Seattle Man Victorious Over Apple In Small Claims Court

Chalk up another win for the little guy! A blogger in Seattle says he just wanted Apple to repair his MacBook as the company had promised. When Apple refused, he felt he had no other option but to take the computing colossus to court.

He details the entire ordeal over at SeattleRex.com, but here are the finer points.

Some years back, he’d paid $4,000 for a MacBook, only to find it had a defective graphics chip. At the time, Apple said rather than refund his purchase, it promised to repair that part if/when it eventually failed.

That day eventually came, but Apple suddenly had amnesia and refused to replace the part for free. That’s how the two parties ended up in small claims court.

Before any actual hearing began, the judge asked the blogger and Apple if they would be amenable to arbitration. They agreed and went off to a room to chat for a few hours. Arbitration failed and it was back into court to argue their respective positions.

He says that Apple attempted to have the case dismissed by claiming that his computer was not part of the company’s replacement program because his CPU was clocked at 2.6Ghz, while the press release for the replacement program says 2.5Ghz.

The judge wasn’t buying that, nor was he apparently buying any of Apple’s arguments for why it should not have repaired the computer for free.

Writes the plaintiff:

Eventually, over the continued objections of the Apple folks (one of the guys kept arguing that I should give Apple one last chance to fix it), I was awarded a cash amount. The amount I was awarded is enough to replace the computer, which means that I should once again have a 17‚Ä≥ laptop. Assuming Apple actually pays me…

If Apple could have replaced my logic board at no cost to themselves, then why in the hell did they drag this out for so long, and why did they send two people to court to try and make sure that I got absolutely nothing? Friends, this is a question I have been asking myself for three months, and it is a question that I do not have the answer to…

[I]nstead of paying nothing for the repair, they paid a legal team to oversee the case, and, oh yeah … you guys, the shareholders, are buying me a new computer too.

Seattle Rex vs. Apple: The Verdict Is In [SeattleRex]

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