Q: New iMac 27inch screen flickering/tearing/shutoff

spurv2 wrote:
5 minutes ago I was very surprised to get a call from Apple. They told me the shipping date of my replacement iMac is now 21st of january, not the 14th as promised. When I asked why the delay, she told me it was due to the iMacs being "very popular".
I tried telling her, the last time I spoke to Apple they told me my replacement iMac had high priority and was going to be shipped within a couple of days. This was december 30th!

I'm suprised to get a call from Apple, instead of an email, like usual. In fact, I have no written info about this replacement iMac whatsoever. I mean ... my first order was confirmed, and I could see the order in my Apple account, and also see what the status was.
Call me paranoid, but I kinda get the feeling that they might try to avoid written confirmation about these iLemons...

This is my first post here - I'm simply reporting that I ordered a 27 inch iMac roughly a week ago from the Apple Store in Canada and was told that the shipping date was the 21st of January. Interesting that the date is the same as your shipment date.

I admit I had no idea about this display issue when I ordered, but only came across this yesterday. It's freaked me out and I've considered canceling my order. I still might, but now I'm thinking that I might just take delivery of it and hope I get a good one, but be prepared to send it back should I get a lemon.

If I do let this order stand, I'll let the forum know if it's a good model. I'm hoping that the reason for the delay in shipping is that Apple is working feverishly on a solution and will be able to ship a good product by then! Well, I can hope anyway

sparkie1984 wrote:
Send an email to steve jobs department mate, their taking the mickey with how their treating people!! Let's all return our iMacs and leave them with a pile of ilemons!!

Maybe steve could sell them as strobe lights to a disco or there's always door stops I suppose.....

iStrobe... Haha, good one! So I have good news everyone. My replacement iMac shipment got through customs in half a day, despite the "clearance delay" reported by FedEx. Perhaps I'll be getting the replacement next Tuesday after all!

So you can choose to have the istrobe, istop, irumble (hard disk), badisight (dead pixels), ilemon, isoiled (screen yellow), icracked

which will you choose???

I see a lot of people stopped posting here. Either they got fed up, got a refund or they got a good replacement or repair.

Ordered i7 iMac but not received yet. Shipping this week. After reading these posts as well as news items on the problems with the 27" iMac models I called Apple and asked if they could tell me whether the most recent shipments have had the problem resolved.

The 1st customer service person claimed to not know that there has been a problem with the 27" iMacs. I told her straight up she is either lying or totally aloof, neither of which bodes well for impressing on me the idea that I was talking to someone who gave a crap about their job or had half a clue what they were doing. It is quite unbelievable that anyone at Apple would not know about this, since it has made international news.

I was passed on to tech service. I got the same run-around there. I explained that due to the news I had been reading I was concerned that I would receive a lemon and was looking for either assurance that I could resolve such and issue or that the problem has been addressed and new shipments are fine.

It was like pulling teeth to get the tech person to not give me politician like double speak. The result of the call is this: Apple is aware of the problem, the tech said they didn't know if I would receive a lemon or not, but that if I did I had 14 days to return it for a refund or replacement and that I would not be left hanging.

I'll post again after using it for a few days..

hey all, just wanted to add that along with a flickering/blacking out screen and yellow tinge, my 27" imac i7 also has excess backlight bleeding at the bottom right. Getting pretty fed up with this. I'm probably going to take it to the private repair shop and have it looked at within a week.

here's a pic

Yea I mean at this point in time, I would either get if fixed or a refund. I'm taking one chance at an exchange. It'll be here next week. I thought about calling the store I bought it from and telling them to pick my replacement from the latest batch Week 02, but I think it's the luck of the draw. I just want my new one to be ok & be done with this nonsense, so I can enjoy the computer I paid over a thousand dollars for.

The very same thing happened to me today: The Apple representative phoned me to say the delivery of my replacement 27" will be a week later (should have been shipped today).

I take it as a good sign as Dino said: Maybe we will be pioneers of a New Mac Age. The ones that did not flash or flicker...

Day two after my new screen and LCD cable and still all good. I'll report back from time to time to hopefully confirm it is the fix.
For anyone with the flickers I'd recommend you get AppleCare under warranty to replace the following part numbers (on the 27"): Part No. 661-5312-Display, LCD Panel, 27 inch; Part No. 922-9161-Cable, V-Sync, LCD. At the moment I feel like I've at last got the iMac I should have had 2 months ago.

Slippers wrote:
Previously in this thread, a long long time ago, it was mentioned that the outer boxes had no "This Side Up" or "Handle with Care" labels. Can you describe how yours looked? Thanks.

Hi Slippers,

I had my iMac removed from the outer box before I left the store, but as far as I recall there were no warning labels of any kind on the outer box - which leaves plenty of scope for "uncaring transportation employees" to toss them around.

I'm telling you tailturtle! That may be a good sign. I know your anxious, but maybe they decided to not send you another iLemon. Good Things come to those who wait. As much as I'm counting the days until I get my replacement, I'm really hoping that B&H tell me they ran out of stock & they have to wait for the next shipment from Apple. That would be a blessing in disguise.

Paul_31, I think your going to be fine! Everyone else that got your fix are no longer on here & are enjoying their gorgeous iMac.

Shocking screen you got there!
Get rid as quickly as poss!!!!!!
I've had 21.5 imac "ati" terrible yellow patches all over (Refund)
Then the 27" core 2 duo, yellow + bits of dirt under lcd panel (refund)
Now I'm the proud owner of a flickering, blacking out Quad core i5 model
(permanent refund pending). I think three is enough!
How anyone can get through 8+ of them is beyond me.
You see I want an Imac.
It does exactly what I want.
It looks exactly how I want a computer to look.
The external build quality is almost perfection.
The OS is great.
"But the **** thing doesn't work properly"
And I can't believe that after all this time there has been no resolution to the matter.
The next time I hear an Apple rep say "I've not heard of any problems with the Imac" I'm going to Punch him where it can be quite painfull!!!!!!!!

Mac+PC= wrote:
Ordered i7 iMac but not received yet. Shipping this week. After reading these posts as well as news items on the problems with the 27" iMac models I called Apple and asked if they could tell me whether the most recent shipments have had the problem resolved.

The 1st customer service person claimed to not know that there has been a problem with the 27" iMacs. I told her straight up she is either lying or totally aloof, neither of which bodes well for impressing on me the idea that I was talking to someone who gave a crap about their job or had half a clue what they were doing. It is quite unbelievable that anyone at Apple would not know about this, since it has made international news.

Just want to say that I had the same experience when calling customer service to clarify return/refund policies with respect to BTO machines. She also claimed not to know and I was unconvinced.

However, I would encourage you not to condemn customer service staff working at a call center - she not doubt has to adhere to guidelines for dealing with these types of inquiries, and is just keeping her job. Maybe be enraged at Apple, but not some making 30K a year to answer calls. For me, I was annoyed at the claim she didn't know, but quite understand that for Apple to allow sales staff to speak to the possibility of defects (some X percentage of machines in this case) is not such a good approach to sales. This is a hard truth to digest with respect to a company I love and hold to a high standard - and it is a very difficult balancing act for Apple, which cares very much for customer satisfaction, not just short term but long term as well. This is why they are the #1 global brand - because they take a marathon approach to customer satisfaction, not a sprint.

One can only hope.

I hate to tell you this, but right around the start of december, I first contemplated buying the new iMac. Even at that time I was well aware of the problems. When I ordered, on december 8th, I was thinking the exact same thing you are thinking right now: "By the time I get mine, they've had plenty of time to iron things out, so my iMac must be ok!". But ... as it turned out ... it wasn't. I keep hearing people, who just ordered, justifying their decision using more or less the same words. Tragic.

I've had a similar experience with my MacBook Pro. When starting to type, first character was missing. There was some guy who was also collecting "evidence" on his website, but no avail; Apple was deadsilent, and it took like what seemed forever to issue a software update, which fixed the problem for most people - unlike the recent firmware update. So ... it seems its just Apples way of doing business. Saying nothing, acknowledging nothing.