Refurb i3 21.5 lasted 2 1/2 months and graphics card failed??

Question

I got a refurb 21.5 i3 in mid February of this year and it was a really nice machine and was fine out of the box, but, 2 1/2 months later it started getting random artifacts on the screen. I ignored it for a few days and tried doing all the usual easy things(resetting the SMC etc) they tell you to do first when you call in with a problem and nothing helped and then it became constant and icons in the dock started to "split" i.e. Safari and Firefox were next to each other and when you highlighted Safari and it magnified it appeared both in it's spot as well as half next Firefox and there was a permanent line where the dock was and I got triangle shaped pieces that looked like tears in the screen and garbled text too.
I called and they made me an appointment at the Genius Bar and they offered me a replacement after only 5 minutes of looking at it and seeing how bad it was. I am happy they gave me a new machine instead of a refurb BUT I am here 19 days later still using my trusty 1.42 Emac and the iMac sits here unopened and still sealed as I am afraid to use it as all THREE Intel Macs all failed (Mini 1.66ghz 3 motherboards in 6 months and replaced, 24" C2D iMac 2 graphics cards in 5 months and then it failed again out of Applecare warranty and I lost over $1000 in 3 years 1 month, then this last one in 2 1/2 months) I do not smoke, use an APC battery backup/sure protector, my outlet is grounded and my voltage in my house if very stable with little variation. Is there something I am missing??? I am now nearly $3600 in Macs over about 5 years and using a $100 Emac that is even older than that. Anyone else have similar experiences or can tell me what I am doing wrong to cause this? I love the Mac OS but constantly changing computers is getting very old and lugging them to the Mall 25 miles away is a real pain not to mention a great waste of time.

Answer 1

I hear that, person who I dealt with at Apple store said mine was the first of this generation of iMac he has seen with the issues I had but he too had a 24" C2D like mine with multiple graphics card failures and took a big hit on selling it as he got tired of fixing it. My biggest issue is I seem to have lost the lottery 3 times with my recent machines, transferring 250-300gb of video, 75 or so gb of music plus all my email, GarageSale etc is a pain every few months backup or not it still takes time. On average I lose 3-4 days between driving back and forth twice to the Apple store, transferring everything and getting the machine how I like it.
I sold over 60 G3 iMacs from a local school district on Ebay and out of those NONE were unusable unless they had a physical issue caused by rough handling like dropping or a failed optical drive and there were only 2 of those.
I have had G3, G4, G5 iMacs, G4 Emacs, G3,4,5 Powermacs for my own use and never had an issue like the ones I experienced with just 3 Intel based machines and every time I got a new machine it was an upgrade in speed never for a failed unit and I always sold them for a fair price and put it towards the new one. It seems as though you are almost being forced to buy a new machine soon after your warranty runs out due to failure, I am not rich by any stretch of the imagination and this seems a high price to pay for using a premium machine in my honest opinion.
Again, this just MY opinion and there seem to be 999,999 happy stories to my one sad one but everyone has a different idea of a good experience with a machine as far as service and reliability.
I am not downing Apple products as a whole as I had many,many good experiences with them to this point including Ipods, Ipads, and PPC machines but since there seems to be an endless supply of i3 21.5" refurbs on the online Apple store there has to be an inordinately high number of them coming back for one reason or another this is just simple math. I purchased a refurb for 2 reasons 1) it is cheaper not going to deny I hoped to save a few bucks on it 2) I figured a machine that was returned once would have updated parts installed and be trouble free but it was not.