag, too.

No dents, no scratches. Feb 2005 until three weeks ago when it was replaced with a SR 2.4.

Treat it like it was worth what you paid for it.

If you say the damage was done by someone else, then you have no idea what idiotic thing they did to bang it up like that. I've taken the albooks apart - the casing is surprisingly strong and flexible. It took much more force to dent it with a screwdriver and hammer than I'd have thought.

Much more.

A powerbook that looks like that got beat on hard at least once, and once is all it takes (to crash the heads).
 
I have to agree with the folks here who say this is beyond a small cosmetic issue. It takes a good amount of force to produce dents. That is not normal wear and tear.

All the same I hope that you find a way to get it fixed cheaply.
 
yeah, how DID those dents come about thru "normal" wear and tear?
let's see, using the computer? no. transporting the computer in a bag/case? no. Dents=high g-forces on the computer and then your HD dies.... what a coincidence; so considering APP doesn't cover damage caused by misuse, they are right, you are wrong.
 
your powerbook looks like its been dropped a few times. To be honest if I was an apple rep I wouldn't service your machine either.
 
Unless you carry your labtop around in an immaculate container all the time, chances are you're going to eventually run into some cosmetic denting. I will say this, I had a plastic dell for god knows how long and it never showed these signs of 'wear.' convenient that aluminum reveals all so well huh?

applecare is clearly just about making money. i have a dent on my computer that occurred maybe 2 months after i got my first logic board replaced. my computer went on working well for another year. but now my logic board has to be replaced AGAIN and apple won't cover it because of the dent. So I guess I'm supposed to believe that my dent had delayed consequences 12 months down the line and is the cause of my logic board failure; i'm sure the refurb logic board they replaced my original one with isn't the problem, nope apparently it's my time-bomb dent.

and the best part is that if you want to regain usage of your warranty, you have to have apple fix the casing at a mere $1000. hell I could do it myself for $250 but then my serial number wouldn't be the same and apple would know that i cheated on them because i'm a filthy mac slut who doesn't deserve applecare. i bet at least 1/3 of the people who buy applecare experience some sort of cosmetic damage that invalidates the warranty.
 
But the dents are likely not bad enough to kill the drive.

The drives these days suck, and seem to be as big a consumable as the batteries. But at least they aren't noisy. ;p

It is more likely the drive just died than got snuffed during a drop.

---

Note: Ask for a refund on Apple Care (you are allowed to cash it out), and replace the drive.
 
Sun Baked said:
But the dents are likely not bad enough to kill the drive. It is more likely the drive just died than got snuffed during a drop.
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Huh? :confused:

Other than heat, dropping a running drive is one of the sure ways to kill a drive. That is why Hitachi is licensing technology from Texas Instruments that detects drops and shuts the drive down before it hits the ground.
 
majordude said:
Huh? :confused:

Other than heat, dropping a running drive is one of the sure ways to kill a drive. That is why Hitachi is licensing technology from Texas Instruments that detects drops and shuts the drive down before it hits the ground.
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While I agree that dropping a normal laptop while it is running wouldn't be good for a hard drive, doesn't Apple have the Sudden Motion Sensor that stops the hard drive if it detects a "sudden motion" like a drop which is suppose to essentially preserve the drive?
 
Yes it does, don't know how long they've been included but if it's dropped while in operation the drive will "prepare itself" for the collision. That definitely includes stopping spinning, don't know if there's anything else that goes into that preparation.
 
Looking at your PowerBook I think its perfectly acceptable for them to deny you a repair.

I take my PowerBook with me almost every day, in a regular sponge case, and it's immaculate. 2.5 years old.

Those dents probably did factor in the dying of your harddrive.

For now, use one of your many other Macs and accept that you'll have to replace the harddrive yourself!
 
polycat33 said:
Yes it does, don't know how long they've been included but if it's dropped while in operation the drive will "prepare itself" for the collision. That definitely includes stopping spinning, don't know if there's anything else that goes into that preparation.
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Since the early 2005 model. I think it was February 05.

I waited for this myself.
 
emac82 said:
While I agree that dropping a normal laptop while it is running wouldn't be good for a hard drive, doesn't Apple have the Sudden Motion Sensor that stops the hard drive if it detects a "sudden motion" like a drop which is suppose to essentially preserve the drive?
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That machine has the SMS.

And the machine doesn't look like it was dropped.

Since these drives do die all the time, it is more likely thermal death than a scuff, scratch, or small dent that some nerd points to and says abuse he dropped it.
 
I could be wrong, but from what I've heard, when you mail anything to Apple, they are more concerned with fixing the problem and shipping it back out quickly than worrying too much about whether a couple of small dents were the cause of the damage.

I've heard some pretty incredible stories about the lengths to which Apple went to do hardware repairs. Both sides of this thread have valid points, but in the ends they are all irrelevant. The only opinion that really matters is Apple's.

You could try to get the Manager of the store to fix the problem, and if that doesn't work, send it in to Apple and hope for the best. There's really nothing else you can do.

As much as it might suck that Applecare is sort of a rip off, the good news is that you could buy a replacement drive at a very reasonable cost and fix it yourself.
 
I sucked it up, bought a new hard drive, and put it in the computer. I wanted a bigger hard drive anyway, and now it works, so I'm happy, although I still think they could have replaced it if they wanted to.
 
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