Apple and Google do take very cold, inhuman approaches toward customer service (or lack of it.) Except in the case of the Apple Store where the employees are generally quite friendly, even if their actual helpfulness varies greatly from individual to individual.
That said, it would be moronic of them to allow comments/threads which are advocating people to take legal action against the company on their own boards. It doesn't matter if the customer is right or not, those kinds of posts are only going to result in more angry, pitchfork wielding customers. I expect pretty much any company, even ones much more customer friendly than Apple, would remove such posts.
I found them quite helpful when I sent my N7 for RMA, too. Seems like they get it right for paying public consumers - I guess that's the demo that's critical to your reputation. Everybody expects corporate clients and free public users to get crapped on, but once you're paying for a physical widget you expect the warranty signed in blood.
I don't know, I had to RMA my Nexus 7 twice (both due to faulty hardware, one was missing the physical buttons entirely and the other was reporting 1GB total space) and both times Google didn't want to process the RMA or wanted me to send it to Asus who would them send it to Google (while both companies placed a ~$400 lien on my card) and take 1+month.
Yup. The problem seems a small matter of an OTA software update. The solution being posted - and deleted - is demanding a replacement of >US$500 of hardware. Whatever the reason for not fixing the actual problem, what's being advocated as a solution isn't: it's just a way of counter-irritating the company into (one hopes) releasing an actual fix. Abusive behavior is not corrected by abusive behavior in return. There's some reason the correct fix hasn't been released (whether you agree with the reason or not), Apple doesn't want to talk about it for whatever reason makes sense to them, and of course will stop any advocacy of malicious behavior on their servers designed to manipulate the company into doing something they have reason not to.
Responding to that lack of delivery by abusing an unrelated legality, as a means to raise the stakes until a fix occurs, is. It's like screaming at someone until they do what you want, even if they think there's a good reason not to and you don't know what the reason is.
Your product doesn't work and the company refuses to support it or fix the issue. What are you supposed to do, suck it up and be happy with your $500 paperweight?
The known fix for the early 2011 MBP's with the discrete GPU glitch is to stick in a fresh version of the same motherboard with the same glitch.
I replaced my board under Applecare for free a few months ago, so I'm a lot less pissed that the issue came back than I would had I paid the non-Applecare repair price of $500. Now I'm debating whether I want to replace my logic board yet again only to have the issue come back a few months later.
That said, it would be moronic of them to allow comments/threads which are advocating people to take legal action against the company on their own boards. It doesn't matter if the customer is right or not, those kinds of posts are only going to result in more angry, pitchfork wielding customers. I expect pretty much any company, even ones much more customer friendly than Apple, would remove such posts.