what's a broken iBook worth?

March 2, 2008 10:34 PM

A repair shop destroyed a non-working iBook. What would be a reasonable recompense?

My hard-up student daughter took her mostly-dead iBook for repair (screen went fuzzy while booting, and the boot-up didn't complete). She paid $100 up front for diagnosis. The shop said they thought the cause was broken video cable connection, and quoted $275 to try to repair it (including the $100 diagnosis fee) but said they were not sure that would fix it.

My daughter declined, deciding to have me try to repair it (I'd recently replaced my Powerbook's power card), but left the iBook in the shop several weeks. When she collected the unrepaired machine she saw two or three keytops and the vent screen were missing; for that reason the shop later refunded the $100 diagnostic fee.

A couple of months later (last month), I opened up the iBook case to get some files off the hard disk, and to prep for repair. Inside it's a mess: parts missing and parts broken (details below.) It looks as though someone just threw some parts into the case then shut it, after cannibalizing it. The machine as returned by the shop is utterly beyond repair.

We sent two letters (the second by certified delivery) listing the damage details and asking the repair shop owner to propose a settlement, but had no response whatever. So we're thinking my daughter should send the shop a bill and then to go to small claims if necessary.

Ads for similar used (but working) iBooks ask $250 to $500. How much should we bill the repair shop? Is it reasonable to ask for extra beyond the value of the broken machine? Or to charge for my time (I'm a software engineer of 20+ years)? At a minimum they should surely pay for the parts they did not return. This is in California. Should we contact the BBB?

The machine:

12" iBook G3; 800 MHz, 40GB HD, 640 MB RAM; DVD/CD ROM; Airport card; OSX 10.4

The damage:

Missing: 512 MB add-in RAM; Airport card; modem; heatsink; hard drive connector & ribbon; optical drive ribbon; motherboard-to-power-card cable; all motherboard mounting screws; other small parts;

Broken: chassis has big pieces broken off and missing; optical drive is damaged several different ways.

posted by anadem to computers & internet (16 comments total)

California Courts: Self-Help Center: Small Claims
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:38 PM on March 2, 2008

Advice on the amount to claim would be helpful please.
posted by anadem at 10:43 PM on March 2, 2008

The link I provided has pointers to people who can advise you.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:52 PM on March 2, 2008

~$325
posted by Rubbstone at 11:23 PM on March 2, 2008

The missing parts could be theft. I'd make a police report, and see if that gets you anywhere. Don't bother with the BBB. Do contact the Attorney General's office or other governmental consumer protection offices.

Assuming the parts are returned, I'd say a fair value for the broken iBook is whatever a used one will cost minus $275. After all, that's how much you thought it was worth to make your broken iBook a working used iBook before they really broke it. But you might want to use that as a settlement value; sue them for the full cost of a broken iBook. I'd wait to see if anything happens with the police first, but make sure you find out what the statute of limitations is.
posted by grouse at 1:13 AM on March 3, 2008

Answering your second question, in the comments. (Standard disclaimer: I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.)

There are generally only two effects from choosing a number for the amount of damages you request in court. First, and most important, you can't get more money than you asked for. So, if the judge is on your side, and would grant you up to $500, but you only ask for $100, that's all you'll get. Second, and less important, asking for an unreasonable amount of money may make the judge look slightly unfavorably on your case. A judge should try to look past this, but it's a human nature type of thing. I think that would only really come into play if you asked for some truly absurd amount (like the price of a new laptop plus pain and suffering for example).

You're right that you're probably entitled to something less than the cost of a working used laptop, but the judge is the one that will actually decide how much you get.
posted by kingjoeshmoe at 2:24 AM on March 3, 2008

Grouse's police report suggestion is quite clever. You may find that the shop is more willing to compensate you after an "unrelated" visit from police about missing parts.

It's also free.
posted by rokusan at 3:11 AM on March 3, 2008

Tell us the name of the "shop" and let it be googleable forever more....
posted by thejoshu at 4:27 AM on March 3, 2008

+1 Rokusan and Grouse. Take it up with the owner.
posted by unSane at 4:47 AM on March 3, 2008

$350 sounds good. Negotiate from there.
posted by electroboy at 6:37 AM on March 3, 2008

Keep in mind that they used your laptop for parts -- the collection of which may be worth more than the broken laptop as a whole. That may allow you to bump up the price a bit, if you look at it in terms of what they gained/saved by cannibalizing your laptop, rather than just what you lost.
posted by misterbrandt at 7:32 AM on March 3, 2008

Since your daughter left it in the shop for several weeks, the shop may be able to claim the computer is their property. They should've given her a slip when she dropped it off for an estimate. It may say that unclaimed property left for x days is their property. You should check that out before going before the judge.
posted by Monday at 8:43 AM on March 3, 2008

Seconding misterbrandt: if the shop really did harvest parts from the laptop then it's likely they used those parts in other machines (meanwhile telling other customers that they were getting new parts perhaps.) So, it's possible that the shop made quite a bit of money off of your stolen parts.

Forget the model or the age or whatever. Think about the replacement cost. $1000 is not an unreasonable amount for a new laptop, and certainly not an amount that a judge will balk at.

That said, I'm concerned about the time frame involved here. Your daughter left the laptop at the shop for several weeks? You took a couple of months to open it up? That may come up in court so you should have a suitable explanation for why (after many months) you're just now getting around to following up on this matter.
posted by wfrgms at 8:48 AM on March 3, 2008

A non-booting 12" iBook G3; 800 MHz, 40GB HD, 640 MB RAM; DVD/CD ROM; Airport card; OSX 10.4 with a not fully diagnosed video problem... and the owner told the shop "It's not worth fixing"

Fair market value on that has got to be less than $200, at best. It'd be easy to get an expert witness to declare a machine with those specs to be obsolete to the point of nearly worthless, even before determining that it won't boot.

Reasonable recompense here is going to be to trash the shop's reputation, and make things more difficult for those at the shop. Talk to your local TV stations' consumer reports people, and yes, file a police report.

It's lame that your repair people treated you this way, and you should defintely contact the cops, BBB, Yelp.com, and anywhere else you feel you can get the word out. But recompense? Please. You gave them a broken computer. Upon a quote for more than the machine's value, you told them not to fix it. You then left it there for weeks, and when you did pick it up, they gave you $100 in exchange for what they believed to be abandoned, surplus parts.

This is not worth the time of a 20-year software engineer. Your daughter's (and your) months of inaction very clearly defines how much this machine is worth to you. How exactly did it become worth more when you discovered that it was missing parts?
posted by toxic at 9:19 AM on March 3, 2008

Go straight to small claims for the price of a new replacement MacBook: $1500 or so. You don't have to pay the $275, and if the shop wants to tell the judge that they shouldn't have to pay that much because it wasn't working, then that's pretty much an acknowledgment by the store that they /should/ pay something. "Them: Hey, that's too much! Judge: Why?"

All she has to say is that she turned it into the shop and they returned it in pieces (bring photos, or the laptop itself). If the judge asks why it was going into the shop, she can truthfully say she doesn't know, but that it wasn't booting right. That's it. If the shop doesn't think they should have to pay the cost of a working replacement, then THEY'LL have to tell the story about how it got into the junky state that chaps your hide. Make the store defend themselves, they'll only readily dig themselves into the hole required for the entire history to be told.

The judge is not going to look down on you for wanting the easiest solution, a comparable new laptop. You should be able to resolve this as quickly as possible and the judge isn't going to tell her that she should wait until the perfect match comes up on Craigslist or EBay. It's just not gonna happen that way, and it's not gonna be "let the shop find you another one." The shop has blown any trust for providing good faith adequate service.

Judges like solutions along the lines of "Laptop. Yesterday." That this is a COMPUTER STORE that is mocking you in this way should go extra toward an easy resolution for you. You do not return equipment entrusted to you this way, and their behavior in this is (or should be, by my values) unacceptable.
posted by rhizome at 1:13 PM on March 3, 2008

Oh and yes, once you get them served for a small-claims case you can get discovery on their records to find out what other iBooks they worked on in that period. This will possibly provide the names of people to whom the store sold stolen property. If they charged full price to the customers, the shop could be in big trouble indeed. You can drop this worm into the judges ear: How many other people have they done this to?
posted by rhizome at 1:17 PM on March 3, 2008