24" screen problem -- hellish experience

Question

Well this certainly has been a long road through **** that Apple has dragged me through with this 24” aluminum iMac. After a number of calls, and hours of my time to AppleCare complaining about the left side of my screen being twice as bright as the right side, they insisted that I do an erase and install to make sure that I wasn’t having a software problem. That alone is not a pleasant experience, and consumed more hours of my time. Finally, AppleCare agreed that they should send someone for a site repair. The first replacement of the screen somehow resulted in a dead computer. The technician had to come back again and install a new power supply and logic board. At that time the technician was told by an Apple engineer that non-uniform brightness problems on screens are usually due to one of those two boards anyway. Well, it made no difference. After talking again to Apple, he was told to replace the the video board, so he had to come back a third time. It’s time consuming opening these things and putting them back together, so this literally consumed three afternoons of my life and time off from work. In the end, there was no improvement, so the technician had to call Apple again and tell them that there’s still a problem. At that point, Apple decided to send me a new computer. Needing to erase my personal information on the original one before I sent it back, I was going to do a reformat of the hard drive. However, when I attempted to insert the install disk, I discovered that the optical drive curtain had been mangled by the last repair, and it wouldn’t go in. I was forced to pick through all of my directories selecting stuff to move to the trash in order to do a secure delete. This consumed another several hours.
So, I returned the original, and got a new one several days later, which strangely was mailed directly from California and arrived with an odd serial number beginning with a “QP”. Now the new one has the same problem. At first I was encouraged in that it seemed to be better than the old one after a short warm up, and I decided to give it a few more days. Well, it got worse and started behaving just like the old one. So last week I emailed someone from the AppleCare Admin team who had sent me information about the shipment saying, basically, that I just wanted to return this defective thing, but never received a reply. I also called his extension yesterday asking for a call back, and that hasn’t happened, and as yet, I’ve received no response. So, I had to start at the bottom of the food chain again, calling the usual AppleCare number. This time, I got someone in India rather than California. After attempting to explain what has been going on, she seemed to ignore what I was saying and immediately launched into the old “power down your computer, unplug it, etc.” Good grief, we’ve already been through this several times. After I explained that I just wanted to return it, she actually had the gaul to suggest that I take yet another morning or afternoon off from work and haul this thing to the nearest Apple Store for evaluation by an “Apple Genius”. (That terminology turns my stomach. I’ve known a number of truly brilliant and accomplished people in my life time, and they never refer to themselves or other people as “geniuses.” It’s trashy) At that point, I asked to talk to her supervisor. After a pause, she said, yes, and I was transferred to a number that rang and I was confronted with the dreaded menu again which finally led me to a number that rang and hung up. I called AppleCare back again, and was told it would be at least 15 minutes, so I just hung up again. I feel like a character stuck in a nightmarish Kafka novel.
This has been a hellish experience. Hours and hours of time, and tons of stress, and I’m nowhere. I have a serious chronic medical condition, and this stress is not doing me well.

Answer 1

I only had my 24" Alu for 3 days, but after reading these forums and from being in IT for 13 years, I just knew this was no Circuit Board or software issue. ****, just reading all the people that are having problems tells you this is no circuit board or software problem, especially when they are connecting a second display up to the external port which works fine, suggests there is a major flaw in the iMac screens.
It's a real shame too, because after using my dads White iMac 20", which is a dream to use, I was really looking forward to these new iMacs, but with this major screen flaw, it gives me a headache and I just wasn't going to accept this as normal, so took it back, checked the swap out machine which also had the problem and just got my Money back.
It appears Apple really need to take notice of this problem, because it could very much hurt them a lot, and it's quite possible what Apple needs right now is a good kick up the rear because they need to acknowledge this as a very real problem.
Not sure if you're from the UK or not Arielle, but I wonder how these screens would stand up to the Trade of Goods act, being that they are not fit for purpose, which is displaying a uniform picture at an acceptable brightness that can be achieved on a lot cheaper screen and PC combination.
I hope they are going to fix it, because I would like one, but if Apple aren't going to show any care for it, then I will end up getting a PC upgrade, which is something I didn't want to do.