I'm not sure if this is the correct address to vent my concerns; if it's not, please advise.

I'm the store manager of an independently-owned computer store in Lawrence, Kansas. We've been an Apple reseller for approximately eight years. Since that time, we've had our share of good and bad times with Apple, but we've never abandoned the product line. We believed in what Apple was trying to do, even if that meant not making as much money as we would on other products. The Apple name signified quality and style and personality, three traits one could not find in any other computer product.

Unfortunately, the past 8 months have shown Apple in a different light. We've noticed more customers, many who are first-time computer purchasers, bringing their machines in for service... new machines (e.g. Summer 2000 iMacs) that would either fail after a few days of operation, or would never work right out of the box. The majority of these problems revolved around the analog/video board of these iMacs, which is not an east fix. I estimate we have 5-8 iMacs in to my store ever week to replace the analog video board in this recent line of iMacs. We've also had an increased number of G4 Towers coming in... bad power supplies, bad motherboards. We were becoming concerned about quality control issues, however we decided to continue to carry the Apple line, because we believed in it...

When the $799 iMac was finally made available, we were excited to be carrying a low-cost iMac that we knew would sell well. However, our cost surprised us: we only make $14 on a $799 iMac! Our markup on iMacs was never great to begin with... it was around the $75 mark. But $14? However, we decided to continue to carry the Apple line, because we believed in it...

When prices were dropped on January 1 without any warning to resellers, we were caught holding the bag... the Cube bag, that is. We learned that Apple was not offering any price protection (i.e. credits to make up for the loss we would take because of the lower price.). We have two Cubes on display. We only made $150/unit. Now, thanks to Apple and their apparent lack of concern to resellers, we're LOSING $150/unit. Thankfully, my store didn't have any of the other products affected in stock.

I called my Apple representative yesterday to voice my concerns. His response: "I'm sorry... I've been hearing this all day..."

Apple, are you listening? Do you care? These are poor business practices that we have never seen from any other computer company.

We're your biggest advocates. Don't make us your biggest enemies.

Sincerely,
Brandon Edling
Store Manager
UnI Computers, Lawrence, Kansas.

[Bostic]

I purchased a Summer iMac DV+ 450 at the beginning of November. After 17 days it developed the Summer iMac syndrome and a few calls to Apple support did not correct the issue. CompUSA wouldn't exchange it because it was after 14 days, unless I bought a 3 year service plan and also upgraded to the 500MHz model. I ended up bringing it to an Apple only store to get it repaired under the warranty. The gentleman there said he had 5 lined up in front of me with the same analog board issue, and averages about the same per week, 5-8 units. That seems a bit high to me. I work with Compaq PC's all day long doing help desk support, so I realize that sometimes sour units trickle in. When my company orders like 30 or 40 Deskpro's at a time, along with the same amount of monitors there might be one bad unit or faulty display. I don't want to sound like I'm slamming Apple because I love my iMac, I look forward to using it after work and getting away from Windows. If Apple would simply come out with a statement rather than one tiny article in their Knowledge Base which is all I could find regarding the analog board issue.