[UniMacTech] Important changes to your Apple warranty

Thu Jul 16 15:14:24 EST 2009

"Australia is different from the rest of the world, they want to make 
us the same, so that if someone takes a laptop overseas they can get 
support (this is an interesting argument, as you could always purchase 
an additional overseas maintenance contract by getting APP)"

Like that helps with labs.

But, interestingly, a little bird (who should know what he's talking 
about) told me today there's an unadvertised aspect to the tricare 
warranty. No, it's not honoured overseas, but if you pay for a repair 
while overseas, Tricare will reimburse you the cost of the repair when you 
return.

So, I think that's zero for three on the 'good reasons to ditch tricare' 
list

d

Darryl Rosin

IT Support Manager, Mt Gravatt & South Bank Campuses
Griffith University AUC Developer Fund Coordinator

Element IT Services
Division of Information Services
South Bank Campus
Griffith University 4111 Australia

d.rosin at griffith.edu.au
t: 04 1876 0956

PRIVILEGED – PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
This email and any files transmitted with it are intended solely for the 
use of the addressee(s) and may contain information which is confidential 
or privileged.  If you receive this email and you are not the addressee(s) 
[or responsible for delivery of the email to the addressee(s)], please 
disregard the contents of the email, delete the email and notify the 
author immediately

From:
Matt Gray <Matt.Gray at anu.edu.au>
To:
University Macintosh Technical Mailing List <unimactech at auc.edu.au>
Date:
16/07/2009 02:47 PM
Subject:
Re: [UniMacTech]  Important changes to your Apple warranty

On 16/07/2009, at 1:35 PM, Adrian Smith wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Did that session happen? Can someone please summarise the outcome of 
> the session for those of us not fortunate enough to be there?

My take on the session - please note that my understanding might not 
be complete, and also note that anything I say isn't an attack on the 
Apple employee who bravely stood up the front.  He was given a hard 
job and did well with the material that he was allowed to present.

Other people probably have a better understanding and can clear up 
some of my thoughts below:

(1) TriCare is going.

Reasons given include:

Australia is different from the rest of the world, they want to make 
us the same, so that if someone takes a laptop overseas they can get 
support (this is an interesting argument, as you could always purchase 
an additional overseas maintenance contract by getting APP).

There is a move from departments/unis buying laptops to individual 
staff or students buying them, and Apple wants to support them better, 
and they think they can't do it with TriCare.  (Personally I think 
this argument is a load of crap, because individuals don't get TriCare 
anyway, Apple dropped that years ago.  How is dropping TriCare for 
departments going to help support the larger number of individual 
purchasers?).

Apple is ranked high in customer satisfaction, and that is because of 
the software support, and they want to give individuals more software 
support, and they can't do that if TriCare is in place (again... WTF?).

And the one I loved:  Recent price drops for hardware mean you wont 
even notice the cost of additional maintenance.  Nice.

(2) Replacements are many and varied:

You can get AppleCare Protection Plan, which has always existed.  This 
adds hardware maintenance to the 3rd year, and telephone support to 
the 3rd year.  Cost varies from product to product, but is in the 
range of $150 - $380 based on what I've seen.

You can get as above, but with an SLA as to how long replacements will 
take.  This adds a small amount (about 25% again) to the cost of the 
maintenance.

There is a Software Support offering, where you pay $2900 per 
institution per year to have two of your employees able to contact 
Apple for any client software support.  If you could funnel all of 
your Mac software support through two people, it would be worth the 
money!

There is also a Server version of above, which is $7000 per year per 
institution.  Again, only two people can be nominated as the contacts.

Or, you can pick and choose from a multitude of different things.  You 
can get just hardware maintenance with no telephone support.  You can 
get just telephone support.  You can get a battery warranty.  You can 
combine these things.  The kicker is that if you go this way, Apple is 
going to negotiate a price with each university separately.  The price 
for one uni for a 2 year maintenance deal might be different to 
another uni for the same thing, depending on the negotiation power of 
your particular uni contracts person.  This will be a per machine 
cost, and despite many questions about this at the X World session, 
Apple simply refused to give any indication as to pricing.  The line 
was "your uni will talk to Apple and work out a price".

(3) Outcomes of the session:

Pretty much everyone in the room was pissed, and Apple reps knew it. 
Apple reps got swamped with shouty people after the session, so who 
knows what happened there.

A few people were frankly shocked that Apple is going down the "each 
uni has a secret price with us" route, and many suggestions were made 
that we should all publish our prices somewhere so people can see what 
is being offered.  The AUC was suggested as a place to publish these 
prices - I don't know how that would go politically or legally.

Overall, people were upset that Apple is presenting this as "We want 
to do all your desktop support for users so they like Macs better than 
if you help them".

Fun times ahead!

(4) Things not discussed:

I was interested in the argument that the ACCC would be unhappy that 
Apple products die in the first 3 years anyway.  I think this is worth 
investigation - if every uni refused to purchase additional 
maintenance and started sending ACCC forms to Apple, it would be quite 
funny I think.

Again, these are my views on what was said - they may differ from 
reality.

Matt.

_______________________________________________
unimactech mailing list
unimactech at auc.edu.au
http://www.auc.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/unimactech

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://auc.uow.edu.au/pipermail/unimactech/attachments/20090716/6360ff3d/attachment-0001.html