In May 2020 my daughter purchased a new iMac through our local Apple Retailer.
iMac Retina 4K, 21.5 inch, 2019 8GB 2400 MHz DDR4, Mac 1TB Hard Drive Radeon Pro 555X 2GB At the very beginning it was a noticeably slow machine. But as time has passed it became extremely slow. Switch on to Login became 4 minutes 15 seconds. Opening and closing files became incredibly slow. Even opening email attachments took ages. I tried checking for Malware, starting in Safe Mode, cleaning out all unused rubbish, but it still got worse. Finally, on 28 October I returned it to the Apple Dealer and asked them to look for the problem. They spent two days running tests and found nothing. They then told me that when Apple released Catalina it was only optimised to run with an SSD. I find that hard to believe because my wife’s 2012 iMac runs Catalina and performs very well with its 1TB Hard Drive. In fact, it starts in 2 minutes 30 seconds. On 30 October The Apple Dealer quoted me a price to replace the 1TB Hard Drive with a 500GB SSD. So, I phoned Apple support to ask for advice and to ask about warranty if this work is carried out. Apple Support seemed happy for the dealer to do the work and told me the iMac warranty will still stand. So, I asked the Dealer to go ahead with the SSD upgrade. But both my daughter and I were not happy that she had to pay $465.00 (260.00 pounds) in order to resolve a major issue with an iMac that is only 5 months old. So I wrote to Apple Australia asking them to take this on board and reply with an explanation for this issue. I made the point that because there was no other alternative, this must be regarded as a warranty repair, and not just an upgrade. I told them that I have been an Apple Mac user for about 25 years and I have never felt so disappointed with Apple. In my home we use two iMacs, two iPhones and an iPad. Other members of my family also use Macs. About a month later I wrote to Apple again because I had not received a response. About a fortnight after that someone phoned me from Apple Australia and after a 20 minute conversation I was told that Apple would never refund the cost so there was no point in taking this any further. But, being a stubborn bastard, I wrote to Apple in California. Eventually, about a week ago I had a phone call from a very polite woman from Apple in Singapore. She listened to my story (again). She then asked me to email her the Invoice for the “repair” and then escalated the issue to the refund team. I have just received an email from Apple to say that a full refund will be deposited into my bank account in the next few days. Although I am back to being a satisfied Apple user, I am still disappointed that this is what it takes to get any attention when things go “pear shaped” with Apple’s products. All the same “thank you Apple”. Regards, Stephen Chape
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