I'm thoroughly displeased :(

[JustinW]

A few months ago, I posted a thread about my iMac and it's issues with overheating, restarting by itself (at times up to every 5 minutes), and not picking up a decent internet connection. I lived with these problems for a few months because the closest Apple store is about 50 miles away.

I finally made the trip a week ago and had them look over my iMac (which is still under warranty) and after them having it for 5 days, I was told none of the issues were happening and my computer was fine and that I NEEDED Applecare (I was told this about a dozen times).

Sure enough, I get it home and the VERY FIRST THING it does is restart over and over again. Right now, it's been on for 10 minutes and the back is already hot and the fan is blowing. I've plugged it into a few different outlets around this and a friend's house only to have the same results for both power and wifi.

What can I do? Should I DEMAND them to exchange computers? Should I write a letter to corporate? I'm just really sick of having to put up with this because I went through the same hell with my iPhone and it took me telling the guy that I would sell all my Apple products if I wasn't given a new one. (Which is something I DONT want to do, but I can't have an unprofessional computer when I try to get business done.)

Thanks guys.

 

[daze]

Were you able to see it run fine at the Apple store?

 

[oldMac]

2 Suggestions...

1) If you have a digital camera that can take short videos, take a little video of it rebooting itself

2) Call Apple Support over the phone to tell them what's happening and see if they'll authorize a return under warranty
- If it's rebooting repeatedly, they'll hear the chime over the phone, right?
- You don't always have to take it to the store for a warranty repair these days, do you?

 

[OldMike]

If you have a digital camera that can take short videos, take a little video of it rebooting itself

I was just going to recommend the same thing. It appears oldMac and OldMike think alike

From all of my dealings with Apple, their customer service has always been top notch. It sounds like you are not getting the service you deserve, or should expect. I would imagine that this is an isolated situation with the one store you are dealing with. I think a phone call would yield much better results...

 

[aprofetto]

Call Apple, ask to speak to a manager, and just keep asking to speak to a manager until eventually you reach Steve Jobs.

No, in all seriousness, I would call. Best bet is to speak with somebody, most likely a manager, and explain your situation.

 

[Hellhammer]

I was just going to recommend the same thing. It appears oldMac and OldMike think alike

From all of my dealings with Apple, their customer service has always been top notch. It sounds like you are not getting the service you deserve, or should expect. I would imagine that this is an isolated situation with the one store you are dealing with. I think a phone call would yield much better results...

It usually depends about the store. Some stores has their "own" rules with things.

I had same kinda issue with my TV. I bought it from finnish electronic store called "Veikon Kone". About 4 months after I had weird problems with it, it shutted down randomly without doing anything. I went to the store where I bought it and they said they can't do anything because it's Sony's problem. Sony's customer service sucks here in Finland so I didn't even spend my time for calling 'em because it costs like 300€ to get something fixed. Few days later I went to other Veikon Kone and there they were pleased to change and it didn't matter that I didn't bought it from their shop.

 

[Advance The Man]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

Could it be an electrical issue in your residence?

 

[zachkowalchuk]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

Could it be an electrical issue in your residence?

He said he also tried it at a friends house.

The apple store is probably too lazy to fix it. I highly doubt it though. Try calling applecare or taking it too a different apple store.

 

[Gregintosh]

My guess is they booted it up, waited 5 or 10 minutes, nothing happened, so they packed it back up and said no fault found.

Another possibility (and probably more likely if they are a proper repair center) is that they didn't even boot your computer into the OS, they just inserted a diagnostic software CD and ran a full test which revealed no problems. This was commonly done during my computer repair days while working on computers that "randomly restart", because if the computer does not shut down while doing a few hours worth of diagnostics tests and all the hardware diagnostics come back fine it means there's no problem with the computer itself (and that the problem is likely software).

What you can do in this case is back up your files, reformat the computer, and see if it happens anymore. It may very well be a damaged or malicious piece of software that is running in the background and eating up a lot of processing cycles (which is why your fans would rev up to the max) and eventually crashing the system prompting a reboot.

Perhaps booting some other operating environment from a CD for a while would also reveal the cause of the issue. If the computer can stay running for a long time (without the OS running, but something else running in its place) then it also points toward a software issue.

If the computer still crashes and reboots on its own even while you have it booting from a CD into a different environment or even after you format it, then definitely it is a hardware problem. If it happens reliably within 10-15 minutes every time, then you should be able to demonstrate it right in front of them too.

 

[jw2002]

Take your computer back to the Apple Store and insist that they examine the log files. The console.app should report the frequent restarts and might even shed light on what is causing the overheating and/or kernel panics.

 

[michael.lauden]

i had only 1 meetup with Apple and i went in there with my MacBook and left with a brand new one (granted the first one was only 16 hours old). buut i'd say make a couple phone calls. better to do that than drive another hour or two to the Apple store just to be sent home again