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Apple Care Efficiency When Macs Break?

Posted by Cliff on from the what-has-been-your-experience dept.

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?"

3 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Re:AppleCare is great... by tsnee · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Usually better than when you dropped it off Depends on which Apple Store. The one in Durham, NC always returned my laptop in worse condition. I would sit in the store for six hours to tell someone my DVD drive was broken, wait three or four weeks to get my computer back, then find that its wireless networking no longer worked. Take it back, wait a few weeks, find that the sound no longer worked. The last time I bothered to take it in, they didn't even put all the screws back in the case! After six months of this, my extended warranty finally expired, and now I am no longer a customer.
  2. Re:Macs for business use are still silly by iluvcapra · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    Sigh. My G5 under my desk has all of the sound effects for a certain arachnid-Stan Lee-related movie on it. If it dies and it can't get fixed, my dubbing stage will stop working within about an hour or two, and the dubbing stage is booked for around $1000/hour. "Fancy Design businesses" like advertising, commercial art and film production, have hideously short turnarounds and are ruinously expensive on a minutes and hours basis.

    AppleCare ain't great, good for home, but bad for what I do professionally. So how do we do it? Our tech support people take Macs seriously, they have a small inventory of spares for when they need to send one back, and they know enough to fix small things themselves. I've never needed mine replaced for anything, FWIW. Any large organization could handle supporting Macs, having IT people who take them seriously and keep up to date on their issues is the real problem.

    Oh and having a spare machines on site helps too ;)

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
  3. Re:AppleCare is great... by linuxpng · · Score: 3, Interesting

    AMEN! I had a powermac I dropped off at that same store that was suffering from the sudden shutdown issue you'll find on some mac boards. (replacement systemboard + powersupply)I came back after 3 weeks to find it had looked like it had been dragged across a circuit board (you know that sharp soldier joints on the back) and for them to tell me "it couldn't possibly have happened in repair".

    Just the last straw. I've had a powerbook (my first mac the old Ti) die right out of the box that kept going back to service for 6 months because when they fixed something, they broke something else. They eventually replaced it with the next level Ti powerbook that had the paint flaking issue. That powermac also had it's powersupply replaced once because they use cheap fans and they used to get loud after a perioud of time. Also still have a 12inch powerbook that had 3 hard drive replacements and has a slight wobble. You should look at their forums for the replacement batteries they sent out on the recall.. See how many people got batteries that don't even fit(mine too).

    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID= 636886&tstart=0

    The problem is when a product is old Apple wants to forget the ever made it. Oh sure when there is a class action lawsuit.

    Sorry for the rant, I've given apple waaay too much money.