Crack in outer case / screen bezel on 20" iMac G5 getting worse by the week

Question

Just wondering if anyone else is having this problem ...?
About a month ago, I noticed a very small crack in the bottom left-hand corner of my iMac's outer casing - at first I thought it was a mould mark that occassionally picked up sunlight coming into the room in the mornings, as in the evenings it was barely noticabable - but more recently I it has increased in length and can be clearly seen in any light ...
Have a look at these photos .... one is with a flash & one without ...
http://tinyurl.com/ejjq6
http://tinyurl.com/hvrpg
My estimate is this crack is now growing by the week but I am not sure exactly why ... also, for the past couple of months - more & more CD's & DVDs are falling out of the 'slot load' without halting after an eject - I have also had a power supply issue recently where my machine keeps switching itself off randomly and without warning (at present I can only use it successfully for lite duties such as checking emails in Entourage & browsing) .... and my hunch is that something inside my machine is getting hot and has warped or buckled the casing.
This machine has been on my desk since new about 9 months ago - the room temparaure is around 22º - 29º celcius (70º - 85º farenheit) on average. It's never been moved or shipped anywhere & is not likely to have been damaged by anything else - as the space is mininal with a bed, desk chair & my Mac - I also live alone and am the only one who has ever used it and that 'direct sunlight' I mentioned earlier is minimal ... so it's a total mystery as to how & why this crack has appeared ...
I would like to know if anyone else has noticed any cracks in the outer casings of your iMacs .... there were a couple of previous threads from late last year, but as these have been archived I could not reply to them so have started a new post ...
you can see previous case-cracking thread here: --> http://tinyurl.com/nr2wx
And - can any of the Mac Daddy's (you know who you are in these forums give me some advice on how best to approach Apple to have it checked ?? My machine still has 3 months left of it's initial 1 year warranty - it goes in for a PSU check and/or replacement in 1 week - but something tells me I might be not be taken too seriously regarding the crack in my machine ...
Macfinger
Auckland City
New Zealand

Answer 1

Boomer ... thanks for your reply ...
Regarding my Apple approach - I went through the iBook logic board fiasco, way back in the early days before it was acknowledged by Apple to be a manufacturing flaw. The company here in Auckland who are the Apple representatives for New Zealand is a company called Renaissance (our official Apple head office is actually in Sydney, Australia) - when I first informed them of my iBook 700 starting up to a garbled start-up screen and then freezing, they told me I must have dropped it and would not consider repairing it under warranty or Apple Care. Many months of conversations, tests by Apple service technicians and eventually, talks with the management at Renaissance, and out of pocket expenses by me, eventually got me nowhere and the final conclusion was that I had misused my machine and it would not be repaired under warranty. After several discouraging months later, I eventually sold it as spare parts for a fraction of what I had paid for it ... 6 months later the iBook Logic Board fault was acknowledged - but for me, it came way too late ...
Fast forward 3 years …
I purchased my iMac G5 last July, which has now developed a serious power supply issue where it randomly shuts down without warning when processing an average size (350MBs) video file in Toast or resizing a medium size image in Photoshop with the internal fans going ballistic on a regular basis whenever a heavy task is laid on the processor - and more recently, the crack in the lower-left hand corner growing larger. Also, the disks falling out of the slot-load - & all this from a machine which apart from the above - looks in minted brand new condition ... because it really hasn't had that much use in it’s short life - if it was new car, it would only have done about 20,000kms ...
My point is. Although the PSU issue is widely acknowledged and the one in my machine is most likely to be checked & replaced by Apple NZ free-of-charge - I feel that I might not be so lucky with the cracked case. The level of service here in New Zealand I would say is but a fraction of the support one might receive in Australia & the States – or at least for me it appears that way ... you would not believe that 'attitude' I have come up against when dealing with managers at Renaissance – and any request to have a speedy check done on my iMac by 3 separate service centres will take more than a week (closer to 2 weeks) to complete as the replacement PSU has to be ordered, then shipped from Australia – there is no such thing as a routine ‘same day or next day’ service or repair! I have lodged the crack complaint with Apple Australasia through our local help-line which diverts automatically to the Apple Customer Liaison desk in Australia but when I spoke to a local service centre, an Apple tech suggested it was unlikely to be replaced if there were no other ‘documented’ accounts of cracks on other 20” G5 iMacs anywhere else. And even without seeing it, he suggested the crack has most likely been caused by ‘blunt force’.
And as I know that is not the case, I sense I am in for another battle with the honchos at Renaissance who will most likely decline the repair or replacement of the casing under warranty.
Hence the reason for this post – I am trying to gather information to help support my case. I am adamant this crack has appeared on it’s own and has not been hit by anything blunt or due to misuse.
You might be asking why I have not just taken it in already to have all 3 things checked at the same time?
Firstly, the fans started acting up about 2-3 months ago – I have performed several maintenance tasks on my machine since then (resetting the power parameters: resetting VRAM & PRAM), & other maintenance tasks (Ethernet/network tweaks & running Yasu to refresh the system) & which combined, reduced the fan noise by about 50%, & that’s something I considered I could live with, considering the amount of others in these forums who are experiencing the same problem. I figured the iMac G5 is always going to be noisy – because no-one in these forums has posted an absolute fix yet - I didn’t see the point in taking it in and being without a machine for 2 weeks, only to be told there was nothing wrong with it. It was also around this time that CDs & DVDs began falling from the slot load & down the back of my desk.
Then the crack came to my attention about a month ago, which I reported immediately to the help line (including the excessive fan noise) and was issued a specific ‘case number’– again, I was told to bring it in to a local service centre but when I called to arrange a time to drop off, I was again told it would take up to 2 weeks for an assessment – that’s when the tech suggested the crack was not a defect but damage caused by a blunt object and was unlikely to be covered under warranty.
My alarm bells starting ringing when I heard that, & I could see myself re-experiencing the long-winded battle with Apple NZ again to be taken seriously.
I was actually in the process of winding down my current assignment, (which is worth $2,000 to me) in preparation of not having a machine for 2 weeks to fix the PSU as I do not have another unit with which to work on - when my iMac started randomly switching itself off without warning last week – as a result, I have had to persevere at a snails pace – saving my work every 2 mins, as I have to get this project finished before I can afford to hire a replacement machine in the interim ….
I am stuck in a catch-22.
My machine will be going in this Monday to have all 4 malfunctions inspected: fans, PSU, cracked casing & the disc eject problem … my expectation is to have all 4 issues repaired under warranty as I have looked after this machine, as with any other machine or appliance I own – with love & with care !!
To round it all up - and I apologise for the drawn-out and rather convoluted explanation, but I am trying to find others who might also be having case/bezel issues with their G5 iMacs, which could hopefully support my claim when I come up against the impending ‘NO’ regarding the cracked casing …