MBP 17” A1189 battery fail – please help access Apple Customer Support?

RE: <Personal Information Edited By Host>

Seems the censorship here abouts dissallows holding brand-damaging Apple employees to account, by editing out "Personal Information" references. Thankfully, the good people at MacRumours are not so censorious. Since the Apple Host censor also removed my specific request for your help, perhaps by accident, here is how Steps 4-7 read when redacted only for "Personal Information" references.

[4] Wed 28 May – My ‘Apple UK Complaint’ is tasked to Apple employee ‘FirstName Surname, Executive Relations EMEIA’.

[5] Thu 29 May – Research reveals that Ms Surname’s reputation precedes her, like a bad smell: “FirstName Surname is the most unhelpful person at Apple. I feel your pain. She is absolutely terrible to deal with.”; “That FirstName Surname is right cow.”; “Surname has a reputation that is damaging the brand.” [direct quotes from but three MacRumours users] ➖😮

[6] Fri 06 Jun – After 12 emails over 9 days, our complaint resolution progress STILL EQUALS ZERO – I’ve merely accumulated bucket loads of FAIL re Ms Surname’s customer support incompetencies. [details omitted for concision, available on request] ➖😠

[7] Sat 07 Jun – ‘Help Me, Please?’ shout out goes out to the Apple Support community. ➕😀

Could you please let me know the name and email address of Apple Inc. customer support specialists or managers with whom you’ve recently had positive experiences – ie: those who do still provide a customer-focussed, helpful, understanding, and compassionate customer support experience, like they all used to do back in 2011, and in earlier decades.

Many thanks in advance for your assistance,

Dalinian

[Loyal 6-Macs-over-21-years Apple customer, pining for the days of perfect Apple Customer Support]

Hi Melophage, and thanks for your reply.

"Was that particular A1189 battery purchased between February 2006 and April 2007? If it wasn’t, then it did not have the design flaw which the MacBook and MacBook Pro Battery Update 1.2 addressed." ~ Melophage

AFAIK, there were actually two Apple Exchange and Repair Extension Programs for the free-of-charge replacement of design-flawed Apple A1189 batteries which exhibit their dead-&-bloated failure mode:

“There were two [Apple A1189] battery replacement programs, one based on serial numbers, one based on performance characteristics. The latter program includes as a symptom the statement, +"Battery pack is visibly deformed."+” (source)

My educated guesstimate is that the dates to which you refer map to particular A1189 battery serial numbers – but I haven't been able to find an online Apple Battery Serial Number Lookup facility to decode my second dead-&-bloated A1189 battery's serial number – W01131LSZ9DA – into a date-of-manufacture. Do you know the URL of such an online Apple Battery Serial Number Lookup facility?

Given as how an Apple Genius Bar employee in the Apple Store, Regent Street, London, UK gave me the current dead-&-bloated A1189 battery in mid-2011, I expect it was most likely manufactured after April 2007. Yet it seems to me that the whole 'dates / serial numbers' issue is moot anyway, since the Apple Exchange and Repair Extension Program I referenced – MacBook and MacBook Pro Battery Update 1.2 – is “based on performance characteristics. The latter program includes as a symptom the statement, +"Battery pack is visibly deformed."+”.

It also seems self-evident to me that natural justice demands logical, moral, ethical, and temporal consistency – if the circumstances that generate a just solutjon recur, then so too must the just solution recur. To take a hyperbolic analogy, if in 2011 first degree murder carries a mandatory life imprisonment sentence, then to allow a convicted first degree murderer to get off scot free in 2014 is most obviously a gross injustice.

So when the identical circumstances that generated a just solution from Apple in 2011 did indeed recur in 2014, then it seems to me to be self-evident that the self-same just solution from Apple ought to recur – wouldn’t you agree? But – perhaps because such a honourable man as Steve Jobs is no longer holding Apple to high ethical standards – the utter antithesis of the just solution from 2011-Apple is actually occurring: hence 2014-Apple – INJUSTICE! In the here and now, Apple is attempting to behave dishonourably and unjustly. Instead of doing ‘Right’ in ensuring that the costs of failed, design-flawed, Apple A1189 batteries are carried by Apple and NOT by Apple’s customers, Apple seems to be determined to do ‘Wrong’, by enriching itself out of each such Apple-generated malfunction through attempting to lay the cost of damage done on to its customer, by selling to the victim of another Apple A1189 dead-&-bloated battery failure the parts needed to repair their Apple-damaged computer.

Of course, the even more honourable and sensible thing to have done was suggested by a shop floor Apple Genius Bar employee in Regent Street in 2011 – if you know the Apple A1189 battery has a dead-&-bloated design flaw in 2009, then get your battery designer engineers to analyse what’s going wrong, then redesign the battery’s internals to eliminate the design flaw, in order to be able to replace old, dead-&-bloated, design-flawed A1189 batteries with new, fresh-&-vital, design-perfect A1189-B batteries. Since Apple seems to have chosen instead to go on manufacturing, distributing, selling, and giving away free-of-change replacements of the original design-flawed A1189 battery, then it hardly takes a legal genius to surmise as how the logic of natural justice demands Apple’s honourable, performance based, free-of-change A1189 replacement program needs must run in perpetuity.

So, do you have the name and email address of Apple Inc. customer support specialists or managers with whom you’ve recently had positive experiences? – ie: those who do still provide a customer-focussed, helpful, understanding, and compassionate customer support experience, like they all used to do back in 2011, and in earlier decades. If so, I'd be very grateful if you could send them to me, please.

Thanks in advance,

Dalinian

Hi Melophage,

Thanks for the pointer towards coconutBattery – as and when I have my MacBook Pro up-&-running again, I’ll certainly be using it to track battery performance over time.

Thanks also for the advice regarding the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended) – I’ll be researching it for a second go at seeking a just solution from Apple Inc.

“If you reread neuroanatomist’s posting there, you’ll see that he provides a link to the latter program. As it happens, that’s precisely the same link which you’d linked to in your first post — the one cloned at archive.org — and that link says nothing about a recall based on performance characteristics. It only states that the affected batteries were those which “were purchased between February 2006 and April 2007” and have at least one of the four listed symptoms. If your battery wasn’t purchased between February 2006 and April 2007, then the presence of any of those four symptoms are moot — the Battery Update 1.2 didn’t cover it.”

~ Melophage

On your suggestion, I have reread the terms of the ‘MacBook and MacBook Pro Battery Update 1.2’ Exchange and Repair Extension Program to which neuroanatomist’s posting alerted me, to see if I’d been mistaken. My provisional conclusion is that we may need to agree to disagree on the interpretation of the battery manufacture dates contained therein.

“This battery update should be run on all MacBook and MacBook Pro computers and extra batteries that were purchased between February 2006 and April 2007. If, after you have installed the battery update, your battery has any of the symptoms listed below, please make a reservation to bring your computer with its battery to your local Apple Retail Store.”

~ Apple Inc., from the ‘MacBook and MacBook Pro Battery Update 1.2’ Exchange and Repair Extension Program [plus my emphasis -- Dalinian]

My reading is that the scope of Apple’s free-of-change A1189 battery replacement program encompasses:

(a) “all MacBook and MacBook Pro computers”

...plus...

(b) “extra batteries that were purchased between February 2006 and April 2007”

...plus...

(c) any and every MacBook and MacBook Pro battery whereby its performance characteristics match “any of the symptoms listed below”

Since there is no mention of serial number ranges of suspect A1189 batteries in this Apple Exchange and Repair Extension Program, whereas there are four performance-based inclusion criteria (culminating in “Battery pack is visibly deformed”), then it seems fair to conclude that this is indeed the “one based on performance characteristics” to which neuroanatomist refers. While the extra battery purchasing date range therein may have reflected Apple’s best estimate at the time of writing this Exchange and Repair Extension Program as to the incept dates of design-flawed A1189 batteries, when dead-&-bloated A1189 batteries start showing up that were made after April 2007, that only goes to prove that the initially specified extra battery purchasing date range was too restrictive. IMHO it does NOT mean that such dead-&-bloated A1189 batteries made after April 2007 should NOT be replaced free-of-change under the scope of this Exchange and Repair Extension Program.

Since there may also be an issue of ‘hicks from the sticks’ at play here too, I’ve booked a Genius Bar reservation at the Regent Street Apple Store in central London for next Sunday (the earliest bookable appointment). Given as how I was given a free-of-change replacement A1189 battery there in 2011 after showing them my factory-fitted A1189 in its dead-&-bloated death throes, I’ll feel super confident in arguing for the justice of being given a free-of-change replacement battery there in 2014 in Identical Circumstances.

Plus, I’ll have research printouts to back up the legal, logical, moral, ethical, and temporal justice of the reasonable request I’m making, and possibly a small claims court procedure up my sleeve. What’s so annoying is that I’m feeling obliged to put all this extra effort in in 2014, simply in order to get Apple to replicate the good customer support service that we could afford to take for granted in 2011, back when good customer support service from Apple was free and easy to access.

Hi Melophage,

Firstly – thank you for taking an interest, characterised by intelligence, engagement, and useful advice. Significantly, and in marked contrast to other well-met appeals for end user solidarity assistance from 2011 and earlier, you are the ONLY person from the combined thousands of Apple cognoscenti gathered together at discussions.apple.com and forums.macrumors.com to have responded. My hunch is that other Apple loyalists realise there’s nothing they can do individually to halt the corruption of a once great innovative enterprise into just another greed-centric transnational mobster-like corporation – and trying to help somebody who is highlighting the illogical, immoral, unethical, unjust, unlawful and uncaring nature of Apple[don’t]Care Customer Lack-of-Support corporate policy opens up too many painful psychological wounds in realising their passive complicity and collusion with Yanqui corporate fascism.

Secondly, I believe you may well be correct about the deliberately narrow scope of the battery update program. However, it turns out that such nuances are completely overwhelmed by Apple’s iron fast built-in obsolescence policy – if you’ve failed to buy a replacement Mac and insist on prolonging the longevity of an older Mac, then we entirely wash our hands of you. So what if our known-to-be-faulty battery damaged your elderly computer? We’re gonna force YOU to bear the repair costs for the damage caused by OUR known-to-be-faulty battery, so why don’t you just wise up, scrap that old heap of junk, and buy a shiny new Apple MacBook Pro?

In dealing yesterday with a store manager at Apple’s flagship UK retail store, the Regent Street Apple Store, in the context of my seeking customer support, I’ve never been treated to such a display of creepy suspicion, dismissive ignorance, and naked contempt. When discussion predicated on logic, morality, and ethics made no impression whatsoever, I began raising the issue of UK statutory consumer rights and how Apple’s behaviour may well be unlawful under the Sale of Goods Act (producing a printed copy of §14 of said law) – and the store manager’s passive aggressive fury ratcheted right up to 11. Not only was she “not qualified” to discuss the UK statutory consumer rights of Apple customers in Apple’s flagship retail store, but neither was anybody else – and so followed the bog standard “see the website” fob-off attempt, and four increasingly desperate attempts to terminate our conversation forthwith. I made sure she knew she was responsible for fully completing the utter alienation of a 6-macs-over-21-years Apple loyalist – and that, by her contemptuous policy pushing inflexibility, she was costing Apple Inc. ~£18,000 in lost future Mac-buying revenue from me. And yet, with no hint of embarrassment or shame at such appallingly unforgivable anti-customer lack-of-support, she just couldn’t wait to be rid of me.

Well, it’s three strikes and you’re out, and yesterday’s dreadful, god-awful performance was STRIKE THREE in as many weeks from three separate Apple employees. If Apple insists on designing and operating illogical, immoral, unethical, unjust, unlawful and uncaring anti-customer lack-of-support policies, then AFAIAC they have demonstrably completed a sufficient proportion of the transition from a once great innovative enterprise into just another greed-centric transnational mobster-like corporation to flip me from being an Apple loyalist in to becoming an anti-Apple antagonist.

I’ve ordered a less expensive non-Apple replacement battery (inc. 1 year rolling warranty) and a second-hand power adapter from TheBookYard.com, and I may be seeking to recover these repair cost from Apple through legal action, either via a Trading Standards authority case or via the Small Claims Court. Plus, of course, I’ll never spend another penny on Apple junk, and I’ll be advising others to boycott this nasty mobster corporation, too. In the course of my research, it turns out Apple are guilty of far worse corporate sins than the wrongs they perpetrate upon the owners of elderly Macs, and entire websites are dedicated to aiding victims of Apple’s Yanqui corporate fascism.

Apple Inc. have been given enough rope, and they’ve chosen to hang – rather than to live and act with honour, integrity, and justice; so from this moment on, Apple are dead to me. My research has already begun in to what will be available when I’ve saved up enough for a new computer, and a touch screen convertible notebook/tablet PC running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is looking very tasty indeed.

Hi Melophage,

Happy, Happy Day! With only the opposite of help from Apple Inc., and in reality thanks to the assistance and encouragement of my BFF IRL and your good self, my grand old MacBook Pro Kallisti has risen from Hades once again, and sprung back to life – and this reply is coming at you from her very own keyboard and net connection.

My non-Apple replacement battery and a second-hand power adapter from TheBookYard.com in Liverpool arrived on Tuesday, and with the swapping in of an unblown 3A fuse, all is as well again as it was before Apple’s design-flawed A1189 battery killed Kallisti for the second time.

What I’ve neglected to mention so far is that in early 2014, the screen began to fail intermittently, then with increasing frequency, until only via a DVI-HTML cable to my 50-inch TV could I see what I was doing at all. Yesterday the screen was working again initially, but only for a couple of hours, before failing to black again.

Seems this is yet another well-known and well-documented fault with all the MacBook Pros that use the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor – see, eg: Apple’s (also prematurely terminated) ‘MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues’ » http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2377 . I’ve a shed load of reading up to do on this issue from all over the web, including what appear to be some possible DIY fixes. I’ll most likely not waste any more time or energy on expecting Apple to take any responsibility for yet another well-known and well-documented fault with their MacBook Pro, since I find their naked contempt policy for Mac owners who fail to buy a shiny new Mac when the old one breaks down to be utterly revolting (not to mention environmentally unethical and unnecessarily destructive).

Re: you yourself being of the Yanqui petite bourgeois persuasion – on the two occasions I’ve been fortunate enough to visit the USA, I’ve been genuinely impressed by the admirable attributes of the Americans I’ve met and stayed with: heartwarmingly generous with their time and attention, welcoming with an effusive hospitality, helpful, friendly, and compassionate. Yet there’s a world of difference between the esteem in which I can hold individual Americans, and the contempt in which I can hold the ruling class social institutions of any country, including especially the USA and my own, the UK: greed-centric corporations, brutally repressive police forces, mass-killing-focussed foreign policy initiatives, etc., &c. Rest assured, from what little I know of you, you’re certainly in my highly esteemed American individuals category. 🙂

I don’t know how useful my advice was, since it wasn’t sufficient to convince the store manager at the Regent Street Apple store to provide you with a replacement battery.

I’m pretty sure nothing short of physical torture (which is obviously and repellently obnoxious) would convince that heartless, hard-nosed SoB to break with Apple’s iron cast built-in obsolescence policy – listen up and listen good: your Mac’s so old it’s ‘vintage’, so screw you, buddy – if you ain’t gonna buy a new Mac, or buy from us the parts needed to repair the damage we did to your old Mac with our known-to-be-faulty components, you can can just get the **** out of our shiny, shiny Apple Store, coz respecting your fancy-schmantzy ‘UK statutory consumer rights’ is only gonna put a dent in our bottom line, and getting to be filthy rich off of the likes of youse is what Apple’s really all about these days, capiche? I have GOT TO End This Conversation NOW! 😮 😠

There’s plenty of free web-based help and advice on reporting dodgy traders like Apple to the Trading Standards authority, and pursuing reparations from such lawbreakers through the small claims track in the civil courts. So now I’ve Kallisti back up-&-running again (albeit with a dead screen), on which to document my anti-Apple legal research, I’m taking my time to ensure I’m following due process, and relishing the irony of developing a suitable regulatory/legal punishment for Apple on the very ‘vintage’ flagship MacBook Pro which their offending policy has all but written off as obsolete. Plus, since it turns out its “Super”drive won’t eject a freshly burned DVD-R, I’ve ordered an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 32-bit DVD to do a fresh unibooting install on my 2001-design backup PC notebook, to add some non-Apple computer robustness to my resources, until such time as I’ve saved up enough for to buy a purpose-built touch screen Ubuntu 14.04 LTS notebook, such as the System76 Darter UltraTouch (» https://system76.com/laptops/model/daru4 ); and that leaves plenty of time ahead to compare the long-term customer support reputations of potential Ubuntu PC manufacturer companies, to ensure that I don’t get taken for a fool by another Apple-like mobster-type corporation. 😎

Time to begin investigating coconutBattery, I think. Many thanks again, Melophage – with zero support from fellow Mac users, I’d most likely have given up and thrown in the towel some time ago, but you’ve helped me to find the self-motivation to persist in perusing a just solution, despite my beginning this process by being sunk in the depths of an episode of severe clinical depression. I must admit, I’d no idea that contending against Yanqui corporate fascism could be so therapeutic! 😉

Having reviewed UK consumer rights legislation and consumer rights advice from the likes of the Citizen’s Advice Bureau and ‘Which?’ Consumer Rights, as well as the the Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct under the Civil Procedure Rules of the UK Ministry of Justice, I have drafted and sent a ‘Final Letter prior to Legal Action’ to Apple UK (and CC: Apple Inc.), from which:

“Since Apple UK have refused, on three occasions, to meet your repair obligations under the Sale of Goods Act, I have followed the consumer rights recommendation from ‘Which?’ et al, and effectively arranged for someone else to affect the required repair, prior to claiming compensation from Apple UK for the cost of doing this – by acquiring the necessary repair parts independently:

Independent repair parts acquisition – my ‘Order Confirmation’ email from TheBookYard.com. Total repair cost: £137.76

Repair Compensation Claim Against Apple UK: £137.76

In light of Apple UK failing to meet your repair obligations under the Sale of Goods Act, I therefore claim £137.76 from Apple UK, in compensation for the cost of independently acquiring the two repair parts (detailed above) which were required to remedy the damage done to my MacBook Pro by the failing of Apple Inc.'s known-to-be-faulty A1189 battery on Sat 24 May 2014.

[snip]

Dispute Resolution Response: Time Frame and Deadline

I expect to read Apple UK’s response to my dispute resolution proposals within 28 days, by email reply to “Tim Jones” <xxxxx@xxxxx.xxx>. Should Apple decline to offer a satisfactory reply by Saturday 19 July 2014, you may expect the two ‘Consequences In Court’ mentioned above to occur, with no further reference to you. This may increase your liability for costs.”

Will Apple UK now choose to comply with their legal obligations under the Sale of Goods Act, or the Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct? Only time (and Tim) will tell.