Who downvoted your comment and why ? This is a good comment and good strategy to teach them a lesson. Without some efforts those companies would not recall moral values. Richard Stallman was warning us about this development long ago and he was right. Cripled hardware is useless for hacking mind.

Hey, wait a second. You seem to be implying that they'll just (irresponsibly) throw out machines returned for "other" reasons, but is that true?

I think the best case is they become refurbished, which means the motherboard is kept and the outside gets scrapped?

"How do we get these companies to stop behaving like this?"

"Vote with your wallet!"

<votes with wallet by doing as OP suggests above. Mind you, NOT buying is noise - buying and returning is signal>

"Not like that!!"

Buying and returning is just a petty, wasteful thing to do.

Dude they'll just sell them to someone else. It doesn't change anything, the material and resource cost has already been paid. Stop making this about something it absolutely is not.

Companies DO care when people return something, because that is pure signal. "I got it because I thought I would like it and I don't" is a much different signal than "I have no idea what you think because I never interacted with you". That is likely one of the most effective ways to make a company sit up and take notice, the return rate of a product is a key indicator of its success.

I really don't see that there's anything to disagree with there. Loving Apple, as you may, doesn't make the above point wrong.

Do you think Apple is just going to take the computer you touched, turn around, and sell it to another person? No, they’re going to take the whole thing apart, replace all the consumables and user-facing parts, the sell it as refurbished. And that’s the best case: they might have to strip it for parts or trash it depending on what it was that you bought.

This has nothing to do with a love of Apple or anything, and everything to do with “you’re abusing a program that they are going to either ban you from, or remove because you abused it too much”.

and degrating Personal Computer into machine under control of someone else, attacking rights of the person and stripping people from privacy completely is not a wasteful thing to do? I mean, it's a garbage by defintion and sure, it takes time for people to understand this, but this machine is useless by design for freedom respecting society, it's not a waste? it's a huge waste of resources I would say. Returning product doesn't add to this too much of waste, it simply tells what it is.

Dude, you’re arguing about control to the wrong person. Apple knows about this already and you returning a bunch of devices isn’t going to get them to change their policy.

I am not buying apple stuff for 5 years already, becasue I can't stand stupidity and their macbooks pro woould just cripple my abilities and mobility with those stupid dongles, unupgradable memory and idiotic touchbars.

The only reason I could bare some of their hw is becase I knew I can put Linux when I get enough of it, and now what?

I am not buying, sophisticated people are not buying and it doesn't help so in my perspective IF something is ever going to change their policy is returning products to SEND A MESSAGE. Other option is to wait untill some dumbo get it when it'll be too late, like it was when S.Jobs has to return to save them..

Or you sugest even more strong action then returning?

They’ll stop selling the device to you or accepting your returns. So you haven’t really done much.

Also, people who complain about downvotes usually attract more. I’d suggest not doing that. Claims that there are “no valid arguments” against your position rather than nobody wanting to deal with you are, well, absurd.

If many people will do that it's a different story. May be it's ok with you and you see no danger in their strategy but I see this issue as huge attack on freedom and rights, including right for privacy. History have many examples about how people protected their rights and freedom. Returning product is very light way to send a proper message.

Recently I see more and more perfectly valid comments to be downvoted and I do not like it. If this forum will become mob controlled with bullying then I see no reason why bright people would stay here. If one doesn't want ot deal with comment, usually one moves on, like I do. But if argument is perfectly valid and instead of answer I see one simply downvotes it is bullying as it appears.

So the e-waste stops the moment they stop selling us junk?

It is greatly reduced when you stop buying things and returning them so they need to refurbish it.