You know that smoking isn’t good for you. But did you know, that smoking isn’t good for your Mac, either? It’s true, at least according to Apple.
Two readers in different parts of USA claim that their AppleCare warranties were voided due to secondhand smoke. Both readers appealed their cases up to the office of Steve Jobs himself. Both lost.
“I took my mid 2007 apple macbook (black) into the Jordan Creek Apple Store in West Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, April 25th, because I had been experiencing some issues with it overheating, and figured the fan was bad. After some initial testing, they took the computer in for work under my Applecare plan, which has over a year remaining on it.
Today, April, 28, 2008, the Apple store called and informed me that due to the computer having been used in a house where there was smoking, that has voided the warranty and they refuse to work on the machine, due to “health risks of second hand smoke”.
Not only is this faulty science, attributing non smoking residue to second hand smoke, on Chad’s part, no where in your applecare terms of service can I find anything mentioning being used in a smoking environment as voiding the warranty”
Jobs’ office did not help Derek, but he resolved some of the problems himself by disassembling his Macbook and cleaning it out with a can of compressed air.
“I own a mac and live in Oklahoma. Recently the burner stopped working. We have AppleCare so we took it in 2 days ago for repair. We just recieved a call today stating we needed to come get it because they are refusing to work on it due to health hazards from second hand smoke due to OSHA violations.”
Consumerist has tried repeatedly to obtain some kind of answer about these two cases from Apple’s media relations department, and we have received nothing on the record after months of waiting. Mostly, we’re curious what the threshold is for smoke damage to a computer, and why this is not mentioned in the AppleCare contract.
Thanks Jared.
The refusal to work on the computers is not because they believe the computer has been damaged by smoke. In both cases, they have apparently refused to work on those computers because the workers believe they have the right to a smoke free environment and the computers represent exposure to “second hand smoke” and are therefore “hazardous”… to the employees.
Interesting take on “hazardous” and I’ll admit I lol’d at it. I think Apple should either put that in their warranty clause or get ready for a lawsuit or two… LOL
Just one more reason to build your own pc. 😉
@ASL4U “smoke free” obviously means just that, smoke free. You can “dip”, take nicotine lozengers, whatever you want to do, except smoke!
But maybe i’m reading to deep into what you are saying. But then you must be implying that the techs are that stupid to believe that they will get second hand smoke from a computer that had been smoked around.
But hey. what do i know. All my computers have fans in them that blow air out the machine.
What are the terrorist going to do next, fill computers up with cig smoke and send them in for repair. News at 6, this just in, 10 techs came down with cancer from second hand smoke after fixing a computer.
I can attest that Steve Jobs is right – I took apart my friends computer after him having it in his house for 6 months and smoking near it. The ENTIRE inside of the computer was covered in this thick black sludge. I returned it to him and told him he could fix it himself.