severe screen damage on a 30" Apple display

[luis bustamante]

A very sad day indeed:

Last night a framed picture fell off the wall and hit the screen of my 30" Apple Cinema Display in 2 parts leaving profound scratches in both places. One is so deep that background light leaks awfully through it, the other doesn't present light leakage but is quite deep as well.

Here are 2 crappy cell phone pics of the bleeding scratch (taken with the LCD showing a pure black image):

http://homepage.mac.com/luisbustamante/LCDscratch.jpg

I'm already trying to find out if Apple can fix this, but I know the people here has a tremendous amount of experience, so maybe someone can provide some advice on what my options are or give me some suggestions on how to approach this. I'm fearing that the repair will be so expensive that I might as well be better off buying a new display.

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks for your help.

[Clayton Harper]

I just sent my 30" cinema in for service. They have service tiers for the amount of damage. If there is like cable or board failure, I think its in the range of $650 for apple to repair it. Tier 2 I think covers screen replacement although not sure it means screen and lamp. Tier 2 starts at like $1200 I think which means buy a new used 30" on ebay and commit the old one to an episode of Will it Blend.

[Bruce Allen]

That sucks, sorry!

You can buy a new wide-gamut Dell 30" for $1270.
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=222-7175

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[luis bustamante]

So, it is as bad as I suspected...

I guess I'll just learn to live with my new friend the Scratch and wait for new monitors to come out, maybe a RED 4k, or another 30" after new Apple/Dell displays come out and prices fall down (can't afford $1200 now). Anyway I see it, the scar is here to stay and I'll be staring at it for some time.

Thanks for the answers, they're greatly appreciated. I won't have it blended yet, though, maybe in a few months, I'll let you know!

[chuck colburn]

What's "blended" ?

[luis bustamante]

lord number zero kindly suggested to commit it an episode of Will it Blend (http://www.willitblend.com/). click the url to see what he means...

[chuck colburn]

What's a url?

[luis bustamante]

jaja, sorry for not being clear, I meant: click on the weblink that i embedded on the name "will it blend", but here it is anyway: http://www.willitblend.com/

[chuck colburn]

jaja, sorry for not being clear, I meant: click on the weblink that i embedded on the name "will it blend", but here it is anyway: http://www.willitblend.com/

Now that's just wierd! Although I do want a Blendtec 20 ampere mdl. w/-10db. reduced sound level. LOL

Thanks

[Tom Lowe]

Dang, sorry to hear that. What kind of warranty do you have?

These days I buy all my stuff from Dell with their super-duper, bumper-to-bumper "complete care" warranties. On my laptop the warranty cost me like $200 for four years. Already I have had the LCD, harddrive, and RAM replaced! The LCD cracked because I grabbed it and crushed it, but Dell asked no questions. They just replaced it. In fact, if I run the thing over with my car, they'll just give me a new one --- which is what I might do a few years from now. ;)

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Luis, sorry for your misfortune. That screen definitely needs serious repair and I'm not sure how Apple will handle that. Best thing to do is take it in to a service shop and see what they say. I'm guessing you'll end up buying a new one. If so, definitely get the new Dell 30" mentioned here. Apple hasn't updated their 30" ACD with the new Samsung or LG panel systems and the Dell and HP models currently have a superior backlight system and give better color.

[luis bustamante]

Jeff, yeah, I'll have to take it to an Apple Store, hear the bad news straight from the source. From what lord#0 said and what I've researched on the net, it does not look good at all. $1200 at the least for repairing or a new Dell at somewhat that price.

Tom, I'm out of warranty since I bought the display almost 2 years ago and I didn't get AppleCare (even though I wonder if this would be covered by it).

I'll get by with this one until Red, Apple and all the usual suspects unveil the next generation of displays, hopefully 4k, hopefully this year (yeah right!). As I said earlier, I'll be looking at this damn light scratch for a long time.

Thanks to all for your support in my mourning.

[Curran Giddens]

Man... that really sucks! :angry03:

and these things used to cost $3300 + $1200 repair would be $4,500!

better just keep it. IMO.

Also, you need to buy display with cpu in order to get it covered under AppleCare.

And here I was worried about a couple dead pixels on my 30" cinema display....

[John Moores]

Wow. That's a stroke of bad luck.
And here's me thinking this stuck pixel on mine is the end of the world.

No more pictures in the edit suite.

Jm

[Simon Dean]

Do you not have insurance to cover accidental damage?

Some of my stuff is covered through household and some through specialist insurance - like cameras and computers etc.

[luis bustamante]

thanks for the support! I knew here people would understand the real depth of my loss.

Curran, yeah, that's what I paid and at the time and I justified the expensive price tag thinking that "no matter what" this would always be a gorgeous display. Guess NOT. As I said before I won't do anything until next gen displays arrive. My friend the scratch is here to stay with me for a long time.

Simes, no insurance, mate. All the industry changes discussed here have us in the process of changing a lot of things (location, financial regime, etc) and then this happens. It's a bit like turning your head to change the tune in your ipod while driving and that's when the naked fat lady comes out from nowhere... you get the idea.

johnny, you summarize it nicely... ugh! the hurting!

and Regista, after one day it's not THAT distracting, hopefully I'll get so used to it I won't even see it after some more days (yeah right!). No harm was done to the picture other that what it suffered from the fall, I drained all my energy yelling to the person that decided to put the darned picture there in the first place (none other than myself, so you can imagine).