Crazy but true. Well, possibly.
It seems that Apple won’t fix faulty Macs if the owners are smokers because the whiff of stale smoke apparently constitutes a ‘biohazard’ to repair staff.
A report in The Register tells of two US Mac owners being told that repairs to their machines weren’t going to be done because they contained some sort of smoke residue.
One suitably miffed Mac Mom complained about her son’s treatment at the hands of Apple’s service department:
They informed me that his computer can’t be worked on because it’s contaminated.
When I asked for an explanation, she said he’s a smoker and it’s contaminated with cigarette smoke which they consider a bio-hazard! I checked my Applecare warranty and it says nothing about not honoring warranties if the owner is a smoker. The Applecare representative said they defer to the technician and my son’s computer cannot be fixed at any Apple Service Center due to being listed a bio-hazard.
After complaining to directly to Steve Jobs (or rather, his office), one user was told that Apple would not repair machines showing signs of smoke residue, saying that nicotine is on OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration]’s list of hazardous substances and Apple would not require an employee to repair anything deemed hazardous to their health.
Mind you, we can see their point.
We once had a long running (and rather bizarre) battle with an eBay seller over a laptop they sold us that absolutely stank of fag smoke, although to be fair it wasn’t the wafty aroma that caused us the biggest problem – that was the fact that the thing was held together with matchsticks.
Oh, and Americans: ‘fags’ means ‘cigarettes’ over here in case you thought there was some sort of weird homophobia going down.
As a non smoker I must say this is absolutely ridiculous. The passive smoking danger here must be somewhere south of zero!