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Apple Care Efficiency When Macs Break?
cyber-dragon.net asks: "I have long been a staunch supporter of Apple and Macs, however my recent experience with trying to bring them into my department, at work, has been disappointing. We had a Mac Pro (the big quad processor monster) die after four days. Of course, this kind of stuff happens, and everything else has worked flawlessly. I even dealt with the inevitable teasing about the shiny new Mac being a lemon.
Almost four hours dealing with Apple Care, three hours dropping off and picking up my computer at different stores, as per their instructions, trying to get this done quickly — I am beginning to wonder if Apple really wants business customers to rely on these machines. Much as I may dislike Dell, when my Linux box died it was fixed in four hours, and I spent maybe 20 minutes of my time setting up the repair. I have spent seven hours of my time so far on this Mac, and it still will not power up. Is this just me or have other people lost critical business machines to the depths of Apple Care inefficiency and lack of business level support?"
...for consumer support. It sounds like the problem you're having is that you're demanding the type of turnaround that many business-level plans provide. Yet Apple doesn't have a standard business-level plan in place.
The normal process is that you drop the computer off, wait a week or two, and pick it up to find it in spectacular condition. (Usually better than when you dropped it off; above and beyond fixing whatever you brought it in for.) The key is that you have to show a modicum of patience, something which businesses often can't afford to do.
Now that's not to say that Apple doesn't want your business. In fact, I imagine that Apple would love to provide corporate support. But you're not going to find it in their stores. What you need to do is contact Apple Corporate and explain the situation. Tell them that you've been tasked to covert your business from an all-Windows platform to an all-Mac platform. Explain that the AppleCare store plans appear to be insufficient for your needs, and also explain the exact issues you've had with them.
I would be very much suprised if Apple didn't assign you an account representative to take care of your needs. It might require a bit of FexExing back and forth, but you'll get support handled a lot better than if you try and take your needs to the geniuses (pun intended) at the Apple Store.
Good luck!
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You should try getting them to take back a whining 1st gen Macbook Pro. It took me over 6 weeks to get them to do anything about it. I think the turning point was when I told them "your tech support is worse than Dell". The good news was that I finally ended up replacing the machine with one of their newer systems that has a Core 2 Duo chip. I'm happy with the new system. It's quiet and it runs cooler as well. Apple's tech support is awful though.
After sales care or your computers should be an important aspect of business machines. If apples sucks, then perhaps you should go with Dell...
I find Dell's after sales better than before. I would rather order online and get almost what i want than speak to a sales rep and try to get exactly what i want.
If i want an exact spec then i would go elsewhere or build it myself.
User error!
What, exactly, are the symptoms of your problems and what have you tried?
Anecdotally...
In my experience, I had to spend 11 hours on the phone with Dell (about 90% of that time on hold) talking to four different people during ONE DAY to convince them to RMA a DVD drive that wouldn't read DVD's. Thank heavens for speaker-phones. Of course, that was as a home user in 2001.
In contrast, as a home user of an Apple keyboard that had problems last year, I called Apple and got to a real person in about a minute (including the phone tree), who had an RMA sent out immediately. Total time on phone? Less that 10 minutes.
Apple's enterprise support is indeed a joke. They're just not set up for that market. 4 hour on-site? Dream on.
In this case (line-ups at stores), your only option is "ProCare" which for $100/yr lets you schedule appointments in advance and jump the support queue at the store. No idea whether it's well-honored at busy stores like SoHo (NYC), though. One would hope, but can never assume.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
When my roommates apple laptop died, he took it to an apple store and they took care of it for him. I guess it really depends on the apple store, as I would think that like any other chain, YMMV.
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Almost four hours dealing with Apple Care, three hours dropping off and picking up my computer at different stores, as per their instructions, trying to get this done quickly
Stores or computer repair shops? You should only have to bring it to one repair shop.
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I have had at least 20-30 computers in the span of about 17 years. Apple is not that great. I had a Powerbook that had a faulty motherboard. Apple promptly and kindly fixed the computer, no complaints. Though now I can only run Linux on the Powerbook because when I reformatted the machine and installed OSX I have periodic lockouts. I have tried the utilities that people have recommended (eg memory stress test, etc, etc) yet no avail. Sure I could get Apple to fix it, but that would mean spending money.
If the Apple computer were a cheap box then I would not care, but Apples are expensive! To this day I have IBM's that are 10 years old and they are still running as if they were unpacked from a box. I cannot even complain about Dell since all my Dell's have survived at least five years.
My worst computers thus far: Sony, Apple, and a clone maker from the UK
My best computers thus far: IBM, Dell, HP/Compaq, Samsung, Toshiba, and clone makers.
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"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
We've had a couple of problems with our XServe and its been hit or miss. We bought the spare parts kit, and it hasn't been the pancea its made out to be. For a bad XServe RAID drive its just fine, but when we had one of the system disks fail on the XServe, it was a nightmare.
When the drive failed we looked in the spare parts kit but there wasn't one. When we called them about it, the rep kept claiming that we bought the wrong spare parts kit. Only after pestering him for the part number for the "right" kit did he admit that there wasn't a kit with the spare part. The 4 hour response time basically amounts to how fast you'll get someone to tell you that they'll ship one sometime. For this particular drive, they didn't have any in stock and it took 5 days to get one to our site (and the delivery people tried to postpone it over the weekend because it was Friday afternoon). When it did arrive, it was slightly smaller than the old, so I had to fight with the mirror config to make it work again.
Not a pleasant experience.
On the other hand, last night I had a scsi raid card die on an IBM pSeries machine. The machine died and after doing diagnostics and sending a report in (at 10:45) I spoke to a rep at 11 and because it was in the middle of the night it took a little longer, but the card was at our site by 4am and we up and running by 5:30.
It's still a silly decision to try to use Macs for mission-critical business machines for just this reason. In my business, if I have a machine go down, I either run down to my local parts store to get the part I need, or I run down to the thrift store and pick up another used beige box for $50. Having a machine down for weeks in not an option. Having a machine down for days, even, is unacceptable in my small business.
Now, if you have some fancy design business, where deadlines are measured in weeks or months, as opposed to minutes as they are in retail, then sure, you can probably afford to ship off a box and wait for a few weeks until it gets fixed. Unfortunately, that's not a luxury that many smaller businesses can afford.
This is what true "lock-in" (hardware AND software) looks like in the IT industry, and it's not pretty.
I don't respond to AC's.
Preamble: I've no qualms with outsourced tech support, that's /not/ the problem I'm complaining about here... I'm complainging about all the errors made in the handling of the issue.
/walk/ over there and ask for you."
I was at work, a few years ago, and someone needed their Mac desktop serviced. I call up the Mac store at the local mall as my boss told me to.
After a few rings, the rep picks up. I tell her my issue, stating that we want to bring the computer in, do we need to pay before hand, and can they take [payment type]. Her response? "Sorry, I don't know, let me transfer you to the tech bench".
I get a couple clicks and am at some automated voice thing, with options of "sales" or "tech support". I chose tech support
click. static. At this point, I know I'm on a different continent.
Sure enough, after 20+ minutes of hold, a guy with an Indian (as in subcontinent, not native american) accent answers.
Him: "Hello [standard greetings stuff], Can I have your product serial number please?"
Me: "Is this the Apple store at [mall name]"
Him: "Yes, yes it is. Can I have your serial number please?"
Me: "Well, I'm just asking if you take [payment type], and do you need it in avance for repairs."
Him: "Sir, I need your serial number."
Me: "I don't have the computer right here, and I'm not asking for assistance in diagnosing the problem or repairing it, I'm asking about paymet."
this goes on for a couple more exchanges, finally he realizes the serial number is irrelevant to the issue.
Him: "let me check the database"
My mind: "wtf?"
Him: "Sorry, we don't have that information, please contact the local store."
(we hang up).
5 minutes later when I calm down a bit. I call the apple store again.
Rep: "Hello, this is the Apple store at [mall name]"
Me: "Hi, I'm calling to see if you take [payment type] and if it is needed in advance."
Rep: "Let me transfer you-"
Me: "Don't transfer me off continent this time."
Rep: "Sorry, we don't have the ability, all transfers are in building."
Me: "I called half an hour ago, and someone tried transfering me to the tech bench. I got India."
Rep: "That's not possible."
Me: "Sorry, but that's what happened."
Rep: *sigh* "Alright I'll
a couple minutes later I get my answer. They didn't take that particular payment method, which didn't suprise me, so we used the company credit card instead (we didn't want to, too much of a hassle with paper work).
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It really does matter where you are. Next day on-site support from both HP and Dell take 2-3 business days for me (HP usually is faster than Dell). Four hour response time support from every vender I've used has been next day at the fastest. Most vendors flat out tell me I can't have 4 hour response. It was like pulling teeth to get a 6 hour response contract from Cisco for a $25,000 router. When I call anyone at HP workstation or reseller support, I end up in India with people who don't speak English. That is frequently true of Dell also, although their Gold support occasionally gets me to someone who speaks English.
Heck, I had an HP laptop with an extended on-site service contract that was down SIX WEEKS for repair and ended up going to depot repair after about 15 hours on the phone with HP and 2 on-site support visits. That is a business grade support contract.
I've never dealt with AppleCare support, but I can tell you that where you are DOES matter!
My experience was actually quite similar. I was tasked with replacing everything in our IT department with Apple stuff, down to the pens and notebooks. The general policy was if it wasn't Apple it wasn't up to the task. Well, three days after one of our big Mac Pros came in, a friggin ninja crawled out of it and started giving us major grief. At first he was just being a nuisance, taking all of the paper cups out of the cappucino machines, covering elevator buttons with engine grease, stuff like that. But over time he started slicing up monitors, breaking fluorescent bulbs over people's heads, and eventually got into the usual ninja habit of killing people and setting things on fire.
I contacted AppleCare about the issue, and their response was I had clearly ordered the Mac Pro with the "trojan horse" option turned on. Friggin liars. Well, no matter what I said, they refused to take the ninja back.
Eventually we started running out of equipment thanks to that jerk. Unable to be productive typing on half a keyboard and a cordless-by-way-of-sword mouse, I was left with no option other than contacting Apple's Business support and informing them that AppleCare was being uncooperative. These guys sent me Chuck Norris within 3 business days and now I'm back in full productivity mode. Though our floor's cappucino machine is messed up after eating one of Chuck's nickels and taking a roundhouse in the gut for it.
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One of our dell laptops had a screen go bad (lines were appearing on the screen). A 5 minute call (including hold times) with a customer rep confirmed the problem and scheduled the tech. The next day the part arrived in the morning and the tech arrived in the afternoon. It probably took him 20 minute to replace the screen. Total lost time less than a day.
The same event with an apple product would have required a minimum of 2 hours on the phone and probably a week or more of lost time.
Apple=Stuff you use at home
Major brand PC=Stuff you use at work.
I had a dual proc g5 tower that never really worked quite right and would lock up now and then. We bought 3 of them at once and the other 2 never had a problem. It took close to 8 months to get the problem solved and in the meantime I had to go out and buy another one as having people try to do work on a flaky machine is pretty hard to do.
They pretty much replaced everything by the time they were done with it. One of the last techs just happened to have a new verision of the diagnostic disks that identified a bad cpu or something. After that the machine was flawless.
But 8 months of back and forth with the local store not being able to find the problem and apple saying there is nothing wrong with it was pretty annoying. Something like that with dell would have take a couple of trips best case before they just replaced it.
For what an apple costs compared to a PC they should be more responsive.
I was previously the CTO of a small marketing agency in NYC. We were an all-Mac shop. When we had serious trouble, calling Apple was not helpful. We came to rely on local companies like TekServe for business-critical support (though it's not cheap). Consider this free advertising for them: they were great.
If you use Macs in business, I strongly advise you to find a local shop of Mac experts and rely on them.
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Apple seems to be particularly bad about inventorying spare parts. Spares allocated to repairs are "unproductive" assets. Everytime I've had anything break on a Mac I first have to go through the painful consumer-type customer service, then argue for at least 20 minutes that we have paid for on-site service. Finally, they indicate that the parts are back ordered and it might be week or more before we can get a replacement.
Maybe if it was some obscure part (xraid motherboard or old hardware) I could understand. But we got the same response when it was a standard MacPro diskdrive and on another occasion a power supply.
Basically I would say that apple support is NOT ACCEPTABLE for busines use.
But of course everybody's MMV. But over the past 15 years I've had to call apple for support and it's always been great (note: I only buy Applecare for portables). With two exceptions, within a few minutes I've been scheduled for a box to be sent out (or a replacement part, e.g. a power adaptor). Painless. The two exceptions were, well, exceptional:
1 - I spilled tea into my 2400c while in Japan. Luckily I was in Tokyo and the machine had been built in Japan (at that time most were still built in the USA) and Applecare called over and then sent me over to somewhere in the Akihabara where someone fixed my machine as I watched.
2 - My machine went completely bonkers because the PCI bridge fried. How do I know? Err, a friend in Apple's hardware group diagnosed it for me (and cloned my disk for me!). Then I called, described only the symptoms, and politely went through the "fixit" script with the guy on the phone (try to restart, try a reset, etc etc). That was my longest call and still not incredibly long.
Enterprisesupport has been different. I've only called for support on my Xserve three or four times but each time I got a phone call (or once mail) from someone in the engineering group. In fact one time I was on hold for a while because the tech at the other end went into a machine room, reconfigured a machine and duped the problem while I was on the phone (it was a booting problem when the a homedir was on a SAN disk). Pretty good.
IBM's support has been quite good too, but they're about the only other one.
Of course ideally the machines would never break and then support could be crappy or nonexistant...but nobody would know!
Apple seems not to care about providing speedy support since they know their fans will keep coming back anyhow.
When the Sony battery recall was going on I had to return one from my (personal) ibook and one from my (work) Dell.
My Dell replacement arrived the next day.
Apple took two months.
That's going to make me think twice when I buy my next machine.
OK, first things first... Service levels of repair are of course dependant on numerous variables, to include accessibility to service center, availability of said service centers, user expectation, user knowledge of key information in describing the problem, comparisons to other repairs that are not the same. Going further, one may say service levels suck if they live in the country and the only service center is in the city and is a scaled down Apple Store, or they have to go to the city to Fed-Ex something. They may also say service is poor based upon them not having enough knowledge of the equipment or how it is intended on running, to accurately describe the problem. My hard drive is bad does not suffice. In addition, service levels could be rated poorly if they coompare a previous repair of a defecive keyboard with an intermittant USB port problem. It is subjective.
Now for my experiences with Apple and their service levels:
1). Apple 5300c laptop, costing $5K when first released. 1.5 years after my warranty expired and I admitedly blew the motherboard on the machine installing memory on a static filled carpet. Apple sent me a box the next day, shipping paid, and replaced the entire machine (with the exception of my hard drive). Everything wa brand new and had it back in my hands 3 days later. I was more than willing to chalk it up to experience and purchase a new machine, as the motherboard was $1500. Cost to me upfront, 4 days total. No out of pocket monies. Now that is service.
2). One month after purchasing a Titanium Powerbook, we had a little accident (yes, my fault) involving a Mountain Dew spilling in the center of the keyboard. I quickly powered off the machine, removed the keyboard and rinsed thoroughly under warm water. Yes, in water, but the keyboard could not stay working. I was oout of town and called Apple. I explained what happened honestly and they Fed-Exed a new keyboard to me, for next morning delivery. Now that's service!
3). I had an obscure problem with my Powerbook hard drive after a while, where the SMART tests would fail and the drive stopped working. Apple replaced quick enough, but after another 4-5 months, it happened again. I then replaced again. The new drive did the same thing after a year, so honestly it must not have been the hard drives after all. It must have been a drive controller in my machine, but recognizing this, Apple suggested this - which blew me away. For $1000, 3 years after my original purchase, they would give me a new MacBook Pro fuly loaded with the all the bells and whistles (2 Gb RAM, 100 Gb HD, 2 GHz dual processor). This machine was barely on the market and they were going to give it to me for $1000. It ws time to upgrade anyway, so it was a no brainer. Another stellar service performance.
So, yes there are bound to be bad service stories and they are probably more vocal than those that are successes.
I had my Gen1 MacBook Pro serviced 4 times...I bought it in August. Each time for the screen. It had spent about a third of its life in a repair depot. In January I just went apeshit after getting the computer back to find they had bent the display bezel. I got escalated up to Apple customer relations where a nice young man was able to replace my computer, but only after I sucked his dick. Yeah Apple's support is somewhat lacking...
I've always been impressed with Apple's tech support. As part of my duties at the University I work for, I maintain about 50 iMacs. I've dealt with Apple about a half dozen times for various problems we've had. Each time I've had hardware problems I've been able to have them send a technician to my location without having to bring the computers to an Apple store. We did have one technician once who took 4 hours just to figure out how to open the iMac to replace a bad hard drive but he was the exception and not the rule.
Plus I've worked in the enterprise and dealt with Compaq, HP, Dell, Sun, and IBM support at one time or another, and plenty of software companies as well.
Apple DOES have enterprise AppleCare plans available, mostly pitched towards education and XServe customers.
If you are using Macs on the desktop, two suggestions-
1. Have spares and a plan to deploy them. Actually, this applies to any vendor. There is no way to GUARANTEE that your "four-hour" support contract will actually get you a four-hour fix, no matter how much you paid. I've seen a bad processor in a Sun Ultra Enterprise that took months for Sun to finally diagnose and fix. The tens of thousands the company paid for a Sun Gold support contract got the techs onsite right away, but it didn't get things fixed any faster. If a machine is mission-critical, you should have a disaster recovery plan to migrate your backup from the dead machine (or just switch over to the hot spare) and keep on working.
2. Get a good relationship with a local dealer or Apple Store. Dealers know where their income is derived- business customers. They will generally offer round-the-clock emergency service, all sorts of custom setup, and so on. If you are working with an Apple Store, pay the $100/year for ProCare so you can get "head-of-the-line" service. Either way, as long as you implement suggestion 1 AND you know how long repairs under suggestion 2 will take you should be fine.
If you don't have a backup plan, well, don't bother calling yourself a professional administrator. You are just a wannabe.
I spent the summer I earned my hardware certifications working as a university Mac hardware tech in the same room as a university Windows hardware tech. The thing I noticed is Dell's corporate support is on average much better than Apple corporate support, especiallya bouts ending out techs to your location, and that Apple's personal computer support is much better on average than Dell's.
I watched the Window's hardware guy get his Dell hardware certifications to try and make his job dealing with Dell easier and still he got jacked around, lied to and screwed with. Make no mistake, this guy is a good hardware tech and has good people skills. But Dell's personal computer service support is just plain bad. On the other hand when I talk to Dell corporate support they are most often helpful and quick to send out parts. The Nebraska Federation for the Blind, as an example, figured this out long ago, let their members buy Dell computers through them so their members get corporate support.
With Apple they usually only send parts to Apple certified techs so most people have to take their Macs to a Mac certified tech. Then you are at the mercy of the quality of the tech, this usually good but can be bad unfortunately.
I think scale applies here, Dell sells a lot more computers than Apple, they can afford to set up techs employed directly by Dell to do service calls. Apple sells fewer computers so until the last few years most hardware repair guys who were Mac certified repaired Mac and other hardware as well in shops or as freelancers. That being said, it often comes down to the quality of the techs you are dealing with, no matter what company supports your computer. I make extra money by doing support/repair work for a variety of desktop hardware and much of my business comes from people frustrated with their current tech support. You have the right or people with the right, experience, knowledge and connections and you are in good shape. You don't and you can have problems. No mater what hardware you have.
Apple in the corporate environment? Heck yes, some of my customers, print shops, publication shops and engineering firms, are on majority or all Mac environments, but like any hardware you need to have look ahead and know what your support options are. One thing I do for my customers is document who to call to get real and useful help in case I can't be reached. Otherwise, Apple, Dell, Gateway whatever you can end up getting jerked around and really frustrated as you lose time and money. Knowing who to call in a company gets you those parts overnighted to your location and connected to a good tech. Yes, I am a Mac user. No I don't hate Bill Gates, he keeps me in business as a tech support guy. Vista? You see problems, I smell billable hours.
I have had great experiences with apple care for my business. I had an old laptop that was no longer under warranty go in for a screen replacement. They had it for over a month, which was frustrating, but in the end they sent me a new macbook pro for the cost of the repair. Now mind you, I did have to wait almost a month, but I always got phone calls and updates and they did send me a loaner while waiting for replacement. I was working with a supervisor, which probably did help The thing is they have processes you have to go through to get to what you need from them, just like any other company. They don't have the market share to be as quick and efficient as a Dell, but for what they have to work with, they do pretty well in my book.
--- Cassie
I made a flow chart:r emacbook-pro-experience/
http://www.tikirobot.net/wp/2006/12/31/my-appleca
You might try contacting Apple Enterprise Sales at (877) 412-7753.
I would suggest any company looking into OS X solutions contact them. I believe they even have a separate support line you can reach.
In addition, as other have mentioned, look at Apple Authorized Service Providers who can provide more personalized service.
Also look at the Self-Servicing Account Program.
There are definitely resources out there for businesses to use. Going through the consumer support system obviously can be frustrating.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
I am a tech admin at a small school in NJ. I am posting as ac cause I can't remember my nick, nor want to register again!
We purchase an Apple Protection Plan with every machine, and aside from a few minutes on the phone, it is unbelievable service.
I can send a macbook out on a monday and have it back on a wednesday, without ever going anywhere. It's not always that fast, but mostly it is.
The best is getting the service sheet on the repaired machines, It will tell me they replaced logic board, case, processor, memory, processor. All this done in less then 48 hours AND they didn't lose my data. They get thumbs up from me.
You can't compare one repair on a Dell with another on a Mac any more than one repair on a Dell with another Dell when what broke is a different repair all-together. Some repairs take longer than others, period. When a computer won't power up, it must be sent in for power supply replacement.. spending your own time trying to fix what you can't fix without the replacement parts is simply spinning your own wheels needlessly.
As a disclaimer, I spent a large chunk of the 90's working for several large Apple Ressellers.
However, I think the basic problem here is one of approach, rather than Apple's response.
Let us put this in another way, altogether:
You run a small business, and you use HP/Compaq machines.
Who do you buy it from?
Most small businesses will probably go to either a large VAR (CDW, etc.) or find a local reseller of HP, who also provide support.
However, I suspect that it is safe to say that you probably aren't going to trundle down to Best Buy and purchase all of your hardware for you business from them.
When you purchase a computer (including support) from someone who understands the needs of the business community, your response to any problem will be significantly different than purchasing from a consumer-oriented store.
This is the same situation with Apple. Apple Stores (at least where I live) are in shopping malls. They are pandering to people who think that every computer should come with a free IPod, because that is their market.
However, again, at least where I live, there are at least two Apple resellers that specialize in business and know perfectly how to support a business customer.
At the time I was a tech, working for one of these companies, we supported every Fortune 1000 company in 40 miles who had a Mac in the office (which was most of them). When they called, we understood the difference between business support and everything else. When a marketing department for a Fortune 500 calls because their server died, it needs to be fixed now, not next week.
Not only that, but we were properly equipped and trained to support the business community. At the time I did this, I knew virtually everything there was to know about upgrades, patches, memory fixes, and hardware that Apple sold. Not only that, but I knew the same thing about every 3rd party product that my customers used. This included Quark, Adobe's full line, Macromedia, and hundreds of other programs, including business support software such as 3270 emulators and 3rd party software to connect Mac's (this was mid-90's) to Windows networks and servers, as well as mainframes.
The reality is that if you are purchasing your business hardware from a mall-store, you've made a serious error in the first place. Find a local reseller, preferably one who sells Mac's to businesses.
The other support issue is one of being able to determine software versus hardware errors. I can't tell you how many times some bizarre piece of shareware that some idiot long-haired birkenstock wearing graphic artist installed that caused problems with memory. A less savvy tech could very well have spent a day or two RMA'ing the memory to Apple, rather than knowing enough about the systems to properly diagnose.
In order to get business class support, you need to find a business class reseller. Relying on the home user support mechanisms won't buy you anything.
My advice: get out a phonebook and find a few Apple resellers nearby. Call them up and maybe meet with them. If you have a decent number of machines (which when I did this was usually about >2) and agree to buy through them, I'll bet money they will assist you with issues. The other place they will be able to assist is in working with Apple's AppleCare process. They do this every day. They know how to get through the system, and have done it countless times.
Bill
Apple with its ever increasing popularity is going through some growing pains. Dell, HP, IBM, and lenovo are rather large companies. They have a support structure thats geared worldwide to be quick and responsive to the needs of thier clients of which 60 percent of thier profits come from. They have more volume and more easily available parts to support it. Making contracts to be no more than 24 hours of downtime isn't impossible with them. However, Apple despite thier current size and brand recongition isn't large enough to adequatly cover the needs of mission critical businesses yet. Every tech in the world can fix a PC pretty quick as problems are common among parts and usually parts needed are on the shelf somewhere accessible within hours Vs Apple which has a centralised system of parts which may or may not be on backorder at the time of repair. Thus, its not a far stretch to argue that it would be very benefitial if Apple where to decisively license out thier OS. With restrictions on certain throughly tested high quality parts only would ease any reliability problems they might have. Dell, HP, IBM doing this would make them a killing. They could even create thier own Apple certified logo selling it only to parts suppliers who meet spec and pay in. Sure, it keeps the price higher; but so long as Apple keeps the quality high do you think the mainstream is going to care much about the price if the downtime and support cost is half of the cheaper windows machine?
My iSight stopped working about a month after buying a nice new $3000+ Mac Book Pro, seeing that I spent this much even though I didn't use the iSight all that much i brought it in for repairs.
They first said it would only take a week because they needed to send it out for repairs.
3 weeks later I made my first call to Apple Care, the rep said that they would look into it and it should be back by the end of the week. A week later I called again they gave me the same run around and I asked to talk to a manager. The manager said hey we will get it back to you by monday of the following week and just to make sure thats the time frame we are looking at I will give you a call tomorrow after I hear back from our people repairing it. No call, so I called, after spending more then 3 hours on the phone and getting the run around I drove to the Apple Store an hour away where I dropped it off and demanded that if they couldn't give me a time frame or with in the week that they needed to supply me with a new computer with the same specs. They said hey we have one at another store 2 hour away but its the 17 inch I said great ill even pay the difference and go pick it up tonight. The rep then stepped into the back room and came back well the one they have doesn't have the 10k rpm drive, I said well ok I want that.
They finally ordered me a new laptop, a week later it came in I picked it up. A day later they called me and said that my repaired computer came in and was ready for pick up. I should have gone in a picked it up but at that point I didn't want to see the apple reps for a while so I told them I had already received a replacement.
What a logistical mess and horrible way to treat a customer by giving them the run around.
Any how I got a nice new computer, sweet, congrats Apple. But you should have taken care of this a lot better.
I've had nothing but bad experiences with that overpriced warranty. I had an iBook that I received with stuck-on pixels, a lot of them, sent it into repair, came back with the same display even though they claimed they replaced it. They did a good job scratching it up though. I had a PowerBook G4 that I sent in for the same issue, it came back with the display replaced, however their replacement display had a piece of the display actually CHIPPED OUT of the display surface, so there was this pitted hole in it that somehow still allowed the pixels around it to function. This one came back with nicks all over the metal. (These were both brand new-out-of-box machines from store.apple.com) My brother had a refurb iBook also from store.apple.com, his first time sending it back for the defective motherboard display video chip issue, they sent it back with the back of the display casing all scratched up with giant gashes through it. The display died 2 months later and he had to again send it back to them, they claiming it was the keyboard this time, replaced the keyboard. It came back again, and broke again 2 weeks later. He sent it back, they repaired it again. This time it worked until his AppleCare ran out, about 2 months after AppleCare ran out (about 4 months after the last time he had sent it in again) the display died, Apple wouldn't do anything because the repair was only warranted for 90 days, and without their warranty he was SOL, even though it was all caused - come to find out - by their defective video chip iBook bug, ta da! Apple didn't care though! We ended up having to take his iBook apart and put a piece of metal on the video chip to hold it on place, and that magically fixed the problem that Apple replaced 2 displays and a keyboard to fix! I have no confidence whatsoever in their ability to repair Macs and will never purchase AppleCare ever again. You're better off doing a flat return/exchange or fixing it yourself.
When I worked at the college computer service center (1.5-3 years ago), we had several problems when we sent Apple laptops (both Powerbooks and iBooks) into their service center to be worked on. About 1 in 10 machines we sent in would come back with either the same problem (only worse) or would have some new issue crop up when we ran diagnostics on it to see if it was safe to return to the customer. With these machines, we'd have to mail them back to the Apple service center and hope they didn't mess things up a 2nd or 3rd time (they occassionally did). This could go on for a few weeks or up to a month in some cases and resulted in cranky students and faculty.
However, when we could service the Apple machines (desktops and minor laptop work) ourselves and order the parts from Apple, we received the parts parts promptly and could usually get the machines back to the customer in a few days to a week or so. If you can do the work yourself, try and do so if at all possible so you don't have to worry about dealing with their service centers.
But I've had essentially the same experience as you.
Problem #1: a PowerBook at work stopped recognizing the second RAM slot. Called AppleCare on Monday, they shipped out an empty box. Box arrived on Tuesday, I sent it back with the PowerBook inside. Fixed PowerBook came on Thursday. 3-day turnaround.
Problem #2: MacBook hard drive died. Click of death. Brought it in to the nearest Apple Store. They had a replacement in stock, swapped it out in about 5 minutes. Came home with a working machine (had to reinstall and restore backups of course).
Problem #3: MacBook hard drive died again. WTF? Do Seagate laptop drives suck or am I supremely unlucky? The first drive lasted 2 months, the second drive lasted 7 months. Brought it in to the Apple Store again. They didn't have the replacement in stock but called another store nearby which did have it. Even though there were no more genius bar appointments left that day, the other store let me come over and did the replacement for me anyway. Came home with a working machine (reinstall/restore required).
At work, we have a couple of Xserve RAIDs that we got the enterprise level support (whatever Apple calls it) for. I've only called once when a drive light went red -- it ended up fixing itself when I pulled it out and put it back in (and the RAID rebuilt it on the fly, nice). They give you a super secret phone number with a passcode and were very helpful.
My only gripe about the "enterprise" support is that it only lasts 3 years and they won't provide support for equipment that's older than that. Our first Xserve RAID just passed its 3 year mark, so it is now officially unsupported. We have good backups of course, but if it goes down catastrophically, looks like we'll have to purchase a new unit.
I had an almost year old Wall Street Powerbook that went bad. It went back at least 6 times before it finally kept working long enough to go out of warranty.
Good: Apple paid for overnight shipping every time and replaced just about every part in it. They were never other than pleasant over the phone (this was long before there were Apple stores.)
Bad: I finally paid $350 to a 3rd party repair shop, who discovered that the first part Apple replaced was an unrepairably failed refurb part. Apple probably spent more on shipping than the used (but tested) part that finally fixed the problem.
So... Apple has problems like everyone else. They may not have know what they were doing, but they tried to do something.
In addition, their detailed subscriber listings consistently show Macs toward or at the top of the scale for reliability in terms of both desktops and laptops. They don't make complete methodology available, so this isn't exactly the gold standard for consumer research, but it's as close as one gets to hard numbers.
I just took in my powerbok when my HD crashed. It was making a noise, and the guy told me to back it up and bring it back. When I brought it back, they had a new HD in there in 2 hours. Of course, I happen to be near a store that isn't very busy at all, and that may have something to do with it. Though even when I've called AppleCare I was never on the phone for more than an hour. I haven't had a problem with their support.
Get me a meat pie floater!
The packages often end up going to Memphis, TN where Apple has a dedicated staff of repair technicians for Apple hardware only. There are probably other places like this around the country. The service is extermely fast- sometimes the problem is fixed in a day then shipped back to you. Not all the Apple Care phone people remember this off hand, so it is useful to remind them if they forget. I've sent in several computers and batteries like this and my response time was less than 1 week.
Compared to what I had to go through at two different 3rd party repair shops, this was nothing. I've had two computers gone for more than 3 months at different times at generic stores like CompUSA or wherever have you. Mail is definately the way to go.
Corporate support doesn't come from the manufacturer itself. It is contracted out to companies like Getronix, Nexx Innovations, and other home-grown companies that have 'x' in the name and low paid techs. What needs to happen in order for Apple to grow in this market is someone needs to put together an all-apple support crew, and get that contract to provide 24/7 on-site support.
It is also worth noting that this model of support didn't happen over night. It took years. If Apple is seriously looking at getting into the Corporate space, they need to get on this.
I would, but it might put my shakras out of alignment. Back to my iLife...
And if you want horror stories, how about the Dell my brother in law bought with a DOA hard drive, that only made a grinding sound when you turned on the machine. It was audible from the next room, and the Dell support personel told him to reinstall the OS. No lie. He put the phone up to the machine to the person could hear what resembled a rock crusher, and the guy insisted he follow the procedure of reinstalling. We escalated to "2nd level", which might have been the guy next to him or even the same guy acting like he spoke differently for all we know, and he said the same thing. 2 weeks later, he had a replacement drive shipped out which we had to install.
I don't count this as the norm. I have had excellent support from both Dell and Apple on many occasions.
"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."...Tyler Durden
By this I mean, Apple doesn't deliver a general-purpose machine. Microsoft does. As much as I think Windows sucks, I have to admit, it sucks about the same for everything I could possibly want to do with it.
OS X, however, is absolutely awesome as long as I'm doing exactly what Apple wants me to do... and as soon as I step outside that, it could be awesome, and it could be worse than Windows. Simple example: Tried remapping the keybindings for Expose -- I like what F9 does on my Powerbook, but F9 is mapped to keyboard brightness controls, and fn-F9 is annoying -- anyway, mapped it to Command-Semicolon, which works great (especially on Dvorak), except that OS X cannot remember this key combination across reboots.
Sent a bug report. They sent me an email back saying that it was a known issue, and they were working on it -- and attached an NDA to that email. I hope I don't get sued for showing Slashdotters an Apple trade secret -- it's been almost a year since I reported that, and to my knowledge, they still haven't fixed a simple keymap problem.
I've run into all kinds of similar, strange little problems -- some even deliberate. Take QuickTime -- viewing a video fullscreen is a "pro" feature, which is why I used VLC almost exclusively on that machine. Then there's things like Software Update -- great for updating your Apple products, but won't update anything else, and there aren't any decent package managers.
Nothing was more illuminating than when it broke. The screen just went dead. Further experimentation suggests that the backlight is dead, and when the room illumination is just right, I can sort of see where a window is.
I know the machine still works, because aside from that window, and being able to SSH in, I have hooked it up (via DVI) to my desktop monitor, and that works. However, I cannot set the desktop as a primary monitor -- I can either "mirror" the laptop display, making a nice little 1440x900 display in the middle of my 1600x1200 monitor, or I can make it span (a dual-monitor setup), using the full resolution of my desktop, but having half my display (the laptop monitor) completely dead. It also makes reinstalls pretty useless, as I haven't been able to get the desktop monitor to work with any boot CD I've tried, including the OS X install DVDs.
And unfortunately, OS X knows exactly what resolution each monitor can handle. So no setting the mirrored display to 1600x1200 -- it won't go over what it knows the (dead) laptop monitor can handle.
Anyway, first thing I did was check my AppleCare account that I assumed I had. I put the serial number into the AppleCare website... and didn't have an account. Hmm, odd... So, next time I was in a city with an Apple store (I live in rural Iowa), I took it to a Genius bar... and discovered I really didn't have an account, and it'd cost me some $200 to even have it looked at. Apparently, AppleCare is designed to be sold as a separate product, but you must then register it to your Mac over the phone or internet.
Fair enough, but goddamned annoying. I dug up the AppleCare CD and used it to check my system for other problems while I got online and registered my Powerbook. Then I called Apple again, explained the problem, also mentioning a bad sector found by the AppleCare CD. They sent me a box -- next-day air or something, a beautifully-designed one-size-fits-any-Macbook box, with absolutely everything included. Tear off the address label and there's return postage there. Even nice little strips of tape inside the box, not to mention a piece of foam with perforations for every Macbook or Powerbook ever made -- tear it off on the right line and my Powerbook fit perfectly.
Apple is amazing when you're inside-the-box.
Mailed it off to them, and they called my cell phone a bit later and left me a voicemail, telling me they had determined it was "accidental damage", and not covered by my $240 AppleCare plan. I called them up and explained -- well, yes, I had dropped the machine a full year earlier, and that
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
A friend of mine got an AppleCare warranty extension for his video iPod. The thing came-up completely dead one day, just out of standard warranty but well within the extended warranty. Apple refused to service the iPod under warranty because the serial number on the plan had one digit incorrect. Apple admitted that the error was their fault, but still wouldn't service the iPod under warranty. They did refund the full cost of the extended warranty, but still sounds like poor form to me.
But I find it best to work in conjunction with a long time Apple consulting firm. Also OS X server preferred support runs $20,000 (ok I was quoted discount at $16,000) from Apple. That money can buy a lot of consultant hours. Basically, unless you need access to the OS X devs I'd just find a good consulting partner.
For repair and replacement, because Apple does not do 4 hour (or even next day) parts and repair to my town (Honolulu) I have to have extra parts and hardware on hand to implement fixes.
It isn't a deal breaker but Apple Enterprise support as of yet is a far cry from what you'll find with vendors like HP, EMC or even Dell.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
"Members get "Next in line, first on the bench" service on all in-store repairs."
Yeah great. Well "pro" corporate support from any of a dozen vendors means they show up to repair within 4 hours of the support call being placed. No next in line. No line at all.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
But I spent a grand total of 20 minutes on the phone when my Tibook broke, and they shipped me an overnight box the next day. The turnaround from call to getting a fixed laptop was under 5 days.
Maybe it depends on how tough your problem was to diagnose?
I think most people don't know when their hardware is defective. Imagine your mom dealing with a machine that cuts off randomly like the power plug has been yanked. Or how many people put up with modern BSODs, you can say what you want but they are very frequently hardware problems.
They might be good in consumer reports but *my* experience is, I've seen hundreds of thinkpads (not on defective from the factory) and about 8 Apple's where 1/2 were broken.
I'm up in canada, and while I'm upset with apple for having had to take in my Rev.A. Macbook three times over the course of six weeks, I've found apple care to be incredibly accommodating and relatively efficient. However, having said that, being in Canada, I don't take my laptop to a real Apple Store. I take my Mac to a local shop (Westworld: www.westworld.ca), and they deal with Apple Care for me as far as getting the parts etc. The turn around time has always been excellent for me, under a week in three out of the four times, the fourth being a miscommunication between the store and Apple.
AppleCare has it's upsides and it's down sides. As I said, this laptop has been in four times. However, it should be noted that two were for the same issue (they gave it back to me while we waited on a part), and the other issue didn't crop up until a little while after I got it back, which required another visit. The upsides of apple care is that they really want your computer to be in working condition: As such, I'm currently looking at a computer that has 1500$ worth of repair (so say the receipts I got), that I paid only 1400$ for. It's got a brand new hard drive, logic board, bottm case, and inner top-case. All in all, a rather impressive amount of work. On the other hand, as soon as they realized the entire logic board needed to be replaced, I'm of the opinion that it may have been better and faster to have simply given me a new box. AppleCare also doesn't cover accidental damage, and Apple does not offer (as far as I know) a piss-on-it-and-get a-new-one warranty like I've been told numerous times Dell does. I'm not sure I would have paid for a warranty like that, but the ability to get one like that is a comfort to some.
All in all, I think ultimately you have to realize AppleCare is a consumer warranty plan, and should be treated as such. I recall numerous times while working in a computer shop local to here (chain), having laptops go to our depot for service for upwards of two to three weeks. As I said above, AppleCare has been wicked fast for me.
Not to play into the Mac baiting/idiolatry, but Apple does have some of the highest customer satisfaction numbers in the industry, year after year.
I'm sure there will be dozens of horror stories posted about here Macs & Apple, we can do the same for any brand. The truth is in numbers and again, Apple leads the industry in customer satisfaction and retention.
Your issue seems to be a mismatch between what you bought and the service you want.
You didn't buy a system with a business support contract. Apple does have those, but they're not in the Apple Stores. Instead like every other large vendor they have a division dedicated to business customers & their specific needs.
Instead you did the equivalent of going to BestBuy (albeit a much nicer looking one with staff far beyond any "Geek Squad" bufoonery) and are getting standard consumer service. Actually it's far better then you'd get from BestBuy et al, and if you sprang the extra $99 for AppleCare you'll get even better, but it's still walk-in service.
Your complaint really has nothing to do with Apple per se and instead with consumer customer service. Replace "Apple" with "HP" or "Gateway" and the store with "Best Buy", "CompUSA", "Microcenter", or whatever, and suddenly your complaint becomes much clearer
I'm sorry to hear you've had a bad experience with your Mac. I've friends who buy the kind of support you're looking for, where there is next-day service at their office for their Apple products. I've other friends who are certified in Mac repair, who give the kind of service you're looking for, show up, crack open your Mac, if they have the part handy replace it on the spot or if not retrieve it from a depot.
Instead you purchased we'll-look-at-it/fiddle-with-it/send-away-for-part s/send-the-machine-away-for-repair.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
...if Apple doesn't consider you "Enterprise." Good luck is all I can say! My experiences with direct A/B comparison (a company with Dells running Microsoft, and Apples running OS X) shows that Apple is by far the LEAST efficient at providing hardware support. Their Hardware troubleshooting standards are ridiculous--they don't seem to have an "IT Pro" line--every caller is assumed not to know how to plug-in a network cable (or how to check and make sure the cable is connected, as I had one Apple Care rep try to patiently explain to me...) That's great if my mom is calling, but sucks if its me calling. If you don't want to play their reindeer games they accuse you of "refusing to troubleshoot."
Their parts policy works like this: You give them a CC# or you can take it to the Apple Store (and wait up to a month) or you can suck it and not get parts. They do still include a shipping label for your broken part, at least. Apple makes great gear, but their HW support stinks. If I had it all to do over again, I'd insist on having a ready stock of spare parts handy to put systems back into service while hassling with Apple's "support" line.
Bottom line: Average downtime for any Apple HW problem: 3.5 days if we could get parts to the office (or, even more rare and special, get a technician on-site,) 7-10 days if we had to take it to the Apple store. Dell: Pretty consistently fast, easy to get parts-- 5 hours for servers, ~1.5 days for desktops/laptops w/onsite service.
Who did what now?
Dell, Well - I guess if you speak 5 languages - you might be able to talk to Dell tech support...
I called support (note, I had not bought any kind of applecare package, but this WAS only a month after purchase), and the guy had me remove each stick of RAM to test if one was bad. The best part was, after explaining to me how to get to the RAM, he believed me when I said I could handle it from there and just said OK, if one is bad then take it to the Apple store and exchange it. This was a great change from some tech supports who insist on hand-holding through every freaking step. I took the bad stick of RAM to the apple store, they tested it themselves, and handed me a new one. Problem solved! Quickly and easily. Maybe the Apple store in Cambridge, MA is just more efficient than most.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
i have had nothing but headaches in dealing with apple support. they are awful--absolute worst.
The biggest problem I encounter is people who mistake AppleCare for insurance. Water in the laptop? Not covered! Busted screen? Not covered! Dropped it? Not covered! Cat peed in it? Take it away. Tried to fix it yourself and rolled a screw into the power supply? Your fault. Fill up your hard drive? Not an AppleCare problem. A good number of the problems I see fall into this category.
Then, there are the people who install substandard, third-party equipment (like memory) from a reseller or something they've bought themselves. They begin to experience kernel panics and/or shutdowns and demand that AppleCare cover something that Apple didn't provide as original equipment. Tough beans, Mr. Green Jeans! I can tell by looking at the customer's memory if it's OEM. If I remove it and the problem goes away, Apple is absolved. Period. Install a third-party card in a tower and I find a driver conflict, Apple is absolved. Period.
People who self-diagnose are a lot of fun. Guy tells me "my hard drive is failing." If I take him at his word, I order a replacement from Apple (delivered Next Business Day, when possible) and I find that the customer has tried doing optimization and maintenance on a Tiger disk with a Panther Utility. Mac OS X keeps a log of everything. I get dinged for a misdiagnosis. One customer told me today that "either my hard drive or my logic board is defective." He's got a faulty power adapter. A smart provider reads the logs and checks the machine before taking the user's word for anything.
Small service providers can't afford to stock all the parts necessary to service the full line of Apple products. That means we make our best diagnosis, send off for the part, install it, and--hopefully--send the customer home happy. There are incentives in place to insure that AppleCare service providers provide prompt, accurate service.
I don't doubt that Apple has dropped the ball a time or two. But Apple and its service providers take the greatest pains to provide quick, satisfactory service. This combines with the people who build, test, and market Apple products--people who really do give a damn that the user is supreme--to make Apple a tier-one operation.
AppleCare Service Providers don't do the job to get rich; repairs don't pay that well. I can't speak for the rest of the authorized service providers, but I can speak for me: your equipment should just work; if it doesn't, it's our job to make it so as soon as possible.
Period.
There are a lot of 3rd party hardware repair companies for Apple equipment - try iresq.com, techrestore.com, etc. Dead backlights are usually the inverter (though not always), in which case you're looking at a pretty inexpensive repair. That's even something you can do yourself, if you have a torx set and a phillips set, as well as a small plastic tool (like the edge of a credit card) to pry the display assembly open. ifixit.com probably has instructions.
In spanning mode, you can set your secondary display as the main display by opening display preferences, clicking the arrangement tab, then dragging the white menubar to the secondary display.
I've never tried it for a reinstall, but you can run most (tibook and later) powerbooks in "clamshell mode". Connect an external mouse, keyboard, and display, and close the lid. Suddenly it's a really small, low powered powermac. Keep an eye on heat, though, as a pretty good percentage of the cooling for powerbooks comes from the top case. If it's getting really hot while you're doing this, run a magnet along the top case until the machine goes to sleep - the mechanism that informs the machine when the display is closed is magnetic, so putting a magnet over the switch will make the machine think the display is closed, but still allow the top case to dissipate heat.
You certainly could put linux on it - though getting wireless to work may depend on whether the airport extreme card is from broadcom or atheros - the former is a bit more tricky. I've had good luck with Ubuntu edgy for ppc.
Apple offers the 80% solution, both with software and hardware: point your services at 80% of the user base (point and click iLife consumers, for the most part) and keep the rest of the buttons out of the way. Sadly, for many people, simply acknowledging that something is possible is percieved as setting up a support contract, so they don't let their tech support so much as acknowledge that it's possible. Lots of impressive things are possible with macs, but you have to be willing to get out your machete and walk through the brush.
I live in The Netherlands where we may have special laws about this, but when an electronic device breaks down within 4 days it is simlpy returned to the store it came from for a replacement (ie. NOT a repair).
The buyer has an agreement with the seller and the seller has to deliver goods that work properly. If they fail within 4 days, you simply return it and get another one. If it's an online store, you only pay for postage.
I fail to see why this guy puts up with Apple phone support, going to different stores, etc. Simply go to the store you got it from and demand your money back! Looks like 10 minutes of work to me...
The time periods in ProCare are shorter than AppleCare.
My experience with AppleCare is that you're better to send the machine in via FedEx and you get it back in 3 days. The stores are so busy it is a bit of a hassle.
I've been fairly satisfied with Applecare Support (read: extremely less aggravated than by say Dell or HP desktop support) and I'm not going to start to rant about Apple stores and authorized repair centers in my area.
:(
From my experience, the iMac is fairly easy to replace the hard drive, but it really depends on the model, as they differ significantly. The older versions actually come apart in two pieces that then allow for easy hard drive access, but the "newer" DV models require slightly more work for hard drive replacement.
Perhaps you meant the eMac? Those are a major pain to dissect; nearly every screw and part needs to be removed to get the fscking hard drive. IMHO, they were designed as a throw away device, not meant for servicing whatsoever. The eMac was nearly as aggravating to repair as the iBook and Powerbook G4 laptops!
I guess luck of the draw brought you a new, inexperienced, or incompetent tech!
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt. (When catapults are outlawed, only outlaws will
No ... I meant iMac. It was a 17" G5 iMac w/ 1.5GB RAM. Really nice computer. Like you said though ... that day I just happened to get an incompetent tech.
When the touchpad on my macbook pro broke, they overnighted me a dhl box, I packed it up and sent it in the next day, and they fixed and overnighted my laptop back to me the day that they received it. All told, it took about 2 days to get the laptop fixed (dhl picked the laptop up Monday evening and I got the laptop back on Wednesday morning).
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
In the past year, I've bought an ibook g4, and a 20 inch Core 2 Duo imac. The ibook g4 had a bad motherboard, but i bought it at the local campus store, not the local apple store, so the apple store wouldn't replace it. I brought the laptop to the apple store at about 6pm on a friday, and i had it back on monday at around 2. Thats pretty impressive in my opinion, and its worked great ever since. When I got my imac, it had bad RAM, and would lock up under load. This started happening about 2 weeks after I got it. I took it to the apple store, and they gave me another one, right away, no questions asked. With a PC at any other store, that would never happen. Apples support is about the best you can get, from my experience
No, I don't work at NMA, but there's some communication between stores. I work in the same market, though.
You're going to be dealing with a fried ethernet port, a bad logic chip, an unresponsive DVD drive, a non-functional display, or a variety of other problems you can't fix at the 'bar.
Those are all things we take care of in-store most of the time. It really varies by the model, but I have repaired all of those things in the past week. And when I was talking "business" I really meant "small business" not "enterprise."
Going to an Apple Store seems like a bad idea these days. They're too busy, for one, and it's possible they may well be following procedure designed to reduce repair costs for Apple.
And, frankly, their continued existence doesn't really hinge on the quality of their hardware service.
An independent shop, which is authorized to do Mac repairs, might try harder. They'd have a great incentive to make you happy. Best case scenario is that you come back and buy your next Mac from them, instead of from Apple. And, it's possible that they could be more inclined to decide in *your* favor, rather than in favor of Apple's bottom line. I don't know how the economics of authorized repair go, so that may not actually be likely. It could certainly be rational for an independent to be less likely to declare your computer's problem as being 'in spec', unless the cost is eaten by the indie rather than by Apple.
And an authorized independent shop is far less likely to have an arrogant emo-buy poseur working the genius bar but more interested in hitting on emo chicks than in helping you. And indie employee who does that is likely to get canned.
On the down side, it may be difficult to find one, let alone one you can trust. I didn't see any lists or directories on apple.com the other day when I happened to check.
A way to find a shop might be to listen to your local NPR station. In Boston and NYC, at least, the NPR stations have been giving away Macs during fundraisers, for the last few years, and those Macs come from local indie Mac VAR/repair shops.
I've been dealing with computer makers for about 10 years personally and professioinally, and overall Apple has always been easier to deal with. IBM was very good as well. Dell, was usually a pain.
The quality of service you get out of different support people varies widely, no matter what company you go with. I've had calls to Dell and Apple where it felt I was beating my head against the wall because it was a script reader or inexperienced tech, and calls where I get a knowledgeable tech that knows what to do. It's a crap shoot.
If you're already familiar with the ins and out of dealing with tech support skip this and go to the next post. If not read on for some tips in how to deal with them:
There's one thing I've learned over the years, it 's how you talk to the Tech support that really matters. Communication is key to getting good tech support. Act like an average user, don't do basic troubleshooting, or be rude and you get the run around from a lot of them. An experienced tech will peg you as an average computer user and feed you the script. The idea is to get off script as soon as possible to get your RMA/support call. Act like you know what you're talking about and communicating to them on a profession and, if you have the skill, a more technical level. (Do not fake it if you aren't technically skilled in the problem they smell that too and will script you then also.
Describe the problem, tell him/her that you've looked up the problem in the knowledge base an that didn't solve your problem. Tell them you've already trouble shot the problem to the best of your abilities, explain that the problem has reoccurred and tell them what you've tried, before you get into the troubleshooting script. If you already know the RAM or hard drive is bad, just tell them how you figured that out. They might make you retry the basic steps you already did, but that's okay. They have to verify the problem before you can get an RMA or service call. Explain politely that you are willing to reproduce the problem and they will sometimes skip a step or three, and take you word for it and save you time.
Sometimes I get a script reader tech support guy and I talk over his head, ask him questions his script doesn't have the answers too and I'll usually get transferred to the next service tier or to the manager.
If you're in IT or a level or two past "power user" or you get your IT guy (assuming he's not a jerk or incompetent) to make the calls you usually get better service too. Once you establish with the tech support person on the other end of the line that you're an advanced user (by telling them everything you've tried in detail), and that you know they are there to help solve the problem (and not someone you call to blame for the problem) user they're more likely to treat you right, and take extra steps with you. Say thing like "What can _we_ try to fix this?" to get them on your side. And I'll usually ask the tech support person if he gets a lot of calls on this problem or if it's new to him.
When you don't like the person you're dealing with, call back and try a different support person or ask to be transferred. I once was told a repair would take a week or two by one, but when I called back I got a person who had overnighted me a shipping box and I has it back within a few days. (Apple India vs. Apple USA)
If you establish that it's a hardware problem and its under warranty, ask if they'll cross ship the part to you and that you can install it. If it is a field replaceable part, I've never been denied cross shipment once I get them a credit card number for collateral that they'd get the bad part back. I've had some tell me to ship back the part instead of cross ship it. Then I explained to the tech that the computer wasn't on-site and it was a VIP's laptop that couldn't be without a computer for even 3 days, and they cross shipped for me.
I've had a case where the tech (dell) told me to do something that screwed up another driver instead of fixing the driver that
When you have the repair done by mail, they are unbelievably efficient. New parts, in my experience of about 4 repairs over 5 years and 3 machines, tend to ARRIVE the day after you call. Repairs are typically back in a couple of days.
And for most things short of a full computer replacement (for example, new mouse, new battery), they'll send you a new one and ask you to just send the old one back. And again, it arrives the next day.
Aside from them dropping "phone support" from the 91st day through the end of the 1 year coverage period, I could not ask for more.
Hi, I have been maintaining about 50 macs in Seattle for a printing company for about 5 years and have gravitated to avoiding contact with Apple for hardware related problems if I can- I try to do business with local Apple-authorized repair stores- I let them deal with Apple. The only two Apple departments that I have run into that seem to make me feel like I am interacting with a company that caters to business needs are Xserve phone support people and sometimes Apple business sales account managers (I purchase most Apple hardware via CDW due to special pricing for the national franchise I work with and they also offer good support if a get "lemon" mac.). For hardware repairs, I use The Seattle Mac Store in Seattle- an independent computer store that is an Apple-authorized repair facility I use to do business with Westwind, another mac shop that was a great apple authorized repair store, but they seemed to close their doors about the same time Apple's Apple store came to town....