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.
