Stay up-to-date via RSS!

Lewi bought this MacBook (silver & black, 13-inch) in the end of October 2008 in Hong Kong for more than $11k HKD with Apple Care (2 years extra warranty) as well. Later Apple upgraded this one into MacBook Pro and kept “little white” (white MacBook) as the only MacBook.

Anyway, it was all working well and never gave us any problems until this year November 30th.

On November 30th 2009 I went to Guangzhou (the capital of Guangdong Province in China). After I arrived the hotel, I turned on the laptop, checked my Gmail, Facebook and got on iChat. Then I decided to go and have some food at the restaurant in the hotel. So I put the MacBook to sleep then put it in my bag to take it with me as they had Wi-Fi in the restaurant.

So here is the beginning of this drama.

After I ordered some food I took out the MacBook and tried to wake it up from sleep.

NO RESPONSE AT ALL.

Then I noticed that the white light was not flashing.

For a second I thought the battery was flat but right away I realised that it was impossible. I do not use battery much and I always make sure it gets charged fully and in the right way. Before I left I checked and it was absolutely full.

I felt very weird as it was working all fine just 5 mins ago so I went back to my hotel room straight away. I plugged the power adapter and attached it to the MacBook.

The LED on the adapter connection did not really light up. Usually, it is bright green when battery is fully charged or bright orange when charging the battery. However, it was just dim green light.

As soon as I saw that I knew there was something very wrong. I tried to turn on the laptop but no response at all. I pressed the button on the left side to check how much power left in the battery. Still no light. Not even a single light was on. Normally when the battery is flat and when you press the button to check there would be one green light flashing.

Just 5 mins, the MacBook completely stopped working. I have a lot of important documents in it and I had to prepare quite many documents all over again in a hurry just because of this.

And, of course, Lewi and I took this MacBook and the original receipt to an Apple Authorized Service Provider. The person who was handling our case was quite cold and was not willing to listen to me about what happened. He just plugged in the power adapter again to try it and when he saw that it was not working he said that there was something wrong with the logic board. Then they told us that as Apple’s service system was under maintenance that afternoon, they could not check this MacBook’s serial number to confirm that it was under warranty. So they kept the original receipt and the MacBook and said that they would call us back tomorrow and if everything all right they would open the laptop and fix it.

The next morning, a lady called my mobile phone and told me that they could not fix the laptop under the warranty because they found liquid damage in it. She told me that some part of the logic board was rusty and mouldy. She even assumed that the laptop had been broken for ages and asked me how long exactly already. BUT IT WAS WITHIN A WEEK ONLY.

I was so shocked. LIQUID DAMAGE?! RUSTY AND MOULDY?! How is that even possible? There was no water, not even liquid on the desk of the hotel room where the laptop was before it stopped working. And definitely there was no liquid in my bag. The restaurant? No, the table was very clean and dry.

Lewi and I could not understand at all. We were very sure that no liquid had ever gone into the MacBook. I called Apple China Support straight away and asked them to explain.

1. If the liquid had been in the MacBook for ages (as the lady on the phone assumed) and made some part of the logic board rusty and mouldy, how come it was working all fine and then all of a sudden it just completely stopped working? We do not think that a logic board can work like that.
2. If it was not liquid (as we both are very sure that there was no liquid ever and we were both very careful), then how come it was rusty and mouldy?

So they blah blah blah blah blah and asked that Apple Authorized Service Provider to send some photos of the logic board to their senior staff in Singapore.

PHOTOS!

How can anyone tell what part goes wrong in a laptop by looking at photos only? Without testing? Without checking in person?

And so of course the result from Apple China Support was just the same — “Liquid damage. It is rusty and mouldy. We cannot fix it under warranty.”

We had to go and take the laptop back. Before we left they opened it and let us have a look. It was two spots that were a bit green on the logic board. And they insisted that it was liquid damage and even if not liquid, it was the humidity.

OK, we are very sure that it was not liquid. So, humidity? IS IT CUSTOMER’S FAULT IF IT IS VERY HUMID IN SOME CITIES? CAN ANYONE CONTROL THAT? And shouldn’t companies make sure that their products can survive in the normal weather where millions of people live? What’s more, how did the humidity effect the logic board which is inside a MacBook that was designed as an unique body?

All they said were just like tons of excuses.

After we left and sat down in a restaurant for some food, I got out the MacBook and Lewi just randomly pressed the power button. GUESS WHAT HAPPENED?

IT GOT TURNED ON.

It even went directly to my account just like when I put it on sleep which means that it was actually still in sleep mode before it was turned on. We did not have the power adapter with us at that moment but we opened a few software and tested the MacBook to see how it worked and it was all fine.

HOW RIDICULOUS.

The staff at the Apple Authorized Service Provider did not even bother to test it out again. They straight away said that it was liquid damaged and told us that it was dead and a new logic board would be needed.

Obviously, it is not dead.

We tried the power adapter after we got home. However, it showed as “Not Charging” and the LED was still dim green light. It would not get turned on either without battery. We tried some other power adapters too but just same result.

The next day I talked to the lady who has been dealing with this case at the customer service department. I told her that it was all working fine except the power thing. She said that the reason that the MacBook working again might be that the wet parts on the logic board got dried after they opened the laptop.

GOT DRIED?!

OK, so according to them, it was wet, rusty and mouldy on those 2 green spots on the logic board. Then the staff opened it and those 2 spots got dried so the MacBook started working again.

What a story.

I decided to take the battery out and reset the SMC (System Management Controller). We tried again about one day and a half later. This MacBook still would not get turned on with the power adapter only. The LED has always been dim green light. We put the battery back and when we plugged the power adapter into the laptop, it still showed as “Not Charging”. However, it showed “Power Source: Power Adapter”. How weird! Also, even though the MacBook would not get turned on with power adapter as the only power source, when we pressed the battery button, the lights still got lighted up which means that there was electricity coming through the laptop and the main board did sense it.

We then decided to leave the MacBook open with the power adapter plugged in to see if the battery would get flat. We were thinking that it was possible that the battery would stay at 15% power. But here came the biggest surprise.

The battery did not go flat at all and actually was GETTING CHARGED.

The percentage kept going up. And then eventually it got to 100%. When we pressed the battery button, all of the 8 small green lights got lightened up. When we clicked on the “Energy Saver Preferences”, there was a line saying “Battery is charged”.

This MacBook still works all fine and I ran LightRoom on it as well to edit some Canon EOS 5D Mark II photos (very big files). All good.

Lewi and I are both Mac people. Actually Lewi has been using Apple computers for almost 10 years. We have never seen anything like this before. And, well, seriously, if not in China (Mainland China), if in other regions/countries such as Hong Kong and Australia, the staffs would have been a lot more responsible and careful to check and test out what was really wrong instead of having an conclusion so quickly.

I’m Chinese and I am proud to be. However, I have to say that there is always something wrong in the China after-sale service filed no matter what company it is. They have very wrong attitude. They do not want to take the responsibility and they love to find excuses so that they can fix things for extra money instead of warranty. They do not care about the customers. When I told my friend in Singapore about this, she told me that it was not the first time she heard something like this that happened in China. There were many different cases she knew that was out of warranty because of “liquid damage” no matter laptops, mp3 players or mobile phones. I thought Apple would be good anywhere just like many others believed in, but I guess Apple China is totally something else. I do not care about buying a new MacBook or anything like warranty. We’re still going to buy a new MacBook Pro anyway. What I care about is the truth, the real reasons and their attitude. It really upset me when they kept making up lame excuses.

We’re going to take this laptop to get checked in Australia and I will update the information.

Related posts:

1. So here we go
2. My new tattoo

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Words. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.