MarcFriedenberg.com

The 30G hard drive on Becky’s iBook started making a really loud clicking noise a few weeks ago, and it was clearly dying/dead. I don’t have the mechanical wherewithal to replace something like that myself, so I started calling around to a few repair places. Connecting Point in State College offered to do the repair for around $250, but I found an outfit called MacService that offered to do the repair, and install a 60G drive, including shipping to Santa Clara, all for $195. The choice was clear.

After MacService received the machine, they took a look at it and said that not only was the hard drive dead, but also that the logic board needed replacement due to a liquid spill. That’s a lie. It’s possible that something was spilled on it a few years ago, but it certainly wasn’t related to the hard drive clicking problem, and the machine had been working perfectly until that started. I asked if they would just repair the hard drive and let me “roll the dice” on the logic board, but apparently their rules require them to send out all machines in a bootable state. They claim that they put a new hard drive in the machine and that it wouldn’t boot up at all. The total price for their suggested repairs? $600!

I had them send the machine back to me, and then I brought it over to Connecting Point. They were able to swap the hard drive out in about an hour, and it’s working perfectly. They made no mention of any logic board problem. So it seems to me that MacService offers ridiculously low prices to lure people into sending their computers to them, then says that they need more repairs than they actually do. The $45 return shipping fee probably forces a lot of people into accepting whatever they’re told they need (I actually argued with them and got them to let me send them a $16 USPS label, instead of using their preferred carrier, DHL). So, in my first attempt at consumer advocacy on this page, I have to say: do not do business with MacService.

UPDATE: Hmm, perhaps there was more to this story than I thought. The new hard drive worked wonderfully for about two weeks, and then suddenly the machine started throwing up horizontal lines on the screen. After that, it booted up to a blank screen. Connecting Point immediately identified it as a faulty logic board. Apparently this was a known issue with this particular model, and there was a faulty logic board repair program from Apple. Unfortunately, the machines are only eligible for this free logic board replacement up to three years after the date of purchase, and I hadn’t even heard of the program until four years after. After about an hour of pestering Apple on the phone, they agreed to repair the machine at no cost.

I’m not sure if this is the problem the MacService people were referring to, but even if it was, they blamed it on a spill, not on a known hardware defect. My verdict does not change.

I normally love Amazon, not only for their price but for their excellent customer service and their innovations in areas such as searching inside books and recommendation engines. It really bothers me though when I’m looking at a product page for, say, a computer, and instead of showing me a price, they tell me “To see our low price, add this item to your cart.” Their explanatory page for this behavior says:

The “click for price” message indicates an additional discount is in effect, and this discount is calculated in the Shopping Cart. You can see this price by clicking the product name and then selecting the Add to Cart button on the product information page. Please be assured that simply adding an item to your cart does not obligate you to buy it–you can always delete the item from your cart if you decide not to purchase it.

That’s crazy. It completely breaks the Web model of transparency, and adds extra steps to my browsing process (add the item to the cart, read the price, remove the item from the cart). Tssk.

From his May 3, 2006 column on the need for third party focused on our energy crisis:

Energy really is key to American renewal — from stimulating more young people to study math and science, to bringing down the trade deficit by decreasing our dependence on imported oil, to bringing down the fiscal deficit by raising gasoline taxes, to improving U.S. competitiveness by making us leaders in clean technologies, to restoring U.S. global respect by leading the fight against climate change, to advancing democracy by finding alternatives to oil and thereby weakening some of the world’s worst regimes, who are using their oil windfalls to halt the spread of freedom.