Updated: Below is the saga of how I got a sick Apple 23" Display. Here is the latest:
I got tired of waiting for Century 23, the Apple Authorized shop that I had hauled my monitor to, so that it could be sent to Apple for repair. My system had been down a week (ever try to plug a standard CRT monitor into an Apple? Oops wrong plug).Cult of the Mac" guys and told him that finally got the monitor back. He told me to call him when i plugged it in.
The man who answered told me that he had indeed just received the monitor back and was putting it in the box I had brought it in. (This made me wonder what they had shipped the monitor to Apple in, and why I wasn’t getting that box instead. An hour later, I arrived at the shop and they brought me into the back room and pointed to my box. I asked them if they had tried the monitor out. They told me that they didn’t have one of the 23" display power adapters (which I was not required to bring in for the repair. But the repair guy pointed out that the had replaced both the LCD panel and the logic board.
"Wow, that sounds good," I said, there isn’t much to left besides that to the monitor (just the aluminum frame and the glass in front of the panel.). So I lugged the heavy box back to my car and headed home. I called my friend Will (who is one of those "
Well, guess what? The monitor displays white without pink in it now. When I recalibrate the monitor, it was absolutely amazing how much I had to change the settings that I had created for the defective monitor.
The montior is better, still no where as good as my Samsung 213T that I use on my PC in terms of eye-pleasingness (not a word but you get the idea). I called my friend Will and he said, "Thank heaven, now you can stop badmouthing Apple."
He then paused a second or two and said, "But I guess they did give you quite a runaround."
Yes they did.
The original story begins here:
After months of pondering the idea that Macintoshs are somehow better than PC’s, last October I splurged over $5,000 on a Macintosh G5 Powermac with two 1.8 MHZ Processors, 2 MB of RAM, an ATI Radeon
Mac Special Edition Graphics Card and one of those then new aluminum 23" Cinema Displays.
After managing to haul the boxes filled with my new equipment up the stairs (they must be made out of heavy aluminum), I set up the system and booted it up. It was the first time I had owned a Mac since 1993 when my employees at Mindware bought me a Pentium 2 for my birthday. I was excited since had heard so much about the superior graphics of the Mac.
Well after getting rid of their one button mouse and putting on a two bottom Microsoft IntelliMouse, I had a good look at the new interface. I noticed something odd. The display had an odd pink cast to it. I talked to my friend Clay by phone and he told me that this is how Macs are supposed to look. I thought, I guess I’ll get used to this. If you want to get an idea about the problem, take a look at " Color Consistency Problems with the New Aluminum Apple Cinema Display HD 23" To read a weblog that chronicled this problem, read Cinema Displays.
I never did get used to it. A week later, I found an article on Apple Cinema Displays have faulty LCD panels: Bad Batch in Barrel. When I read this, I immediately called Apple Support. The tech recommended I read the Apple Forum on their Tech Support Site so I did. I read story after story about people who had gotten Apple to swap their pink-eyed monitor for a new one — only to get another one with similar problems. When I went to computer stores that sold Apples, I always looked at the 23" Cinema Displays and they are always pink.
Here is a post from AppleNova Forum:
Just a quick note for those suggesting color calibration:A good percentage of the 23" apple displays are permanetly pink. This is a well known and documented problem which no amount of calibration will ever remedy.
Granted, there are people that have a slightly pink display that can be fixed by calibration. Yet, this is of no help to those with one of the defective displays.Do a quick google on pink apple display problems and you’ll turn up a billion reports. It really is astounding that there hasn’t been a recall. I’m not one to scream the sky is falling, but in this case, the product has a widespread, major defect.
I predict a class action lawsuit relatively soon…(authors note: see Forbes story)
The day before yesterday, I spent an hour trying to adjust the monitor "just one more time." I could not get it right so I went to the forums again. All of the posts that I had made about the pink problem had been deleted. But new ones had proliferated. One person said that he had gotten a new monitor and that it was good. White was white again.
So I called what has always been called the Superior Apple Technical Support. After all, I had paid several hounded for an extended warranty, maybe they might swap my defective screen for a good one, like the fellow on the forum. Well I think that I reached all the way to India on the first call. After going through all sorts of tech support steps read off a cue sheet or screen, I told the guy, "Look, I think I should get a new monitor."
No, you have had the monitor too long. We are going to repair it. So he told me to call CompUSA and schedule to have it repaired. When I called CompUSA, they told me that they no longer serviced Apples and to take it to Century 23 near the Meadow Mall (I live in Las Vegas). So the next day, I packed the monitor in its original packing and took it to the store. They told me "they had heard about this problem before" but that I had better be prepared to have Apple "repair" the monitor several times before they finally replace it.
Now I ask you, why does a rich company like Apple continue to stonewall its customers on something like this. They will not admit that there was a problem. Apparently they bought a large lot of defective panels and they can’t afford to take a hit on them. So their customers are paying.
So those of you who are considering switching to Apple — remember this story. And also you should know that if you are every unhappy with Apple as a vendor, there is no other company to turn to and still continue to use their operating system. And they want to keep it that way.
Not only is my expensive Cinema display a joke, now they decided to switch to Intel processors. So my expensive aluminum tower is now an instant antique!
I had the pink cast show up on 23″ monitor last month (bought it in Nov 2004) called up apple on a weds, no problem, gave me a case number and that they show ship out a box via DHL, a shipping box arrived thrusday am, shipped it back to Apple Display repair centre Jabil Global in Lousiville, Ky, friday am I get email that it had been received and i would get another email when it had been fixed and shipped out. On the following monday am got monitor back.
i have never ever had any problem with warranty repairs thru Apple Care. I have been a Mac user since 1985 along with having to use Windows for some of my businees needs. Apple’s service and attitude to me has been spectacular, I can not say that about HP or Dell.
Another company that I can highly recoemmend their after servvice is OKIDATA
Your (c.aalyn) experience is not typical. I suggest you read the Apple Forum thread on this subject to see what happened to most people at http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@822.tbZ6agwT0qX.1@.68992154.
As you can see by reading this thread — which has 318 posts — that “Topic: 23″ Cinema display poor color consistency” is a popular subject. I doubt so many people would have posted on the subject if there was no problem.
The reason I did not send my monitor back right away for “repair” is clear when you read this thread. Nobody got a good one back. Not until recently that is. Which is why I tried to get Apple to swap mine out.
The refused to do so. They made me pack the monitor up and lug it to a store 25 miles from my house, carry it into the store and spend a bunch of time having a report imputed. This on a monitor that NEVER WORKED RIGHT but which I paid $1800 for. As others who have emailed me from this post have pointed out, there are a number of CHEAPER monitors of the same size that work well. Included in this are monitors from Samsung, HP, Dell and Sony.
I thought that when I bought an Apple monitor (I was still in my Apple limerance phase at the time) that I would not have to read reviews before I bought.
In my opinion, now that Apple has stuck me with a $3200 computer which they rendered virtually valueless by switching to Intel and a monitor which never worked, would be nice en ought to at least give me a loaner monitor to use with my PowerMac G5 which is now gathering dust as I work on my number one computer, a Gateway Wintel computer by the way. Many companies would have simply replaced the monitor, especially since I have paid $300 extra for an extended warranty. In fact, they would have sent me a new monitor before asking for the old one back. But not Apple. They “think different.”
I cannot even track the repair. The ticket number which was issued by their technical support from India tech guy does not even show up in their system. Its as if the monitor never existed. I have five to seven working days of repair marked from the time that they receive the monitor from their authorized dealer.
“Why does a rich company like Apple continue to stonewall its customers on something like this”?
Because they (like every other company) can.
In the past ten years or so, bottom-line data have consistently proven that adequate customer service is a money-losing proposition.
Forget repeat business; forget word-of-mouth reputation; forget ethics and doing the right thing: just make sure to delay *any* warranty expenditure as long and as relentlessly as possible, and your stockholders will be well-served.
The consumers? Oh, they won’t care. They’re busy satisfying desires, not needs. Feed the former, ignore the latter, and your business will thrive, indeed.
Apple usually has excellent customer service… not sure what’s going on with this “pink cast” thing though…
HOWEVER, the switch to INTEL processors definitely hasn’t decreased the monetary value or USEFULNESS of your Dual G5.
“virtually valueless” – LOL gimme a break!!!!!!
Hello,
I got one of the 23″ Aluminum ACD’s that i bought only a few months ago. While it does not have the pink discoloration, it has had it’s share of issues.
The first time i sent it to repair was due to image ghosting, the menubar actually burned into the display so when i watched a movie or anything full screen it would have a ghost image of the menubar. I quickly sent it back in for reparir. When i got the repair back i noticed that they stated they fixed the LCD Module. When i connected the display to my Quad PowerMac G5 i noticed that the issue with ghosting was gone.
However the apple tech’s introduced an entirely new problem. The new LCD Module had 14 dead pixels. I contacted support again to return this one for repair. They replaced the LCD Module again and returned it to me. This time i have 8 dead pixels, slight image ghosting and an entirely new issue. When i have a dark background on the screen i have a defenite striping pattern showing on the screen. There are vertical lines spanning the screen about 1/4″ apart.
I called support again and i am not happy that i have to send this in again. I run my own company so losing a display for 6 days is not acceptable (this does not include this next repair). I emailed steve jobs and an employee from the executive dept called me. They said that they cannot replace my display as they require a certain number of repairs first. My display is less then 4 MONTHS old, they shouldnt have to repair it to begin with.
NOT TO MENTION they should employ competent techs who test thier work AND DO NOT introduce so many new issues.
I have been posting every step of this incident on my blog.