Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

If you can speak with them again, ask them where do we send them the complaints? If they don't trust in this forum reports, at least let us know where send them. They are a few actions around the world but if they give us a email or contact, we can send complaints all together. It sounds as a cheap excuse to refuse all our problems.

260 euro for a reball is pretty steep.

Since I am in Europe currently, I found a company in Germany that will fix this by replacing the chip for 170 euros, and they'll give me a 12 month guarantee. I will take it as I need this fixed. I will post my experiance and updates here...

Does anyone know when they replace the logic board they wipe out the hard drive? 

Bodhitawa wrote:

 

If you can speak with them again, ask them where do we send them the complaints? If they don't trust in this forum reports, at least let us know where send them. They are a few actions around the world but if they give us a email or contact, we can send complaints all together. It sounds as a cheap excuse to refuse all our problems.

The only way I can think of to send a complaint, is going to the apple store, let them observe and record the issue. It is the best way, that's what I did. They came with a quotation, and then I asked them not to go on with the repair, because I couldn't afford multiple Apple repairs, since the one they proposed is not durable (logic board replacement).

We can only hope to have mainstream media to cover the issue, and maibe something will change.

<Edited By Host>

hi james, i am also in germany (berlin). can you send me the contact to the company? it sounds very good. thanks.

James Moyna wrote:

Well, I believe that when one is talking about a design/manufacturing flaw, a single computer failure deserves the attention of one of the world's richest corporations - a corportaion that has put your laptop purchase money into their bank account (and we all know that Apple has very large capital reserves). Apple's reaction seems like pure "bottomline" or "please the shareholders" thinking to me.

Years ago, when it was faultering, Apple was saved by the loyalty of its professional users ...one purchase at a time.

Here you go http://www.widcom.de/ , I hope it works out for both of us... I actually contacted several companies around Europe (two in Germany). I opted for another one at first, they quoted me 179,- at first and then raised it to 279,- via email, so I canceled it with them and ended up getting response and a quote from widcom @ 170.

Have your model nr., serial, order nr., graphic chip type/brand ready, they will ask you all of that.

My syster lives in Nurnberg, she'll take it in and make sure all is working at pickup so I do not have to mess around with postage/paracel.

I hope this helps.

I'm interested in collating all the UK cases. Anyone willing to share?

Hello all.

Going through the back and forth with Apple currently over my late 2011 MBP.

I would like to assemble names and case numbers of all those affected in the UK.

In my personal case, I'm claiming that I'm covered under Sales of Good Act 1979 [which is one of the many EU + UK pieces of legislation that covers you irregardless of your Apple warranty], in specific, what it says about "conforming to contract" and being "of satisfactory quality".

The fact that the latest Apple recall on the 2011 iMac's with faulty AMD chips was extended for computers up to 3 years old in my eyes sets the precedent for what is deemed an "acceptable lifespan" for a computer of this value and marketed in such a way.

As it's past 6 months since purchase, it's down to me as the consumer to prove that it is defective. The hardest part is proving that the latent defect was there, but not apparent, when I bought the computer.

It is becoming clear that there is a known "pattern of failures" in the 6550/6750 GPUs which indicates a class issue here, which is a different kettle of fish.

I would argue that because of the history of this specific known issue with this model's predecessors that the failure of hardware is due to Apple being negligent in respect of design, manufacture and marketing.

I had the same issue, i got it fixed with a cpu replacement which costed 160 pounds on ebay. Works like a charm now.

To my knowledge, replacing the logic board will not require formatting and wiping your drive.  However, when you send in your machine for repairs, they do not guarantee that they won't format/wipe your drive.

Long-story-short: Everyone should call AppleCare about this, cause you might get lucky. I called and complained and now they're fixing mine for free!

Here's the long version in case anyone is interested:

I had zero luck at the Apple Store. They said a Depot Repair would be $300+.

So I called AppleCare. I complained long enough to the first support person (didn't pay the $19 to talk to a tech) that he got fed up and transferred me to his supervisor. He finally transferred me when I said I wanted them to do the repair for free.

The supervisor was very condescending at first and did not care about this thread or any of the documented cases online. His direct quote: "We make millions of products, so some of them are going to inevitably fail." Even when I tried to explain to him the difference between some products failing across all their product lines vs. a specific part in a specific model failing for 1,000's of people who own that model, he still deflected the question and didn't care.

It was only after he realized that my AppleCare expired 8 days ago that he became sympathetic to the problem. He said they would make an exception because my coverage expired so recently. After this he was extremely nice and helpful. It was an interesting switch since he was so condescending and combative before. I'm sure Apple trains them to do that since he seemed like a good guy in the end.

Anyway It's worth a shot to give them a call. They might not help you out, but then again, they might! Sometimes it doesn't hurt to be a little pushy.

they should see how to put the aggregate demand, for one you can count on it. Greetings to all affected

Since reading through this whole epic of a thread I have contacted all my 2011 customers, gave them this discussion link, asked them to fill the feedback form and to ensure their receipts for the GPU work done are kept safe for a future possible refund.

As for myself with a late 2011 17", though with far better temperatures now I re-pasted my own heatsinks if my 5770 does fail I am much more inclined to send mine away for a new replacement GPU soldered onto my logic board and keep the receipt for any future claim. After reading these 4,000 replies to say I'm not confident about the quality of Apple's logic board swaps is a complete and utter understatement, as I intend to keep it for the next 3/4 years now I've maxed the memory to 16gb and upgraded to an SSD and with these faults rectified are great machines, especially who prefers the very last generation of 17 inch model MBP.

As I've said previously, consumer groups such as Which in the uk should also be notified of this issue as it seems to me the uk users have a pretty good argument to refer to the sale of goods act in future in either demanding replacement logic boards or reimbursed for work done on this very hot running, poorly pasted and defectively soldered MacBook Pro Sandy Bridge CPU/AMD GPU generation of notebooks.