That’s right – apparently if your MAC computer, netbook or otherwise, shows sign of you being a smoker, Apple won’t repair your system even if it’s under a warranty. According to the company, evidence of cigarette smoke constitutes a biohazard.

According to reports, two individual repair centres in America told users that they couldn’t repair the ‘contaminated’ systems. Despite having nothing in the service warranties about smokers and their rights, Apple told one of their customers that they defer to the technician in such cases, and wouldn’t fix the problem.

If the problem had been that heavy smoking had caused the computer to fail or that the customers had been abusing the system in a similar fashion, we’d understand Apple’s logic here. As it stands though, it seems absurd and perhaps illegal to refuse to fix a laptop simply because it has some nicotine stains.

It’s especially rich coming from a company that still uses Arsenic in its hardware, which could certainly be considered as ‘harmful’ a nicotine stain. Regardless of the logic though, it seems like heavy smokers might want to consider switching over to using a computer instead. We’re pretty sure there aren’t many PC manufacturers that wouldn’t honour the warranties of a smoker.

In related news, the Office of Fair Trading has dragged Apple’s terms and conditions back into line this week with the company now accepting liability for goods sold via iTunes as well as instating a 7 day cooling off period where users can get a full refund on a product purchased online.


Written by: Douglas, who runs a website about UK SEO Agency