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Comment by xyzzy_plugh | Hacker News Reader

I had a fan bearing go bad on an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. It was literally two days out of warranty, and I was pissed. I was near one of their main offices at the time, and ended up calling their reception and driving to drop off the borked card after speaking to an engineer who wanted to see it. They handed me a brand new card, no questions asked, and thanked me for bringing the problem to their attention.

I miss the good old days.

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I’ve been such an ATi fan after owning an FIC-branded 9700 that was flashed to a Pro and went bad in the first year or so. I was ~13 years old, called up ATi and told them the situation, I was honest that I had flashed the bios, and asked if there was anything they could do. They sent me an ATi branded 9700 Pro.

First company to do me a solid like that and I’ve stuck around since.

I had a similar experience with AMD back in the day. I was probably a similar age and damaged the pins on my new Athlon XP 2500+. I called them up and they ended up sending me a 2800+ as a replacement.

It’s why I still like logitech today.

Had a mouse go bad 20 years back, called up support, they told me they’d send a new one. I was shocked, wondering what if I was lying and didn’t they want evidence?

They replied they took it on trust but I could cut off the usb plug and put it in the trash if it made me feel better (that is, of course, a very easy repair).

I had a similar experience with Logitech - when I first got into sim racing I got their cheapest wheel and pedal set - it started not keeping a calibration so contacted them.

They paid for me to ship it to them, and then just sent me the next model up as a replacement as mine had been discontinued.

Same. I last bought a mouse in...damn, 2008. They've replaced it 3 times since, with the new equivalent model regardless of it being in or out of warranty.

I had a similar experience, something borked on my Radeon 9600 Pro (assuming a busted capacitor) a week or two after the warranty expired, but I figured I'd try my luck and ask if there was anything they could do. They promptly sent me a new card for free (though it was probably refurbished), didn't even ask for the old one in return.

ATI was a great company back then.

Back when IBM was making Thinkpads, I called their support number to get the FRU for a HD in a second hand laptop that was well out of warranty. The next day I had a package waiting for me with a new drive and prepaid postage for the return. Easily my best customer experience, without a doubt they made that money back - I went out of my way to direct my business their way for years.

I remember hearing stories of Apple taking care of their customers like that, too.

They still do. Support will upgrade models of MacBooks every once in a blue moon (have had it happen before).

Happened to me once too. I got a lemon, it went in for service 3 or 4 times (this was right after the Intel transition) and eventually AppleCare just apologized and mailed me a new laptop - the next generation of them.

Same thing, only two repairs, in store exchange to a newer model, price difference comped.

One of my cousins went swimming with his new iPhone 3G 3 weeks after it came out, and they replaced it for free at the store.

I dropped mine in water (pool if I recall) 2 times and had it replaced for free also (3G and 4 I think).

I’ve had the absolute worst experience with Apple.

I wanted to buy Apple Developer Program subscription. It wouldn’t let me add any of my credit cards, saw an option to add payment via UPI (Unified Payments Interface) in India. Added $99 to my Apple account and was still unable to pay for the membership. Spent around 7-8 hours speaking to customer support but no one had a clue what was wrong. I asked for a refund and was told money added to Apple account as credit can not be refunded.

Should have dragged the head of Apple India into small claims court.

Actually, I think that's a job for the consumer court. I don't think? We have have small claims court (by that name atleast).

Not apple but I recently wanted to get some work done on fiverr. The dev completed the stuff and when it was my time to pay, I couldn't. No card I used worked. RBI international stuff. I tried like 5 banks cc with international payments turned on.

I asked support and the dev for crypto and they banned me for soliciting third party payments.

I have been unable to find either an Indian dev for a small job or someone who can accept crypto.

Talk about fiverr support. Smh

Not an Apple fanboy but when I got an IPod 4(I think) they started having problems with the included headphones. Read about it on Slashdot then soon after mine failed, I called(!) support and they sent me a box with new ones and a return label for the old ones so they could do failure analysis.

A very long time ago.

Today you have to be careful when dealing with apple repair as they have been found to repeatedly engage in money grubbing tack ticks which border on fraud.

And that is ignoring the fact that in general they tend to not repair component but just replace whole components (because it easier) while hindering others from providing proper repairs (because money) even if it necessary for e.g. data recovery (because from their POV you are stupid if you don't auto-sync everything with the iCloud).

It's also ignoring the fact that apple had in the recent years repeatedly some very questionable design flaws (like strangely over sensitive power management chips, missing heat pipes and similar).

And ignoring that by soldering everything including the ssd on the main-board preventing on-main-board repairs a lot of damage from a problematic USB hub to a broken SSD will always lead to a whole main-board + ram + cpu + ssd + ... replacement which makes many repairs unreasonable expansive.

Commodore did something like that for me. I had an early A3000 that got fried somehow (probably by a NewTek Digiview) and we received a brand new A3000 2 days after talking to them.

Apple hardware support was legendary before they became The iPhone Company. I had the first Intel MacBook Pro, and if stuff broke or the battery started getting a bit weak I’d just walk into the Apple store, talk to someone there, and most of the time my problem would be solved that day (with the battery they just gave me a new one for free, including once even after AppleCare had run out).

Nowadays when I go to the Genius Bar I feel like I’m being cross examined so that they don’t have to replace anything. And the examiner doesn’t know the first thing about the computer but is just reading a script someone gave them. This is despite paying for the most expensive warranty.

Compare this to 3Dconnexion, a maker of expensive 3D mice for CAD software. They rubberized their mice but the rubber decayed after a couple of years (spent $200+ in the 00's and got a gooey piece of junk 3-4 years later). For a decade, they've been ignoring customers and saying the issue was fixed in a later version.

Apple, Ubiquiti, and Microcenter have all honored just expired warranties for me in the past 5-8 years. You just have to be polite.

* or be covered by a consumer guarantees act that looks after you.

New Zealand has a great bit of legislation there.

How long are you covered there? It's 5 years here in Norway for anything "you should expect to last five years", which means basically all computer parts and mobile devices.

The legislation just says products must last a reasonable amount of time. As you can imagine, retailers and consumers usually have different ideas about how long something should reasonably last. I've never had much luck getting products repaired or replaced once the manufacturers one-year warranty runs out.

Directly from Forbrukerrådet (Consumer Council):

"You have 2 or 5 years to make a complaint if you purchased from a professional vendor (Consumer Sales Act (in Norwegian)).

The statutory warranty period depends on how long the product is meant to last when subjected to normal use. Sofas and mobile phones are examples of products with a 5-year warranty period.

When buying from a private individual, the warranty period is 2 years (Sale of Goods Act (in Norwegian))."

You can't have been trying very hard. I have never had any problem.

In case it wasn't clear, I was referring to the Consumer Guarantees Act in New Zealand

What does a private individual mean? If I sell you my MacBook Air you are entitled to some kind of warranty? Is the seller or manufacturer obligated to provide the warranty?

The more I hear about Norway the more it seems to be a country that really has its act together.

A lot of things are easier if the state owns a fund valued at approximately 2000 billion dollars and you only have to share that between ~5 million people. [0]

It's a crazy amount of money. In 2017 that fund owned 1.38% of the global stocks. I heard at some point they had trouble because they couldn't use the money to build roads or whatever without affecting the global economy.

[0]: https://www.nbim.no/

That helps, no question. But the causality is the wrong way around. Norway had that fund in the first place because they are a sensible country that made good decisions. Their government clearly functions at a level the US today can only dream of - where they can barely agree on not shutting down every time they near the debt limit. Here in Canada we're maybe a little better off, but not close to Norway.

Lucky you. I had to spend an hour a few months ago proving to Apple my warranty had 9 days left it. And they did nothing for me when my warranty replacement iPad Smart Keybpard died in less than a year other than offer a replacement for 90% of MSRP but with another useless 90 day warranty.

This, every time. I had my iPhone 11 start to booloop back in July, literally the day after the warranty expired. Called up their support, explained the issue, and they issued me an exemption and I got a replacement for free. Not trying to be an Apple fanboy, but I don't think Samsung or Google would extend the same offer.

FYI Ubiquiti slashed their US based employees a couple of years ago, both engineers and support. Don't expect similar treatment in the future. You can see the change in responsiveness looking at their support forums.

Apple used to do this for me more than once. Not anymore they need that sweet monthly applecare revenue.

Just out of interest was yours a Sapphire branded 9800 Pro? The fan died in mine and the only bad behaviour it exhibited was that it overheated in games (Half-Life 2 and Unreal 2 were the big killers), for anything else it was perfectly usable in that crippled state.

It might've been, I still have it somewhere probably.

To this day it is still the hottest piece of hardware I've ever owned. I swear you could cook on that card. It definitely didn't help that the fan died, and it melted itself into a broken state not long after I suppose.

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