Appears that a contract from Apple is NOT worth the Paper it is written on!

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Gordon Cook <cook () cookreport com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 22:14:12 -0500
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Appears that a contract from Apple is NOT worth the Paper it is
written on!

Apple has just thrown me an extremely arrogant curveball on Apple Care.

On May 6, 2000 I bought a cinema display and G4 Tower from PC
Connection.  Cost just over $6500 bucks.  In April of 2001 worried
about anything happening to my display, I bought directly from APPLE
rather than PC Connection an apple care agreement for $250 not
including sales tax.  I had a lengthy discussion with the sales agent
making it very clear i wanted the apple care to cover the cinema
display which in July 2000 had gone south and was replaced by apple
under the one year warranty.

Agent:  did you by a CPU at the time you bought the display?  Me:
Yes.  The apple care plan will have to be taken on the CPU you bought
with the display on may 6 2000.  it cannot cover your cube (purchased
january 2001) which you say is now your primary day to day working
machine.  Me - OK.

Apple then issues me apple care agreement number 270000037826
covering QUOTE GSeries servers + Displ 3yr AC product serial number
XBO122ETJJ2 UNQUOTE

Fast forward to late October 2002.  I am in Nepal.  my wife cannot
make the display go on.  I  tell her  i have apple care on the
display and the tower.  Call them and they will talk you through the
problem.  She did. Five minutes later the display is working fine but
when i get home there is a $50 bill from Apple for service on an item
not covered by apple care.  I called Apple and complained.  They said
the Apple care aggreement had been improperly filled out by the sales
agent who had not listed the serial number of the display.  They
would not give coverage until i dug the invoice for the display out
of my tax records and faxed it to them.

When i explained to the Applecare rep that the display i had now was
not the display on the may 6 2000 invoice because it was defective
and had been replaced, the reply was ...oh. we cant cover it because
it is NOT the display that was purchased with the CPU.  when I
suggested that this was not my fault they said doesn't matter.  you
have no coverage on the display.  The apple care case incident on
this brouhaha is 15983747.

Several hours and several more irate phone calls later I got a
supervisor named NIKI who assigned a case number as an informal
agreement.  this new number is 16035959.  under this case number she
assured me that apple would agree to provide coverage on the cinema
display through May 6 2003 when the agreement should have ended.  but
we cannot do this as part of the formal contract she said.

I let the matter drop but was surprised when a few days later in the
mail I received from Apple a brand new apple care package.....with a
contract with the same  270000037826 agreement number and the same
GSeries servers  AC product serial number  XBO122ETJJ2

MISSING from this new Contract were the words " + Displ"

SO A CONTRACT from APPLE is clearly NOT worth the paper it is written
on!  If this is their position, they better give me 3 years of
coverage on the CUBE purchased late jan 2001!!  When i purchased the
apple care in May 2001 was no longer using the G4 tower, but covered
it rather than the Cube because i was told i had to to get the
display covered.  Now they tell me the display was NEVER covered!

Apple has in its data base an absurd amount of hardware  i have
purchased from them since 1986.  As a loyal long time customer I was
treated with extraordinary brazenness.  I'd much appreciate it if you
would publish this to IP in the hope that you have a reader at Apple
who will do the right thing!
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