Money Laundering

You have helped me in the past and here I am writing you again.  I'm sure you get complaints about Apple all the time.  I have had a lousy year with their products and their passive aggressive customer service.  We have had three terrible experiences with them since Sept of this year.

We purchased a $3500 15" Macbook Pro for my son to take away to school in the US August of 2013.  A month out of warranty, his screen gets a pixelated line across it.  He is told too bad so sad, nothing we can do.  We would be happy to send it in for you and replace the screen for $1200.  He is currently living with the defective screen which, as a design student, is problematic.

In June, he dropped and broke his iphone5.  We took it to apple and we spend $300 on a replacement refurb phone which came with a 90 day warranty.  My son goes to school in the US.  A month out of the warranty period, the refub phone dies and gets stuck on the Apple start up logo shortly after the release of ios8.  He takes it into the Apple store in Michigan and is told, sorry the warranty is 90 days even though the problem is a manufacturing defect of the screen mother board connection.  We'd be happy to replace it for another $300.  Having very little choice, he paid $300 for yet another refurbished phone.

The final straw happened today.  I purchased a refurbished 13" Apple Macbook from from Apple's Canadian on line retail operation in August.  My daughter caually tells me Christmas morning that the webcam on it has never worked. I called Applecare yesterday and they said take it into the Apple store. We took it in to Toronto Eaton Centre today.  I spoke with Adam who said he is the manager.  I was told that because I bought it on line from APPLE CANADA as refurb its considered a US purchase.  He also informed me that it is illegal to return items from another country because its money laundering.  That is right, I was accused of money laundering by the staff at Apple because they sold me a defective product.  At no point did I bring up that i have family living in the US with this person.  I did, however, tell him that I knew for a fact that this was an outright bold faced lie.  I have returned many items purchased in the US including things from Costco, American Eagle, and Target without a bat of an eye.  I was also told that I should take the computer home and call apple care and lie to them and say I gave it to her for Christmas because Apple will refund my money if I do this.   All of this conversation happened in front of my 15 year old daughter.

I am insulted by my experience today.  Being lied to by staff who feign understanding is outrageous.  I do believe that Apple will eventually fix my daughters macbook but I will likely have to make four or five trips to actually make that happen which is a huge hassle and time suck.  The iphone and the 15" macbook I believe are lost causes.  I realize that Apple is notorious for their stonewalling but accusing a legitimate customer of money laundering is beyond crazy.

If you have a similar lousy Apple story, I'd love to hear it.  Its time to for them to step up the accountability here.