Split second screen flicker on boot (Or: Help me resolve this eBay dispute)

[ness96]

I recently sold a 5,1 Mac Pro that was only a year old and has always worked flawlessly, the machine was in fantastic shape. The machine is only a few weeks out of warranty, and the buyer was fully aware of this fact. Now that the buyer has received the machine he is claiming that the video card and motherboard are faulty because he receives a display flicker on first boot. He has filed an ebay dispute (thus freezing a large chunk of money) and is refusing to troubleshoot the machine. eBay disputes are notoriously difficult for the seller to win, so I need a mountain of evidence. Further, given his dishonesty thus far, I'm worried he is going to purposely damage the machine.

Fortunately, he made a video of the issue (Occurs at the 20 second mark). The computer boots into initial setup as I installed a fresh copy of OS X Mavericks before shipping to him: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/58ngcrtzy91mgb6/hoT8ncDopR#lh:null-macstartup.MOV


The buyer:
- Admitted that he has not completed the initial setup. This means he turns the machine on, sees the split second flicker, and then switches the machine off.
- I have offered numerous tech support articles from Apple for dealing with this very issue. He has thus far refused to take any troubleshooting steps.
- Thus far he has neglected to even hook up the second Cinema Display that he claims to own.
- Ignores the fact that the flicker does not persist past the boot screen.

The Mac is a 2012 Mac Pro 5,1 Quad Core with an ATI Radeon 5770 1GB. I purchased the machine new in March 2013, and sold to him in March 2014.

The buyer is using his own monitor, which is a four year old **2010** 27 Inch LED Cinema Display from Apple.


What I am asking of the gurus here is to simply view the split second flicker on boot in the linked video and give me your honest opinion of what is happening. For myself, I'm confident of what's going on, and that there is no problem or defect with either the buyer's monitor or the Mac Pro I sold him.

Thanks for your help!

 

[bystander36]

I do not own a Mac of any kind, but Windows does that every boot as well. It is just a switch of resolution that causes it during the boot up process.

If he want go past the boot screen to see if it works normally, I don't know what to say.

 

[Jodell88]

There's nothing wrong with the computer. Every OS I've used has done the same thing.

 

[Kenmitch]

Welcome to the forum

Buyers remorse most likely.

Viewing the video you can see a circular hr glass thingy appear just below the Apple logo, just before the anomaly he's whining about. Most likely it's just loading driver(s) would be my guess.

Not sure what you can do about it if he won't even complete setup to properly test it.

 

[KingFatty]

You mentioned citing some articles on this very issue. If the issue is already known, perhaps he is exploiting that, and snapping up macs from unwary sellers like yourself just so he can squeeze some money out of the process, using a known issue?

 

[ness96]

Welcome to the forum

Buyers remorse most likely.

Viewing the video you can see a circular hr glass thingy appear just below the Apple logo, just before the anomaly he's whining about. Most likely it's just loading driver(s) would be my guess.

Not sure what you can do about it if he won't even complete setup to properly test it.

I won the case. eBay demanded he take the computer to an Apple Store for inspection, at that point he suddenly produced a newer display. With the new display there was no flicker.

Funny thing is, he started inventing other issues. After 7 days in his possession he claimed the computer started making a clicking sound in tandem with the flicker on boot. That was quickly dropped when I pointed out the hard drive is an SSD.