
My visit to the Apple Store - acangiano
http://antoniocangiano.com/2008/11/28/my-visit-to-the-apple-store/
======
Tichy
How Dell visited me

This was two years ago. Unfortunately since then I did not have any troubles
with my Notebook, so I had no opportunity to call in the Dell support.
Actually back then I did not have a problem either, but I was not sure about
that. My notebook's hard drive would emit a faint clicking sound occasionally
- only noticeable because being fanless, this was the only noise the notebook
would create at all.

Apparently it is normal, but when I called Dell about it, they insisted on
exchanging the drive just in case. Because I was contracting at the time, they
offered to come around to the office at the company where I worked. When the
Dell technician arrived the next day, I went into an empty room with him and
he exchanged the hard drive within minutes. Then he left.

My notebook has worked without any problems ever since.

I didn't tell my girl-friend about it, because she doesn't care, but whenever
I see a chance to recommend a Dell product, I wholeheartedly do so.

Hm, this would have made a great blog post, but now I wasted the story on HN
already. Ah well...

~~~
andr
+1. My Dell fan was full of dust, so the notebook started overheating. I asked
Dell (over their online chat) if it can be replaced and two days later a
technician knocked on my door and took care of it. Total time wasted: 10
minutes.

PS I didn't even have to pay for the warranty, as you can usually get a 3-year
at-home warranty from Dell for free.

------
dchest
Good for him. I own three Macs (iBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air) and two of
them broke a few times. I live in Russia and Apple's service is _terrible_
here.

I have waited more than 50 days for a replacement part (battery) for my Air to
arrive, and -- since it didn't arrive -- thanks to the local law, got a
replacement Air. It broke two months later (sound card) -- it's been in
service for three weeks now.

My MacBook Pro's hard drive failed -- it took two weeks to replace it, and I
paid for it even though I had a warranty (they said it was my fault that the
HDD failed). The next week after warranty expired the battery broke, and I had
to buy a new one. Even though they had a recall program for batteries that
broke with the same symptoms, my battery was not eligible for recall because
of a different serial number.

My girlfriend waited 5 (!) months for a replacement battery for her MacBook to
arrive. (Local laws that require no more than 45 days for repair didn't work
in that case, because she bought her MacBook in Scotland.)

Ask me why I still love Apple products. I don't know.

Ask me why I have three Macs. It's because one of them is always being
repaired.

------
jyothi
What is also important about the recently numerous gaga stories about how
great apple treated them at their service centers is - "Why is that there are
so many complaints?", first place.

I own a Mac and I am definitely pleased by their support. My hard disk
crashed, top case chipped away due to a bad design in this version, Apple
happily replaced this all in a day, in India. And as I write this my RAM is
beeping indicating some hardware problem yet again and it has been just around
a year. Now am I happy, definitely "No". You can't be making 10 trips to the
apple store and still feel good just about how they treat you.

For the same money I could have bought a Dell or a HP, threw it away when i
was not happy and bought another one. I would have still saved some money.

------
andr
I don't mean to be rude, but every day thousands of people around the world
visit their local Genius bar. And as much as you want to think that your
Genius was just awfully nice, they ARE following strict guidelines about what
they can and can't do. Not exactly news.

~~~
potatolicious
I think the point here is how they stack up with the competition. I had a
unique experience a while back as my roommate had to fix his Dell at the same
time I had to fix my Apple.

He spent... well, almost a full work day (!) on the phone, arguing with one
rep or another, convincing them that something had broken, before they sent a
tech out (to their credit, it was fixed then).

I spent... 10 minutes. I called, told them about the problems I was having,
asked for a repair-via-mail, was promptly granted it, gave them my address,
and was on my way. Yeah, it took 4 days longer than his method, but I saved
myself some pretty major aggravation.

~~~
woodsier
"May I please speak to a supervisor" - magic words!

From my experience you can also ask to speak with the Gold tech support guys
who are local to your country (that's the case in Australia anyway).

This is regarding Dell support, btw.

------
yef
You're happy that you got a new battery for a laptop you can't use? I don't
get it.

I have gotten good service at Apple stores, and (as in life) it pays to be
nice to the person you're dealing with. Overall, however, I find them fairly
confusing; hard to find stuff, don't know where to pay, etc.

------
unalone
The store near where I live in New Jersey extended its hours to help me when
my computer melted. I had a pretty severe problem and I was panicking - didn't
have time to make an appointment - and they stayed open an extra half hour to
make sure everything went okay. It was incredibly kind of them.

An undercover retail article said that Apple Store employees are given an
incredible amount of freedom in the store: they're allowed to roam around and
talk to customers however they see fit. The idea is that if you hire a Mac
fan, train him only minimally, and free him from any sort of store restraint,
then he'll be much more responsive to customers. It's a really smart idea and
in my experience, it works.

------
somabc
Two things make me think Apple are not giving such great service -

1) A simple firmware update rendered your screen unusuable 2) They only
replaced your battery because they had sold you a faulty battery in the first
place.

They are not being nice they are fixing mistakes that should never have been
made in the first place.

~~~
GHFigs
Those are quality assurance issues, not customer service. Both factor into
your satisfaction with a product, but they are not the same thing. Even though
the ideal is both, it's entirely possible to have great QA but shitty CS, or
shitty QA and great CS, and still have happy and loyal customers. It's
impossible (or at least extremely impractical) to have perfection in either.

This story is about a positive customer service experience, where 1) the
service person lacked a prescribed solution to the original (firmware/screen)
problem, but the customer left satisfied and 2) the service person was
attentive enough to solve a second problem (out of warranty, at company
expense) that the customer hadn't even expressed as a complaint.

If you can't see why that's uncommonly good service, you're not paying
attention.

Of course it's not that way all the time, at every location, for every
customer, but it indicates Apple's atypical strategy of having their own
retail stores with that kind of one-on-one support is one that can have
atypically big pay off in customer satisfaction.

For comparison, Best Buy's GeekSquad would have charged the customer a minimum
of $50 to even look at the problem, and on the off chance they even knew about
the recalled battery, would not have been able to replace the it on the spot
for free. Local shops are mostly the same story. In short, the author could
not have had had the same loyalty-generating positive experience with any
other brand of computer.

~~~
somabc
As a counterpoint though I have found Apple to be less than helpful when it
comes to hardware issues. My Macbook Pro developed a hardware fault after I
upgraded my Hard Drive.

The design of the MBP is surely aimed at discouraging you from upgrading the
HD, you practically have to dismantle most of the laptop. I took it to an
Apple Store in London who would not help as it was out of warranty. The store
employee advised me I would be better buying a new one than repairing the
laptop. So I went to an Apple Authorised Repair Shop where they quoted £120
just to look at the laptop, then parts and labour (again this would likely be
£600+). I then went to an Unauthorized Apple repair shop where they took 6
weeks to repair the issues and charged £250 to replace the superdrive. The
only faults found were a broken clip jamming the superdrive and a reinstall of
Leopard. It is not easy to get Apple parts to repair it yourself.

So a design flaw cost me 2 months without my Laptop, the Apple Store were not
interested without serious £££'s, and the Apple dealer was the same.

~~~
GHFigs
What design flaw? You said yourself that you dismantled it. That's a pretty
solid indicator that you yourself broke it. Why on earth would you expect
Apple to repair that for free? Would you expect anybody else to? Would you
work for free?

Your experience with other shops is irrelevant when regarding Apple's customer
service, as those shops _aren't Apple_. An authorized shop can charge whatever
it wants for out-of-warranty repairs, and an unauthorized one, well, you're
really grasping at straws if you think Apple has anything to do with that.

I don't see how anything you've written here is a counterpoint. It's just an
anecdote about how much money you chose to spend to have someone fix your
mistake.

~~~
somabc
I consider not having a user replaceable hard drive a design flaw. Most
laptops have a hard drive bay so you can easily swap your hard drive, even the
macbook has this now. What do you do when your hard drive fails? (which it
will eventually) Apples answer is to pay them to fit a new hard drive or buy a
new laptop.

My point with the Apple Store is they were unhelpful and unprepared to take
the time to diagnose the problem. Their attitude is if your laptop that is
more than a 2-3 years old you should buy a new one.

I mentioned the other Apple Dealers to point out that spare parts for Apple
Macs are normally ridiculously overpriced and hard to come by. PC Laptop
repair shops are happy to repair other laptops for a fraction of the price but
will not touch apple products (why?).

~~~
GHFigs
That supposed "design flaw" did not render your computer inoperable. You did.
By your own admission it was operating normally until you "upgraded" it,
breaking it in the process. Don't complain about anybody else until you can
take responsibility for your own mistakes.

I don't see how the store was unhelpful, given what you've already described.
What nerve they have--when you walk in with a broken out-of-warranty laptop--
to suggest replacing it with a new, functioning, under-warranty one. How rude
and unhelpful it is to suggest a solution with a 100% chance of enabling you
to have a functioning machine again! Instead, you wanted free out-of-warranty
repair, which is not a service they offer. Their "attitude" has nothing to do
with it: they can't give you what you want, and you didn't want what they
offered.

And again with the non-Apple shops, you're being completely obtuse. Apple does
not own those shops or set their rates. Being "authorized" only means that
they can do repairs under warranty and receive service manuals and parts
directly from Apple. Every other laptop vendor has a similar program. If a
shop ripped you off, you can take it up with them. The OEM has nothing to do
with it.

Finally, as I said before, you're not speaking at all to the original subject.
Instead, you're bitching about how much money you spent fixing your mistake.

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psyklic
"My laptop stopped displaying anything on its LCD."

I had a Gateway (acquired by MPC), same thing happened three months ago. I
sent it in after an on-site repairman couldn't fix it.

Two months later, MPC doesn't answer their phone and doesn't reply to emails.
In fact, MPC filed bankruptcy earlier this month, so it looks like my laptop
is in limbo.

------
evdawg
Hey, I've been casually following your blog but didn't know you lived here in
Toronto. Good stuff!

