Do you really need Apple’s extended warranty?

Wow… I had similar problems with an HP laptop. I had the extended warranty for it, but by the third time it went out I put it in File#13 and solely went with a desktop.

You cannot say that an extended warranty is worth it when your hardware craps out like that, because the purpose of buying extended warranty is solely to NEVER use it… or at least hope so.

Doesn’t sound like you got a good deal.

First of all the laptop had an inter alia of faults from the motherboard to the battery. I wouldn’t want a faulty laptop.

Second of all you would have been covered any way by the Sales of Goods act 1979 for 6 years.
If I was you I would have asked for a refund or replacement. The warranty was unnecessary.

You actually got ripped off.

@Ramas – the sale of goods act gives you 6 months cover where the supplier has to prove the fault was NOT present at the time of manufacture, thereafter you have to prove it.

The law has now changed since I purchased in the EU everyone now has 2 years warranty.

BTW I don’t feel I have been ripped off considering the workload I place on this machine, for the first 3 years of its life I used it for 15 hours a day 7 days a week.

Don’t agree .i paid about £70 when I bought my apple I Mac for one to one as teaching at their Apple store at Lakeside in Essex .I only used It twice in the whole year as I had a accident and broke my arm and was off work for almost 6 months .Than my brother had uncurable leukemia and I had to fly abroad to see him in his final days.And to top it off my husband has stage 3 heart failure.Hence I could not attend to any more one to one sessions.I spoke to manager X at Apple Lakeside store for extension.Can you believe it she only extended it for 1 month.How heartless is that.I even told her I can show her all the hospital letters. I cannot cram 1 years one to one in 1 month.She said I wlill need to pay the extra £74 if I needed more time.Perhaps I got a bad apple.Just my luck.I am so so disappointed with APPLE LAKESIDE.

I think you are right, and buying brand new models of any computer is risky.

I have had to pension off a unibody machine because the hinge broke. The computer still works perfectly but if I continue to use it the fragile screen connections would break. Repair would cost over £400 (to replace the case lid plus display) and I doubt that it would have been covered by an AppleCare warranty. So much for unibody machines being tough! I am being very careful with my new replacement MacBook Pro. I’m annoyed about this, but it’s the first major problem I have had with Apple equipment.

@wavechange – unless you dropped the machine and as it is a unibody machine it is less than 6 years old. SOGA still applies and there is sufficient comment on the web to show that the problem may not be unique.

Perhaps you should return to the retailer and just say SOGA to them, also did you pay by credit card? If so you are probably covered there as well.

Thanks David, but I have dropped the computer and assume that I am at fault. It still works fine so I can keep it in reserve in case my new machine misbehaves. I’ve had more use out of the broken one than most laptops will achieve.

If I had not abused it I would certainly have done what you suggest.

@wavechange – home insurance then, accidental damage. Sorry been a while but just realised you may be covered there.

Thanks David. Coincidentally, a friend suggested this last night, so I will be checking to see if I am covered.

I have never been told about the SOGA 6 years cover, I was at one time told by Curry’s after I had a home cinema DVD repaired that it was a good job it was in warranty.

I kindly pointed out to them that by default I have 2 years where the vendor had to prove it wasn’t a design fault and I then had a further 4 provided I could prove it wasn’t fit for purpose or a design fault.

Needless to say they denied any such thing.

PS Yes all warranties should contain the information of your statutory rights.

One of the reasons I took out a subscription for Which? magazine was to support their work to protect consumers. A lot has been achieved over the years but little progress has been made to make shop assistants aware of their company’s obligations and also to make consumers aware that the SOGA is not a 6 year warranty.

My current view is that consumers should push for extended parts & labour warranties to be included in the price of goods, especially for products that have a poor reliability record. Obviously the retailer needs to be able to reject any claims where there is evidence that the customer has misused a product.

At present the retailer has responsibility under SOGA, but perhaps it would be better for this to fall on the manufacturer after the normal 1 year guarantee. Retailers often cease trading and with an increase in online sales, it is becoming even more difficult to get help if something goes wrong.

The contract of sale is with the retailer, not with the manufacturer, and the six-year limitation period specified by Section 5 of the Limitation Act 1980 applies to this contract. There is usually no contract between the consumer and manufacturer.

Quote Section 48B of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended). See http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/54/section/48B. The period within which you can take action under this legislation is not limited by the manufacturer’s or retailer’s warranty but by Section 5 of the Limitation Act 1980, i.e. 6 years.

Yes, Section 48A(3) assumes that the defect was present at the time of supply during the first six months, after which the consumer may need to prove, if the supplier disputes it, that the goods had a durablity defect at the time of supply in breach of Section 14(2B)(e).

I wish you the best of luck Asif and do let us know how you get on. As I have mentioned earlier I do know people who have had replacements from Apple despite having abused products.

As nfh has kindly brought to our attention, it says so
in Section 5 of the Limitation Act of 1980.

It wd seem the consumer has a rather difficult
task vis a vis the manufacturer if there’s a bone
of contention or a dispute as to liability.

No, the manufacturer has no statutory liability towards the consumer; the retailer has a liability towards the consumer because the contract for sale is between consumer and retailer, not between consumer and manufacturer. Any claim made by the consumer must therefore be against the retailer, not against the manufacturer. The retailer may then in turn claim against the manufacturer, but that’s not the consumer’s problem.

It’s tough on the consumer if the retailer goes out of business and not much better if the customer has to deal with an online retailer.

To protect against the retailer going out of business, always buy goods over £100 with a credit card so that you can claim instead against your card issuer under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. This is a statutory right, but additionally Visa and MasterCard have recently started offering comparable protection under their own voluntary schemes, even if the goods cost under £100 or are paid for with a debit card.

As to what I’d said abt manufacturer, was thinking of the
warranties independently given by them outside of the statutory
rights as to the contract of sale entered into between consumer
and retailer.

Thanks nfh. I know that paying by credit card gives protection, for example with non-delivery of goods. I wonder how it would work with a claim under the SOGA. It isn’t a possibility that I had considered.

Yes, you can claim against the card issuer under Section 75 for any breach of contract, whether under the SOGA or any other legislation.

Thank you nfh, for refreshing my memory and may you continue
to enlighten us here with expert counsel.

Doesn’t that just mean they are complying with EU law?

I have made a number of calls (about 25) to Apple telephone support and my experience has been totally different to davidinldn. I have spoken to people in Eire, Athens, India and Newcastle. I found all of them professional, competent, and really keen to help me. Some of the people in the Athens centre were prepared to talk of their life experience in Greece – very interesting.

The best technical support I have ever experienced is for Parallels. It is virtual machine software running under the Mac operating system so that you can have windoze programmes running on the Apple computer. Very useful if you must have windoze stuff on your Mac. When you phone them with a problem, their standard procedure is to take remote control of your PC and fix the problem, while you sit back and watch. You learn stuff too.

It is very interesting to read of your experiences. My only recent experiences with contacting Apple were over a laptop that was dead on arrival and to obtain a replacement for one of the ridiculously expensive adapters to connect the computer to a projector. Both were dealt with very promptly and efficiently.

I did once have a bad experience with Apple over an educational promotion that offered a free iPod Nano with a new computer. I think I was treated very poorly but I think I was speaking to a different department from the one that handles product support.

davidinldn

I forgot to say that Apple Time Machine is superb for backups. When I bought a new MacBook Pro to replace one that I had broken, I simply plugged in my external backup hard drive into the new machine after spending a couple of minutes setting up Internet access. Everything copied over, including software, and I was able to use the new computer as if it was the same machine, even though the new machine was OSX10.7 and the old one 10.5.

It’s undoubtedly better to install software properly when the hardware is different but I was in a rush before Christmas. My point is that keeping backups is so easy and could save a lot of time and money.

Hi Wavechange – I have reported how seven Apple support people responded early last year. Two of the seven were at their ease in terms of expertise, and were the only two who were immediately aware they were dealing with a multiple-cause crash. The rest were unsure and slow to diagnose. Indeed one struggled to understand anything I was describing for 22 minutes, during which he repeatedly had to consult a “senior adviser” and finally put him on the line. He in turn added little and himself pulled the plug after 15 minutes as he realised he was in deep water… The point was, I was being asked to runs tests and report back, but each new call from me was met by a stranger to my problem who had to jump onto a moving train.

As for the Time Capsule, the service agent wondered whether this had caused the iMac crash in the first place, because when we looked into it, the TC had wiped most of its stored backups and was almost empty. What nobody tells you is that once the TC reaches full capacity it does this in order to create space for the next scheduled backup.

Talking of back-ups, the other unbelievable lesson I learnt from the guys at my Apple service shop was that each of them has so little faith in the reliability of hard-drives that they back up their own computers with three, yes, three external drives!!! Why, I asked? “Because we see so many people like you coming in here desperate to recover lost data.”

The big problem with the Sale of Goods Act is that the onus is on you to provide an expert’s report that the fault was present at the time of manufacture for goods over 6 months old. Expect one year’s parts and labour guarantee, as with most retailers, but Apple is no different from other companies. The advice you have been given is wrong but you will not find many people who have successfully made a claim under the Sale of Goods Act.

You certainly cannot buy AppleCare now that the one year warranty has expired.

At this age you will probably be expected to provide evidence that the fault existed at the time of manufacture, which could be difficult and costly. Unless you bought the machine directly from Apple, you should try the retailer since negotiations should always be made with them. I have relationships who have had generous goodwill with Apple products.

It may be better to cut your losses and have the drive replaced.

The one thing I really want Which? to do is to push for the SOGA to be replaced, because although the consumer does have rights, it is far too difficult to take advantage of them.

Best of luck from another MBP user.

I suspect that it isn’t the HD that is faulty and it’s a problem with the graphics card. There is a lot of information online regarding a problem with my model and Apple have confirmed it. Getting the Apple Store to acknowledge this may be inpossible. As you say, proving a fault existed when purchasing is very difficult. Having said that I’ve now got a MBP that won’t even boot up after repair. I’d like to argue that 18 months doesn’t meet the ‘durability’ statement of the SOGA satisfactory quality criterion.

Two things;

You have two years warranty now in the EU.

Did you buy with a card? If so speak to them as they are jointly liable.

In the EU you have 2 years see – http://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/

Angela – Try letting the battery run down completely, then charge the phone and try the power button. Turning off power can work miracles with electronic gadgets.

Unless you have evidence that you have two years’ cover or have paid Apple for AppleCare then you must assume that the warranty has expired.

Your contract is with whichever company you bought the phone from – the retailer. The retailer could be Vodafone itself or from a company that sold the phone on the Vodafone network. You have rights under the Sale of Goods Act but the retailer is likely to deny this or say that you must contact Apple since the warranty has expired. That is not true and I suggest you print off something about the Sale of Goods Act to prove the point. Both Which? and Trading Standards have useful information on their websites. Be polite but positive. If you have no success, try again when a different store manager is on duty. Don’t hesitate to pick a busy time when there is the danger that new customers could be put off making purchases by overhearing that they can look forward to little support if they have a problem. The most you can expect is a free repair.

If you live near an Apple Centre you could call in and hope that you are one of the lucky ones who are given free repair/replacement outside warranty, even in cases of accidental damage. But Apple has absolutely no liability to help.

Best of luck.

“I’m hoping that the Sale and Supply of Goods Act is going to assist me in securing a repair or replacement.. Anyone know if I stand a chance?”

Not being on the legal side but based on the fact that Apple have acknowledged a manufacturing fault and that the Sale of Goods and Services act covers 6 years I would suggest that you have a fairly good chance.

Hi Pradiepkoemar – The graphics card problem affected later models than your computer. Full details are on the Apple website: https://www.apple.com/uk/support/macbookpro-videoissues/