Just adding my sob story to this thread since I'm so ****** at apple & applecare.
I bought a 15" MBP i7 / 500gb 720rpm / 8 gigs RAM a little over 2 months ago. Experienced glitches right from the start while trying to migrate from my older core duo 2 MBP. Eventually got everything migrated using migration assistant.
2 freezes / kernel panics in first week. Took it to the apple store, the 'genius' told me it was probably the migration, and to do a clean OS reinstall migrating without checking 'other files'. Did that, computer kept freezing about once a week.
Called applecare and they told me to do another OS reinstall, migrating only my data files, not my programs, and to reinstall all my programs manually. Did that, freezes still happening once a week.
Called applecare again, they told me to take it to the mac store to have a 3 day hardware diagnostic run on it. Took it in, while I was there, bought another MBP to have while mine was in the shop and return after I got mine back. I kept this replacement for almost the full 30 days allowed for a return, and had all the same programs and data migrated into it as in my original one. The temporary replacement never froze, not once. So I figured, as did some of the 'geniuses' at the store, that this would prove it's not a program / driver but hardware.
Got my original back after the diagnostic found no problem, had to again reinstall all my programs manually, migrated my data again. Returned temporary replacement. After 3 weeks, the weekly freezes started again.
Called applecare, this time saying I had jumped through enough loops and wanted a replacement. They said that was no longer an option since it's been more than 30 days and it passed the diagnostic. This is totally crazy since I had been reporting problems well before the 30 days and it now has been longer since I was trying all their fixes. If I knew this would be the case, I would have demanded a replacement from the start.
Now applecare wants me to ship my computer off to some repair center to have more diagnostics run on it, which I suspect will be the same thing as what they did at the applestore. Meaning I will have to buy another replacement, and incur the 10% restocking fee while they find nothing wrong with it again. They told me that the only way I can get a replacement is that if I can get it to freeze without any programs installed. They actually expect me to own a $2500 computer that I can't install any programs on.
I am going crazy about this, I have no idea what I can do. I'm even looking into getting a consumer protection attorney and fighting them just out of principle since it will cost me as much as just buying another machine. Does anyone have any advice on how to fight this ? All I want is a replacement for a 2.5 month old mac that freezes once or more a week.
All my programs are pretty normal stuff, MS office, parallels 6, VLC, firefox. The only non apple drivers installed is a cisco vpn driver. The crash reports always point the the kernel thread, always in a different place, nothing is consistent. I have it plugged in to a 27 inch apple cinemadisplay, apple keyboard, an external hdd branded for macs and sold at apple stores, a usb hub sold at apple stores. It usually crashes when watching videos / movies. Half the time I get the gray screen, the other half it's just a hard freeze. Sometimes there is no crash report. I have the video switching off.
Who do I need to call to get this resovled since apple care is giving me the runaround ?
