You need to stop calling it "broken". If it's ineffective in operation it's defective. Not broken. Strange word to use after the OP described their issues. It's only broken when something is damaged.
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Myriad of issues with brand new iMac 2020, freezing, visual artifacts
- Thread starter rachelcenter
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I walked into the apple store. Gave them my computer. They told me: for how new it is, it would just be better to return it then us spending the time trying to find the problem. So I said ok wipe it.... As they were wiping it, the computer literally died on them. They could NOT find a way to turn it back on. The end. Now I get to start all over again from scratch.
Glad to see you did that. You saved yourself a lot of heartache and wasted money.
Glad you decided to return it. Hope your replacement gives you many years of trouble free usage.
Is this your only machine? If so, I’d pick up something immediately, just so you can meet your immediate deadlines. I’ve heard some issues with the high end video cards on the 2020 iMac, most seem to be related to crappy drivers, but it doesn’t seem like Apple is in any hurry to fix them.
Reading your story sounds very much like some of my misadventures with Apple Inc. I get it, they changed their name from Apple Computer Inc to Apple, but they still sell very expensive computers and they have some responsibility to that customer. I would recommend you send your OP, slightly modified, to tcook AT apple DOT com, and ask that somebody in "Corporate Executive Relations" gets back to you to discuss the problem and to find a proper resolution in this most unfortunate saga. You should hear back from somebody that day or the next, they'll want to talk on the phone, be firm but polite. Those people have the ability to make you whole.
For some reason I don't see the edit button any more to be able to add more details. But here's the latest update: Johnnie with Apple Support called me on Thursday May 13th and said he should have an answer to me by Sunday May 16th about when my Apple Care is going to get refunded. (Remember I returned the computer on May 8th and got refunded for that. I also tried to get Apple Care refunded that same day as well but sat on the phone for 40 minutes with Apple, IN THE APPLE STORE, only to be told that there was a system glitch). 8 days later. It's still not refunded. Johnnie called me late in the afternoon saying 169 something odd dollars were refunded. Said I would get an email in 30 minutes as confirmation. The email never came in.
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5/18/21 I couldn't take Angel's call when she called me in the middle of a work day because I was busy at work. She left a voicemail saying she would email me a good date and time to reconnect on the phone. That email never came in. I emailed her that evening and said "I missed your call because I was talking to a producer. Ideally if you can respond back via email, then another day doesn't have to go by without me having to wait to hear from you on the phone to get an answer. For instance if you would've responded today over email, with what your boss said, versus leaving a voicemail which didn't address my question, it doesnt push it back another day. And with emails, I can have everything in writing so it doesn't turn into a he said she said thing."
5/19/21 I emailed her again Wednesday morning at 8:28am stating "Angel, please follow up with me via email this morning and let me know where we stand, in terms of what your boss said when you followed up about a potential discount for all my troubles." instead of doing that she calls me on the phone at 8:30am. I said the last time we talked you said you would go to your supervisor and asked what can be done for me in terms of maybe a discount, did that conversation happen? She deliberately dodged the question twice. Then I started taking notes and reading them outloud as I was typing, stating conversation with her boss didnt happen. She goes actually it did, and if you're recording this, I can't continue to help you. I said i'm allowed to take notes. and she goes I want to make sure those notes are accurate. I said if you wanna argue accuracy, you just dodged my question twice about speaking with your supervisor, you deliberately wouldn't give me a yes or no answer, it wasnt until I started writing notes that you said you actually did talk to your boss, so if you wanna talk to me about accuracy then this needs to be balanced on both sides of the table. (then there was a very uncomfortable silence on the phone for a few moments). In short she says shes in kentucky and is waiting for diagnostics from the engineer. And has no clue when that will come in. Can't provide me a timeline. "when i find out, you'll find out. I cant give you a timeline because I'm working with multiple departments. I have a small case load and you are priority." She mentioned at one point that she would setup a 1-on-1 for someone to help me get everything installed etc. I said at the risk of sounding like I have a big ego, I don't need anyone's help with setup, I'm a power user. I'm not looking to have my hand held during this process to make sure I know how to use the products. I had a terrible experience with the last computer and want you guys to make it right. There really hasn't been any action on her part yet that makes me feel confident that I'm being taken care of. I'm not really sure if she's done anything yet. Everything she mentioned doing, it sounds like it never happened.
She says I have to wait until the new computer gets here to make sure its running fine.
She wasn't giving me a lot of confidence that Apple is going to do much in the way of making me whole as a customer. It just sounds like their plan is to hold my hand throughout this process. She had mentioned in earlier conversations that she was going to follow up with all the parties who had corresponded with me, to ask why they made the decisions they did. I asked her how the investigation was going and it was clear she hadn't followed up with anyone yet. And I've been talking to her for a few days now.
On a somewhat related, somewhat random note...I just want to point out that when I was working with Wayne days ago over the phone to rectify this, I asked if I could send him any diagnostic reports and he's like there are so many different reports that could be taken that I don't know which one the engineers would want. So we didnt end up exporting any diagnostic log. And then when I went to the Apple store in person, they told me the computer was so new that I should just return it, so they tried to wipe and the whole computer died on them and wouldn't turn back on as they were wiping it. And I'm just really angry that it feels like the ball was dropped multiple times on getting that diagnostic log to engineers while the problem was still ripe. I'm worried now that the computer might be fully dead, how are you to get a diagnostic now? I emailed her about that concern, and her response was "Please feel free to call me with any additional questions or concerns."
5/19/21 I emailed her again Wednesday morning at 8:28am stating "Angel, please follow up with me via email this morning and let me know where we stand, in terms of what your boss said when you followed up about a potential discount for all my troubles." instead of doing that she calls me on the phone at 8:30am. I said the last time we talked you said you would go to your supervisor and asked what can be done for me in terms of maybe a discount, did that conversation happen? She deliberately dodged the question twice. Then I started taking notes and reading them outloud as I was typing, stating conversation with her boss didnt happen. She goes actually it did, and if you're recording this, I can't continue to help you. I said i'm allowed to take notes. and she goes I want to make sure those notes are accurate. I said if you wanna argue accuracy, you just dodged my question twice about speaking with your supervisor, you deliberately wouldn't give me a yes or no answer, it wasnt until I started writing notes that you said you actually did talk to your boss, so if you wanna talk to me about accuracy then this needs to be balanced on both sides of the table. (then there was a very uncomfortable silence on the phone for a few moments). In short she says shes in kentucky and is waiting for diagnostics from the engineer. And has no clue when that will come in. Can't provide me a timeline. "when i find out, you'll find out. I cant give you a timeline because I'm working with multiple departments. I have a small case load and you are priority." She mentioned at one point that she would setup a 1-on-1 for someone to help me get everything installed etc. I said at the risk of sounding like I have a big ego, I don't need anyone's help with setup, I'm a power user. I'm not looking to have my hand held during this process to make sure I know how to use the products. I had a terrible experience with the last computer and want you guys to make it right. There really hasn't been any action on her part yet that makes me feel confident that I'm being taken care of. I'm not really sure if she's done anything yet. Everything she mentioned doing, it sounds like it never happened.
She says I have to wait until the new computer gets here to make sure its running fine.
She wasn't giving me a lot of confidence that Apple is going to do much in the way of making me whole as a customer. It just sounds like their plan is to hold my hand throughout this process. She had mentioned in earlier conversations that she was going to follow up with all the parties who had corresponded with me, to ask why they made the decisions they did. I asked her how the investigation was going and it was clear she hadn't followed up with anyone yet. And I've been talking to her for a few days now.
On a somewhat related, somewhat random note...I just want to point out that when I was working with Wayne days ago over the phone to rectify this, I asked if I could send him any diagnostic reports and he's like there are so many different reports that could be taken that I don't know which one the engineers would want. So we didnt end up exporting any diagnostic log. And then when I went to the Apple store in person, they told me the computer was so new that I should just return it, so they tried to wipe and the whole computer died on them and wouldn't turn back on as they were wiping it. And I'm just really angry that it feels like the ball was dropped multiple times on getting that diagnostic log to engineers while the problem was still ripe. I'm worried now that the computer might be fully dead, how are you to get a diagnostic now? I emailed her about that concern, and her response was "Please feel free to call me with any additional questions or concerns."
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May 20th, replacement computer finally arrived. I've only had it for an hour. I downloaded a few applications like adobe creative cloud, and Google Drive. It told me I had to restart my computer to make Google Drive work. So when I restarted, upon seeing the login screen, the baseball icon is very low-resolution looking which was part of the problem that I had with the last computer that I had to return. This hints at more problems to come. This is not normal. Mac does not offer icons that look low-resolution graphics-wise. Please see attached screenshot.
![IMG_4272 copy.jpg]( "IMG_4272 copy.jpg")
I'm on the phone with the woman who is taking care of my Better Business Bureau case against Apple. She is trying to get an engineer to look at this today or tomorrow. She goes this is why I wanted to wait on giving you anything because of this type of thing to see what you wanted to do like return it. I said if I return this, this will be the second computer that I return. And then I'm **** out of luck, because I need a really big fast computer to get my work done. Returning this again isn't an option. We can have an engineer look at this but we had them look at this same issue on the last computer and they couldn't figure out whats wrong. And one person even told me that it's a well known issue with the graphics card and that I'm at the mercy of whenever another software update comes out to patch this. (But a graphics card is hardware, not software....) For them to tell me I'm at the mercy of a software update is not an acceptable answer. I didn't pay upwards of 5 grand for a 5k retina display that gives me standard definition graphics. That is not what was advertised when I bought this computer. Apple should give me a concession monetarily.
I'm on the phone with the woman who is taking care of my Better Business Bureau case against Apple. She is trying to get an engineer to look at this today or tomorrow. She goes this is why I wanted to wait on giving you anything because of this type of thing to see what you wanted to do like return it. I said if I return this, this will be the second computer that I return. And then I'm **** out of luck, because I need a really big fast computer to get my work done. Returning this again isn't an option. We can have an engineer look at this but we had them look at this same issue on the last computer and they couldn't figure out whats wrong. And one person even told me that it's a well known issue with the graphics card and that I'm at the mercy of whenever another software update comes out to patch this. (But a graphics card is hardware, not software....) For them to tell me I'm at the mercy of a software update is not an acceptable answer. I didn't pay upwards of 5 grand for a 5k retina display that gives me standard definition graphics. That is not what was advertised when I bought this computer. Apple should give me a concession monetarily.
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I agree that Apple should make you whole. Maybe try an iMac Pro if you can find one? They don’t seem to have the same kinds of driver problems as the high end consumer iMacs.
This will probably run circles around the machine that is giving you so much trouble:
Refurbished 27 inch iMac Pro 2.5GHz 14 core Intel Xeon W with Retina 5K display - Apple
Apple Store Search Results
www.apple.com
Apple says the low-resolution icon issue is because of file vault. so i turned off file vault and restarted and the icon was high res again. (but all those other problems i experienced on the last computer was because that computer was a lemon according to Taylor, senior engineer at Apple)
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I just went to restart my computer and that nasty brown tint showed up on my computer, just like the last computer. Here is a picture from it happening on the last computer. Let's see what Apple has to say about this.
![IMG_4175 attempting to restart.jpg]( "IMG_4175 attempting to restart.jpg")
I had an iMac, bought from the refurb store, that would go psycho from time to time. And I mean psycho. A shredded screen, sometimes half, sometimes the other half, sometimes the whole screen. It would occasionally just seize, and once or twice, in my career with it, it spontaneously shutdown.
Had Apple Care. Took it to the Apple Store. The 'genius' couldn't get it to freakout, until the last second of being plugged in on their counter, and it threw a monumental snit of colors and shreds and just downright awesomeness. The genius was impressed. He immediately unplugged it, and shuffled off to the backroom to 'run diagnostics'.
Nearly an hour later, he came out looking rather odd. 'Well, we've run diagnostics, and they are showing a list of issues, but then showing nothing. (Stick with me for a minute, getting to the good part) And they offered me a choice. I could either leave it there, and they would try to fix it, with no guarantees, likely ending up replacing everything inside the case, or I could accept a brand new OOB one. Well, it was bought refurb, so I was surprised to get that choice. What do you think I was going to say. I walked out with the new one.
Then the fight over Apple Care started. They 'couldn't refund the old Apple Care there'. I had to call a phone number, and get the process rolling. 'Shouldn't take more than a few minutes'. No, they couldn't transfer the Apple Care I had to the new one. Hmm... I called the number on the way back. 'We are having a problem finding your agreement'. Okay, well I did just return the iMac covered by this, is that the problem? 'No'. Well, what do I do? 'Call back in a few hours, and we can look into it again'. Okay...
A couple of hours later: 'We are having a system issue, and no one is able to refund Apple Care at this point. Can you call back tomorrow?' Sure...
Next day: 'We are having a glitch. I can't find your Apple Care. Oh, wait, there it is. The system isn't letting me refund it. Hmm. Can you call back? My manager said that it's a system glitch'. Sure...
Next day: 'I can't find your Apple Care agreement. Are you sure it hasn't been refunded already?' I haven't gotten confirmation. 'That's odd. Hmm, let me look into this further'. Okay... 'Oops, my system just crashed. Can you call back?' Sure...
Next day: 'I think this has been refunded already'. Uh, nope... 'I can't find it in the system. Oh, there it is. Hmm, I'm getting an error trying to cancel it. Can you call back?' Sure...
I emailed 'steve', and got a call from 'Apple Executive Relations'. The person was very officious, and found my agreement, cancelled it, and issued the refund, and I got the notice of a 'pending cancellation' almost immediately, and a followup notice that it had been refunded to my credit card. Totally painless, and really quick. It left me wondering what the deal was with the other attempts to get this done... Weird... Happy days, but strange...
Had Apple Care. Took it to the Apple Store. The 'genius' couldn't get it to freakout, until the last second of being plugged in on their counter, and it threw a monumental snit of colors and shreds and just downright awesomeness. The genius was impressed. He immediately unplugged it, and shuffled off to the backroom to 'run diagnostics'.
Nearly an hour later, he came out looking rather odd. 'Well, we've run diagnostics, and they are showing a list of issues, but then showing nothing. (Stick with me for a minute, getting to the good part) And they offered me a choice. I could either leave it there, and they would try to fix it, with no guarantees, likely ending up replacing everything inside the case, or I could accept a brand new OOB one. Well, it was bought refurb, so I was surprised to get that choice. What do you think I was going to say. I walked out with the new one.
Then the fight over Apple Care started. They 'couldn't refund the old Apple Care there'. I had to call a phone number, and get the process rolling. 'Shouldn't take more than a few minutes'. No, they couldn't transfer the Apple Care I had to the new one. Hmm... I called the number on the way back. 'We are having a problem finding your agreement'. Okay, well I did just return the iMac covered by this, is that the problem? 'No'. Well, what do I do? 'Call back in a few hours, and we can look into it again'. Okay...
A couple of hours later: 'We are having a system issue, and no one is able to refund Apple Care at this point. Can you call back tomorrow?' Sure...
Next day: 'We are having a glitch. I can't find your Apple Care. Oh, wait, there it is. The system isn't letting me refund it. Hmm. Can you call back? My manager said that it's a system glitch'. Sure...
Next day: 'I can't find your Apple Care agreement. Are you sure it hasn't been refunded already?' I haven't gotten confirmation. 'That's odd. Hmm, let me look into this further'. Okay... 'Oops, my system just crashed. Can you call back?' Sure...
Next day: 'I think this has been refunded already'. Uh, nope... 'I can't find it in the system. Oh, there it is. Hmm, I'm getting an error trying to cancel it. Can you call back?' Sure...
I emailed 'steve', and got a call from 'Apple Executive Relations'. The person was very officious, and found my agreement, cancelled it, and issued the refund, and I got the notice of a 'pending cancellation' almost immediately, and a followup notice that it had been refunded to my credit card. Totally painless, and really quick. It left me wondering what the deal was with the other attempts to get this done... Weird... Happy days, but strange...
what was the date when they told you system glitch for refunding apple care? was this recently?
Actually, about 5 years ago. The 'glitch' seems to be a really long lasting issue... *COUGH* *COUGH*
Why would they drag their feet in refunding Apple Care? Seems weird. I was amazed it's still happening, plus mu iMac experience was really odd too...
The woman I'm working with at Apple says shes going to refund me $150 on my credit card. Haven't seen it post yet