Random Shut Downs in Sydney Australia and Poor Apple Care Service!!
I am a recent Macbook convert after years of using PC( and back on dell celeron now!). I have to say I have been extremely happy with my mac until this saturday when the random shut downs began…I have a Thesis due in 2 weeks and I use my mac to work as a dj in conjunction with Scratch live (http://www.rane.com/scratch.html) and so now I’m pretty much screwed.. I went into the Apple Care centre in Broadway (Sydney) and the Tech guy had no sympathy for my position what so ever. All he said was that if I paid an extra 200+ bucks that it would get an immediate look at, otherwise I’d have to go to the back of the queue like everyone else….He said it real smug too like I was the scum of the Earth for wanting a quick fix for my situation. I told them if it was any other time of the year that I wouldn’t be so stressed about it but at the moment its a border line life and death situation….Anyways I think the best solution would be if they just replaced it but kept my HDD and Ram..convincing apple of that will be another goliath task though….
August 28th, 2006 at 7:39 am
My experience has been similar to yours. I’m a recent Mac convert and was overjoyed with my Macbook when I got it. To my mind it’s ideal. After two months of use (this seems to be a common time frame from comments I’ve seen) I started getting the random shutdown thing. It seems to happen when the machine is warming up – when first coming on after either a sleep or a complete cold off state. Once the machine’s been up for a while, it’ll run all day. This is not just an annoyance – I’ve had data lost and corrupted through inopportune shutdowns.
I live just outside London, UK, so on Saturday I schlepped into town to the Apple Store in Central London, on Regent Street. I queued for 20 minutes to see someone and was told I needed to see the “geniuses” upstairs. OK, so I go upstairs, queue again, and then am told that they were all booked up and could not see me that day – this was about 13:00. I asked whether I could just leave the Mac: they wouldn’t let me. They just weren’t interested. Procedure comes before customer satisfaction, it seems. That sucks.
I’ve tried to make an appointment to see one of these “geniuses” via their online “concierge” service. Every time I try it says they’re too busy to take appointments. I’ve tried day and night, even at 01:30 in the morning I get this message. That sucks.
I do like the Macbook, but this service stinks. I’m going to try and make an appointment by phone tomorrow (its a publc holiday today in the UK) and see if they’ll deign to look at the Macbook. I’d desperately love to just get it swapped out, but I guess it’s going to be a lengthy repair job. That sucks.
August 28th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Mine’s a week 18 MacBook. It started shutting down randomly after a month of trouble-free use. Have tried all the software workarounds to this random shutoff phenomenom– nothing works. 2 days ago, I bit the bullet and opened up the top case of my MacBook. I insulated the center post of the top case which makes contact with the logicboard chassis and fan. I also disconnected and reconnected the connection of the heatsink temp probes.
NO RSDs for almost 3 days now! Do such tinkering at your own risk!!!
August 28th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
I’m having the same problem with Random Shutdown.
I use MacMedic at Mosman. These guys are great. Give them a call. They had my logic replaced but like a lot of others, this only fixed the problem for a couple of days. It’s actually the second logic board that I’ve had replaced.
This looks a big problem for Apple. It’s all over the web.