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Apple Tops Consumer Reports List
memoryhole writes "It seems Apple has come out on top in recent Consumer Reports surveys regarding technical support and hardware failure. Way to go Apple!"
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You know... I somehow miss the hassles from tinkering with Linux distros: it taught me a lot of things. Sigh! My OsX only panicked twice in 4 months! (USB)
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
The difference between Apple "Inoperable Failure" machines and Dell "Inoperable Failure"machines looks to be very small - the real difference between them is in machines that were "Broken but Still Operable".
Maybe they're seeing people who got their computers working, then discovered they were running XP...
[ducks, runs for cover...]
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I had the misfortune of having my logic board fried by an "analog" hotel phone line within the first year of owning my Powerbook. Apple swapped it out for free.
Free Airborne shipping back & forth too.
Once, in the late 80's, I was young and was over at a friend's house. He father had two of the old B&W Macs sitting on his desk. One had a crack in the screen and was obviously broken. The other looked like it hadn't been touched in a while.
.. in the course of the conversation, we started talking about computers and I asked him if his Mac worked.
We were playing with Legos in the room when the father came in and starting chatting with us
All of a sudden, he stopped cold and stared out the window, with his mouth half-open. I thought maybe he was having a stroke or something, but eventually he swallowed and said in a monotone "THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH MY APPLE COMPUTERS. THEY WORK PERFECTLY."
And then he left the room. It freaked me out a little. My friend looked at me and shrugged. "Don't ask him about those computers. My mom has a Tandy that she uses to do her work and every time we talk about the Apples dad spazzes like that, so we just don't talk about it."
I didn't think about it much after that, I mean I had this one friend who freaked out anytime you touched his guitar without washing your hands.. people are like that sometimes.
But over the years I noticed this more and more. Apple computer owners simply don't admit any problems with their machines, and when confronted, their eyes glaze over and they refuse to talk about it.
Friends, girlfriends, relatives; Mac Classics, Powerbooks, iMacs... I've seen it with all of them. The funny thing is, it's only the Mac owners, folks who just use a Mac don't seem to suffer from it.
I wondered about this for a long time, ever since that strange day in 1988. That is, until last week.
That's when I saw the sunflower. It's on the back of their necks.
Every Mac owner has a small sunflower-shaped tatoo on the back of their neck, just inside where the hair grows. It's about 3mm in diameter. I'd never noticed it before. I didn't know what to make of it at first.
I was fooling around with this cute graphic designer friend, just teasing her one night, and I saw it. Then I saw it on my uncle, a hard-core Mac user. Last week I saw it on our Unix sysadmin as he bent over to pick up a cable for his iBook.
Well I had to find out what this was about. I tried mentioning it but they all denied its existence. Just yesterday I went to the nearest Apple store and waited and watched.
Yes, it was as I thought. Every new Apple purchaser was taken to a small, gleaming white room with a curtain, supposedly to pick up their Mac. As they came out with their bags, some of them stopped to rub the backs of their necks.
Now I understood.
I also understood why Apple made it so difficult to become an Apple reseller: the store had to have "Special Equipment".
I have no idea what that tattoo means, or what happens to those poor people in that smooth white room, but I can tell you one thing: I'm not touching a Mac ever again.
is their delivery carrier.
Airborne seems to leave packages at random times at my doorstep, and sometimes will honor my signed instructions to them if I'm not there, sometimes will not. Their customer service sucks as well. Any problems need to be kicked along a chain of command that moves with the blazing speed we've come to expect from slugs and other slimy invertabrates.
Apple's response to my bitching about not getting iLife with my new 12" PB was to send me 3 copies immediately.
Dell's response to my having to unplug a new harddrive to get XP to install to a "c" drive on my new Dell was, "it's an OEM version of XP, that's what you'll have to do".
Last Dell I'm buying. Last Windows machine.
Apple failed all consumer reports for not adequately dealing with the customers calling in for hardware/software issues on X86 compatible clones people built in their garages.
I had a sucky sig.
I've worked repairing Toshiba, Compaq and Apple laptops.
customers who have problems with their Tosh. or Compaq laptops are by far more laid back about delays in service and rarely complain about cost of repairs.
where as when anything goes wrong with an Apple laptop it's far more frequent to get a customer that'll complain like their throats ben cut.
it's quite funny sometimes when they get all riled up and resort to the old "I'm gonna trade it in for a PC" line. when I know the service procedures for other manufacturers is nowhere near as streamlined as Apple's
Subscribers will see that the eMac scores higher than the low-end machines by Dell, HP, Sony, Gateway and eMachines. Even with a higher price it gets a better overall score.
:-)
They say nothing about it having a one button mouse, though
Also: the Consumer Reports website is an excellent source of information. Well worth the monthly or yearly subscription.
I have been a mac user for years and their customer support has been very good, until now. I go to buy a 15" powerbook last week and i find out that i am not qualified to receive anything out of AppleCare because i am (a) a student and (b) a resident of Florida. The guy couldn't explain to me why, but thats what he told me. He told me i am unqualified to receive support from apple because i'm a floridian college student. WTF? Does anyone know about this? I thought they had good customer service before. But now i'm not so sure. Why they would say "yeah, we'll give support to this child in new york, or this parent in washington state, but forget those floridian college students"?
I got a Pismo PowerBook (my 2nd) off Ebay and it arrived with bright blue lines in the screen For those who don't know, a screen swap is $1050 and up. The Seller, Ebay, Paypal, Trust-E, all offered nothing -- zero help from any of them. Insurance I paid for on the shipment was denied by the carrier.
I was so bummed I thought I would call Apple, just to learn if I had been ripped off by the seller, or if the multiple verticle blue lines in the display could have in fact been a shipping issue.
I called Apple and talked first to a CSR who chuckled when she looked up my name because of the many Macs I own. Then she forwarded me to a tech, who spent 45 minutes explaining the details of how my problem could have possibly been caused in shipping, but was not a certainty. But, since I did not buy it from an authourized reseller, I was SOL on warranty work. I told him he blew my mind with his kindness in speaking to me for so long for free. Then we hung up.
20 minutes later the tech called back and said they would take a look at it "just to see" if it was an Apple problem, and I would see a pre-labelled post-paid return shipping box in the mail tomorrow. I sent it in and FOUR DAYS LATER had my Pismo back in hand with a brand new screen at no charge.
My next computer? Guess.
it's quite funny sometimes when they get all riled up and resort to the old "I'm gonna trade it in for a PC" line.
You just described me.
The motherboard on my first Mac died one month after the warranty expired. I wouldn't pay for a new motherboard. I told the repair rep that I'd replace it with a PC. She gave me a phone number. I guess it was their pissed-off-customer hotline. The new rep agreed to cut the price in half, so I bought the repair.
My iBook returned less than 72 hours after I mailed it across the US. Still works great today. Count me in for a new G5 / PowerPC 970.
Okay, see this from Apple's point-of-view. Let's say your're the person working at Apple. Someone calls and says he/she baught an open copy of AppleCare at CompUSA and wants to apply that to a computer he/she now owns. How do you reply? You look up the numbers and see that that said service has been registerred by someone else. How do you now "know" that the person on the phone is telling the truth? How can you distinguish this from, say, someone who lifted it out of another person's house because he/she found it lying on a table during a party? Think about it. As has been said, the onus is on YOU to prove to Apple that you're now the proper owner ... not on Apple. Now whether you can bring get on CompUSA's case is another thing ... but don't expect Apple to do this for you -- you have to do this for yourself.
I bought my first mac a few months ago, a 12" iBook, and it has been badass. It had a catastrophic failure at one point that rendered it unable to boot. I got on the phone with Apple and they sent me a box the next day. I shipped it on a Tuesday night, waited a day, and it was waiting for me at work on Thursday with a new mobo and processor.
Apple's custormer support has impressed the hell out of me, and this will not be my last Mac.
I got an iBook in May 2002 for Graduation from my parents. I used it everywhere.
:)
Around December I was sitting in my dorm at college and leaned the chair back on the power plug (the part that goes into the ibook with the colored ring) and squashed it. I tried to make it circle again and it fit with some pushing. I got home for xmas break and one day went to pull out the power adapter from the ibook. The bare leads ripped out of the adapter, beckoning me with certain death at the hands of Apple.
I called AppleCare, as I was still under my 1yr factory warranty. They sent me a brand new adapter in a postage-paid returnable box. All was well.
Around March my new power adapter stopped working on me. I did the same thing and got a brand new one in the mail. Soon thereafter my batter y started holding no more than about a 20 minute charge. After calling AppleCare and talking with some awesomely helpful techs I got a brand new ibook battery for free in a postage-paid returnable box.
Finally, last month my hard drive started making a "clicking" noise when I tried to edit this one song in iTunes. I called AppleCare and they advised me to bring it to the Knox Street Apple Store to get it looked at. I brought it in and they told me that the hard drive was on its last legs (which I already figured out by the clicking, but wanted to be sure) It was sent off on Friday, May 2 right before the big iPod party. I got it back on the wendesday the next week.
I looked at the work order attached, and not only had they given me a new hard drive, but also swapped me out a new logic board...just to be nice
Conclusion: I rave about Apples and how they work so great, but one of the best parts is that when they don't work, the support is a dream.
It obviously helps that Apple makes the hardware AND software. Apple techs only have to know how to fix Mac hardware and software. It's based on the jack-of-all-trades dealy.
My contacts with Apple support over the last 10+ years have been 99% excellent.
In fact, yesterday I called Apple because the cord on my iPod remote had started to tear near the plug. I honestly thought they would just tell me tough luck because it was mostly a cosmetic issue.
The tech said they would be glad to send me a new one and it would arrive in 3-5 days. It arrived at my house no more than 18 HOURS later! Granted, some of that has to do with proximity (California->Oregon), but they sent it Airborne, when I would have been happy to get it in a week with ground shipping.
I read posts about bad Apple service occasionally, but all I can say is that it probably just really bad luck or the caller was a royal pain in the arse to the rep on the phone.
Like puzzle games? Warehouse51 for iOS
Actually, I use Maya. I wouldn't use it on a standard eMac (mostly because of that whole 128 MB of RAM thing), but even if I did, I have a Wacom tablet with a three button, wireless, batteryless mouse. I SO love this thing! It's simply great. I use the stylus to make textures and the mouse to control Maya.
Anyway, if you got at least a 512 MB stick of RAM, the eMac would make a pretty respectable Maya workstation. It has a reasonably powerful processor, a sufficient graphics card, FireWire (Maya Live MatchMoving. Mmmmmm), and enough hard drive space to store a few hours of DV quality footage. Plus, it's not very expensive, especially if you have a developer's discount.
I would still prefer a nice dual 1.33 GHz Xserve for the actual rendedering, but an eMac would make a nice modeling machine.
First, I am a Mac fan and have never owned a PC. I do, however, run a PC network at work and have built and supported numerous PC's' for friends. The last time a friend of mine bought a Gateway it was hell. The shit OEM hardware and drivers didn't do what it was supposed to do. The DVD dropped frames (and this was a high MHZ P4). After weeks of complaining for my friend (he was a novice), I was able to get them to solve the problem. It was not a fun experience. It also mirrors the experiences that I have had with Dell. Now to my Apple experience. First, there is a problem with some of the optical mice that came with the newer CRT iMacs, they tend to die. I was in the Bellevue Apple Store the other day and a guy had his mouse there. He went to the genius bar and talked to someone, he walked out with a new mouse, without a hitch. My work has 8 of these dead mice, I asked and they said to bring them in. I don't even have to mail them anywhere. I helped a friend with her iBook. For some reason it came with 128 MB RAM instead of 256. My friend was on vacation but the iBook had been shipped to me for this reason. Apple saw my name and sent me new RAM the next day. I had it all ready to go for my friend when she got back in town. I have to Macs myself. A tower w/17" LCD Studio Display and a Lombard Powerbook G3. I have had excellent service on the two problems I had, with the same practically next day service that so many other of these Slashdot posters have mentioned. They both replaced the power management board in my PB and the backlight in the Studio Display. That sums up my experience. I think from this entire discussion it can be seen that the Consumer Reports conclusion is valid, and not just the ravings of people trapped in the so-called reality distortion field.
I kept AppleCare for my Powerbook 5300 for as long as they'd let me extend the warranty. Twice I had problems with the wiring to the display crapping out on me (they ran through the hinge, which always seems like a bad idea...) Both times I got it back via Airborne Express within a week at no cost, and in one case, I'm pretty sure they just replaced the whole display.
Another time I was running a Workgroup Server 95 (Quadra 9500 running A/UX) as a print server. I was having problems at 7 AM CST on a Sunday morning. Called the support number and was patched through to an engineer at his house (I could hear a parrot in the background...) and he walked me through the solution.
This sig intentionally left justified.
This was a minor problem compared to some. I have a new PM Dual 1.25. I installed some aftermarket RAM. My Mac didn't feel right after the install. No major panics, but programs like photshop began to hang ect. Apple Hardware Test wouldn't load so I called Apple. The Apple tech had me on the phone for over an hour, reseting firmware, moving RAM to different slots ect. We came to the conclusion "bad ram". Told me to replace the module and if there were further problems they would walk me through any procedure to solve the problem. What more could I ask? It was bad ram and the problem was solved. I just counted 47 programs on my dock, one major design program that requires a security dongle and must run in Classic. My Mac is rock solid except Entourage doesn't close sometimes. Looking for a new mail app!
Here at my office we have a number of G4s, including a few Titanium Powerbooks. An older one (500mhz) was sent in for repair and it came back as a 667 (which was one model newer, too). Well, it broke again a few months later and we just got it back and it's an 867mhz machine.
Go Apple!
The key word is "percentage".
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
even though I dropped it about 18" on it's side! It was a Graphite iMac DV/SE 466, the old clamshell version. I dropped it and it just plain stopped working. Even the molding on the front left was visibly damaged. I brought it into my local retailer. They asked me what was wrong, I said it wasn't working, they shipped it off and a week later it came back good as new and no charge! They had to have known that I damaged the molding. That it wasn't a simple malfunction. They didn't charge me anyway! I call that service!
Pooty tweet
I had an original (beige) G3/266 Motherboard crap out on me at work. My boss wanted to send it to whichever shop said they could turn it around the fastest. After 2 MONTHS of them screwing around, my warranty ran out. I spent a few days dealing directly with a senior support person at Apple. The day the blue and white G3s came out, he offered to just swap the old G3 for a new one with similar specs. When he said they had about 10 of the beige units left, I jokingly asked him to delay the order until he HAD to give me a blue and white. He laughed and said that he had planned on doing that anyway. The very next morning, I had a brand spanking new G3/350 tower sitting on my desk. I can't say enough about how cool they've been to me over the years. I assume that unlike other tech support farms, Apple likes to hire people who also "drank the cool aid". Whatever you think of Macs, you have to give Apple some respect for the way they handle (most of) their business. My mom (!) was forced to change her own motherboard on a Packard Bell 286 years ago because her warranty "didn't include labor". They were happy to send a new motherboard, they just wouldn't cover the cost of having the work done for her. I have to say, that gave me a whole new outlook on (a) customer service, and most importantly (b) my Mom. Whenever any of the gamers I am acquainted with brag about building their own system, I love to tell them that my mom not only preferred DOS to any windows system, but she also swapped out her own motherboard. That was probably 11 years ago... Just 2 weeks ago, she retired her 286 and bought a 1Ghz 17 inch iMac. O.K... I'm gettin' all misty now.... Anyway, Apple's support is awesome.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
Two days later I got a call saying it was back and ready to pick up. They had to replace part of the case but also replaced the motherboard, which knocked up the cost of repair. The fellow at the Apple Store noted that a call was not put thru to me to ask my "ok" on that (since it was more than we orig. asked) and crossed off the additional charge, without me even raising the issue.
Better than that, perhaps, is what happened a month or two earlier. I had bought a Dual G4 800 right when it came out, summer of '01 and got it with a combo drive (DVD player / CD-RW). It had trouble reading some discs on occasion, so I put off getting it serviced. Almost a year later I was 2 weeks out from warranty expiration so I took it in to Apple Store, showed them the prob and they said they'd get it replaced. Machine was serviced on sight and ready the next day...and indeed a working drive had been swapped in...
A working SuperDrive.
...perhaps I should've pointed it out like a truly honest lad, but instead I just bought a pack of DVD-R's and had some fun at home.
I love Apple. I will never willingly stray. Never.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
I swear on my life I'm being serious. They won't support anything outside the GUI.
"What? You say you've been using to secure shell to remotely access your XServe? That's unsupported."
I admin a little over 20 FreeBSD servers, and a few Win2k servers that run Cygwin. This is a new one to me.
They'll support it if you purchase an enterprise support agreement, but you have to dicker with a sales person on the price...it isn't static. My client that has 5 OS X servers they wanted $15k (!!!) per year, or $6k, and $150/hour/per incident. So $6k to have the privelage to ask, or $15k to actually get answers to your questions.
In the words of my client:
"I feel violated."
Ugh, I'm a Unix admin myself, and can fix most any of their problems, but things like NDC (name daemon control for bind) are broken out of the box and we'd like to have work. Can't get support for it, and I've messing with it for months now. FYI, both NDC and BIND are pre-installed and 'working' with OSX.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Come on, now. Have you looked at Ford lately?
-- thinkyhead software and media
Sure, Apple like any other business has limits, and has to say no to customers sometimes, but it was pretty rare when I was there. They had very clear and specific lines of escalation for all manner of customer issues.
Another thing is that the agents take a lot of pride in their work, and are given a lot of latitude in helping customers. Not only are customers satisfied, but the support agents are satisfied too.
I've tried to apply all that I learned at Apple to where I'm working now, and it's helped me be the best Macintosh support agent here, and among the top 1% of all agents, which admitedly isn't hard considering that 98% of the rest are all Windows product related agents.
We need Macintosh power. I *am* Macintosh power!
Apple is tops in hardware failure. Way to go Apple!