SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
posted by
Fnord666
on Saturday November 23 2019, @06:20PM
from the make-it-right-the-first-time dept.
from the make-it-right-the-first-time dept.
Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956_
Right to repair advocates have described Apple's recent claim to lose money on repairs as 'absurd' and 'misleading.'
Apple made the claim to a Congressional judiciary committee investigating, among other things, whether Apple's locked-down approach to device repairs is anti-competitive...
Apple has always insisted that its control of the repair process is for reasons of safety and reliability. Others have, however, argued that Apple is deliberately preventing customers from obtaining lower-cost repairs from independent shops in order to force them to use Apple Stores.
Source: https://9to5mac.com/2019/11/21/lose-money-on-repairs/
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Lose Money on Repairs, Apple? an Absurd Claim, Say Critics
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 27 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday November 24 2019, @05:00PM (1 child)
I played this game from 2005 to 2011 or so in various jobs.
I ran the repair departmnet for the maxprts network out of columbia mo for a time. We were a 'ship to' for independent techs. I was responsible for our stores repairs and shipping parts to the remote independent techs who used our shipto for a fee/cut. I saw how incredibly difficult it is for non-apple people to make any money on repairs.
MESSAGE TO APPLE: RESTRICTING DIAGNOSTIC PARTS ORDERS OR LIMITING THEM TO ONE BASED UPON YOUR ARBITRARY ASSESSMENT AS TO WHAT THE CORRECT DIAGNOSIS IS FROM THE DOCUMENTATION IS PREDATORY. MULTIPLE PART FAILURES ARE A REALITY NOT FANTASY. SCORING YOUR TECHS ON PARTS ORDERS AS A WAY TO DETERMINE HOW MUCH TO PAY IS SOME SHADY SHIT. FLAT RATE REPAIR FEES FOR WILDLY INCONGRUENT AND INACCURATE ESTIMATED REPAIR TIMES IS A FORM OF SLAVERY. LOSING MONEY WHEN YOUR PRODUCT FAILS IS THE CORRECT MARKET RESPONSE NOT SOMETHING YOU CAN HAND WAVE AWAY AND FOIST COSTS TO OTHERS.
So for an ibook that was locking up, it could be the drive or the cable, or both, and so for every ibook repair you were taking a 50% chance of taking a ding to your score. They literally do not allow in their repair plan for the chance of multiple parts to fail, and in this case, tens of thousands of ibooks under warranty had their hard drives fried by the errors caused by the bad cables.
Fast forward to hawaii I was living on a balcony and cycling to work in traffic, when punaho school district was threatening apple that they were going to buy a bunch of thinkpads or sonys when the entire punaho class threw their ibooks in their swimming pools because they were so unreliable. And the new black/white ones were coming out and apple sales really wanted that.
Trouble was, on my first day of the job at computer doctor, they had 40 or so ibooks *in 5' stacks on the floor*, all with catastrophic damage and punaho wanted repair quotes by the end of the week. My boss's boss said I had to make all shortcuts, just eyeball it. My apple contact who was taking a daily interest on how the *repairs were coming along* and making sure I was following apple procedures. And I had to do all of the diagnostics with paperwork, and only 2 recent high school graduates to help, who were not certified and so could not do anything, but my boss's boss said they have to, but I have to lie to apple.
Whew stressful just writing about it. I got the job through express personell, and then they even lowered my hourly wage arbitrarily after negotiation. (really fuck express personel)
(my entire employment history was leaked with the federal application breach in 2015, so this is no secret to anybody)
I say all this to say that what I saw from apple was that the beauty of the design of the computers, which comes from jobs himself being a real designer, was totally corrupted by the economic procedures of the subdepartments. I doubt any of the finer points of the diagnostic process ever reached their way to steve, these details were stuck in their by accountants who designed them to appear as persnickety details mr. jobs would never stoop himself to consider, even as his company was earning an awful abusive reputation among the actual techs who were most enthusastic about it.
And that's how we got here, where the apple brand is meaningless. It has become *nearly* as ugly and clunky and bloated and poorly designed as any microsoft product.
And the best power connector ever invented has been removed from the market, and you would get sued if you tried to make one. (correct me if im wrong about magsafe)
Idk, here is a meme I made a couple days ago, that I think kindof shows a lot of what we are seeing here, about how this way of doing business is centralized and predatory. If even the guys who are smart enough to work on these repairs are being squeezed to near minimum wage, no wonder so many people are homeless.
https://archive.is/6uwoN [archive.is]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 25 2019, @10:38PM
So, you lied to Apple with regards to how much was damaged? How it was damaged? Or what, exactly? That was pretty incomprehensible.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"