

Apple Fails at Customer Service - kaffeinecoma
http://garmhold.blogspot.com/2009/11/apple-fails-at-customer-service.html

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jsz0
DOA probably isn't the right term here. Neither machine was DOA. Anyway the
point of advance replace is a good one. Apple also doesn't have on-site
service which is a major issue for big heavy computers that are typically used
as professional workstations. Apple, as a company, seems rather clueless about
enterprise level support. They're missing out on a small but insanely
profitable part of the market. People will pay a premium for the best support
possible. This goes for computers and software developers. How many iPhone
developers would pay a few thousand dollars a year to get A list treatment? (a
lot I think)

~~~
nudist
Apple applies the same principles to customer service that they do to their
products.

Rather than tier service -- and by design treat some people badly and some
people amazingly -- like many companies do, they work hard to find a good
middle ground where everyone is sufficiently happy and receives almost the
same level of service. Necessarily, this means some people used to amazing
support will get worse support and those used to shitty support get better
support.

Whether you like it or not, it seems very strange to me that someone would say
Apple is "clueless about enterprise level support." Of course Apple
understands how the industry standard is for enterprise support. They most
likely consciously do not copy it.

~~~
mattmaroon
Enterprise support is what you need when you're selling $3,500 towers because
that's the where most of the sales come from. Not many consumers drop that on
a PC.

~~~
nudist
And an Apple MP3 player must have an FM radio built-in because all the other
companies put them in their players.

~~~
mattmaroon
I don't see the connection. Not all statements about Apple are wrong because
one is. Apple sells about as many desktops to enterprise in a year as the
average Best Buy and this is probably part of why.

~~~
nudist
My point is that most companies, like Dell, sell their consumer machines at a
horrendously low profit margin. They make it up in enterprise sales.

Apple, however, sells consumer machines at a tremendous profit. The value you
think Apple should see in enterprise is negated by their own business model
being different from the industry norms.

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staunch
This is truly the one amazing thing Dell has over Apple.

One of the fan filters on my Dell laptop got clogged, which caused the
graphics chip to overheat (resulting in slow graphics performance and blasting
fans). I called Dell in the afternoon on a Monday and did 15 minutes of
troubleshooting. They said it might be a problem with the model of graphics
card or motherboard.

The next morning there's a Dell tech taking my machine apart, fixing it, and
walking out in 20 minutes. Total disruption to my work was less than an hour
that week.

Another time I was traveling (for work) in another country and I broke my
laptop (dropped it). Dell had a contractor in my office with replacement parts
the next day. I didn't have coverage on it though, so that time cost me a few
hundred. I'd probably have been SOL with Apple though.

~~~
nomoresecrets
Yeah, Dell are great at support. </sarcasm>

My Dad's PC had a DVD-ROM drive that died. I was on the phone to Dell support
for A WHOLE DAY. THe problem was trivial, but I got shunted around, told to
try all the crappy shovelware shit they'd put on the PC that I'd uninstalled,
etc.

XP's built-in CD burning just plain failed to work. Dell support tried to tell
me that the CD-ROM drive was not compatible with XP's CD burning (totally
nonsense). I even had to give them my credit card number to sign up for their
software support (as well as the cash I'd paid for next-day hardware support),
because "it might be a software problem, so you have to pay for software
support." At least they had the decency to refund that.

They'd established (or rather, I had) that the drive was faulty, so they
wanted to mail me a drive and I could fit it. As I'd paid for next-day on-site
warranty I told them they could take a running jump.

Next day, hardware guy turns up, replaces drive in about 10 minutes, fixing
the problem.

A WHOLE DAY on the phone. I've never bought Dell support again.

~~~
tallanvor
Consumer level support is completely different than enterprise support.
--Generally with enterprise support, companies like Dell assume someone
competent has already done initial troubleshooting. It's cheaper for them to
pay people to spend the day on phone rather than sending someone onsite for
something that might not actually be a hardware issue.

I'm not saying it's right, that's just the way it works, unfortunately.

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whatusername
This might add some light on the phone calls from higher up the chain - and
also has the advice that this month is the time to contact Apple Support.
<http://www.cringely.com/2009/12/ask-and-ye-shall-receive/>

(The gist of Cringely's post is that Apple want to top the JD Power listings
for quality and support. This means that this month apple will bend over
backwards to ensure they're keeping people happy)

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jason_tko
I also had a serious issue with my new MacBook Pro I purchased for business
use.

Upon arrival, it constantly froze for between 2 to 30 seconds during any kind
of task. Extremely frustrating and disruptive to productivity. I took it back
to the Apple Store, and they told me they needed to swap the hard disk.

Fine. Time Cost : Trip during business hours to the Apple store, and perhaps 2
hours waiting around. 1-2 days without PC. Backup/restoration of all backup
data.

After this, I went to the Apple store and got the computer back, and took it
back to the office. It was exactly the same as it was before - constantly
freezing.

I took it back again. This time, they said it must be the logic board. I
argued this - a lot of other people on the Apple forums are also complaining,
and they say it's due to incompatibilities by having shock detection systems
on both the hard disk and the MacBook Pro itself.

In the end, Apple said fine, let us take the PC and run tests on it. Within 1
or 2 days, we'll know what the problem is, and we'll be able to fix it.

Well, I asked, how long will it take you to fix it after you figure out
exactly what the problem is?

About a week, they replied.

This is when I started to get a bit upset. This machine I bought for business
is not capable of performing the simplest of tasks, and they want 8-10 days to
fix it?

Further, it has a serious work preventing problem, and Apple causally asks for
a full week diagnosing and fixing this laptop, which I need to use daily for
business tasks.

I complained, and eventually got them to simply replace pretty much everything
in the PC (HDD again, logic board, memory).

They then said "Alright, because you have a built-to-order machine, we don't
have the parts here. We'll need to send it out, and it'll take about 5 days."

Upsetting. I naturally complained again.

"You should get the business pack. It only costs 20,000 yen (or something
along these lines), and you get priority service for a year. You'll get your
laptop back in 1 day. All the businesses have this."

Once again, upsetting. To have wasted days of my time trying to get Apple to
fix it, and then to be hit with a surcharge for them to fix a problem in a
reasonable time frame that is likely THEIR fault in the first place!!

I complained, spoke to a manager, and had this fee waived, and they promised
to return it within a day. Finally, this was a satisfying solution.

I submitted my laptop, had it back the next day, and still had freezes, but
they weren't as bad. I almost went off Apple forever, but then a few weeks
later they introduced some firmware changes that cleared up my problem.

Now I am very happy with my laptop, and I believe it's the best machine I've
ever used.

However, I couldn't help but compare my experiences with "AppleCare" and how
they support their flagship business laptop, to any experience I've had with
the most basic PC configurations from Dell.

Dell will come on-site almost immediately, fix things quickly and efficiently,
quickly ship replacements of broken equipment or broken PCs/Laptops.

It's a dream to get support from Dell.

But look out if you have an Apple machine you plan to use for business.

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jeremymcanally
I've only experienced issues once with a local store, and a call to Apple's
Customer Hotline (or whatever it's called) fixed that real quick. I was in a
situation similar to yours (starting a new job, _had_ to have the machine),
and I was told I had to wait for them to repair it. After a number of back and
forth conversations over a day or so and the manager ignoring me for a second
time when I tried to appeal in person, I called the hotline.

The store called 2 hours later to tell me to pick up a new, updated machine,
ready to use with my data transferred over (keep in mind the issue I took the
original machine in for was super minor).

I know it's anecdotal, but every time I've had to interface with Apple people,
it's been nothing but pleasant (even with the App Store).

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ajaimk
I think the tech support you had could have been a lot better and I will say
that such issues usually pop up for me with dell. Dell does 1 thing right and
that is NBD On-Site Warranty.

Also, I don't understand why you had an issue with advance shipping of you
Mac.

I bought a macbook pro which was DOA this summer and was in a similar issue
where I had just started the job and needed the laptop. I explained this to
them and they faxed me a contract which specified that they will send me a
replacement and I had return the original within 30 day. They took down my
credit card details but I confirmed it with them that my card will only be
charged if the laptop is not returned within the 30 day period. I just needed
to print that paper, sign it and fax/scan and email it to them which I did. I
spoke to Apple on the Monday, got the contract taken care of on Tuesday and
had the computer by Wednesday morning.

Also, note that that Monday was WWDC and they managed to solve all this DURING
the launch of a the macbook pros and more.

Do send me an email if you want me to send you a copy of the contract(Advance
Replacement).

~~~
kaffeinecoma
Hey ajaimk, I'd love to get a copy of the contract (with personal details
redacted, of course). Could you send it to me at kaffeinecoma@gmail.com ?

Thanks.

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ben1040
I've had much, much better service by having my computers repaired by the
local indie Mac shop. They generally were a lot more responsive and friendly,
and they did the repairs on-site and billed it back to Apple.

Plus I didn't have to make an "appointment" to lug a G5 or Mac Pro all the way
through a shopping mall.

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tallanvor
I can't say I'm all that surprised... I had to argue with one of their
"geniuses" about an issue with my Air. He tried to get me to reinstall the OS
to fix a failing drive (S.M.A.R.T. was even reporting that the drive was
failing).

Took them a week to replace the drive. It probably would have been less hassle
for me to just buy a new drive and replace it myself.

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dareiff
I see the point about having an enterprise level of support.

I also see two edge cases.

I've had an LCD screen replaced (fo' free) 2 years outside the warranty period
—

My first Mac, so it made an impression.

So all you had to do was wait for a postage-paid box and send it back?

As an aside, Apple's Bluetooth mice have always seemed terrible, IMHO.

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DenisM
_What's the point of buying AppleCare?_

Like any other extended warranty, the point is to make a nice profit for them
and give a warn and fuzzy to people who are not strong on math.

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staunch
If it was me, I'd have:

#1 Used software to manually control fan speed (watching temp).

#2 Bought a $10 USB Bluetooth device.

I hate shipping/going to stores for support.

~~~
whatajoke
If it was me, I had assemble my own machine. But neither my story, nor yours
is related to apple support.

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teeja
"For some reason the fans just started going full-tilt all the time"

Sounds like a kernel panic to me. My brand-new iMac did that on its first day
right out of the box ... nothing on it but system software. First, and only,
time - go figure.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_panic>

The Mac fans are (apparently) under software control, and a number of testing
routines also rev up the fans. It can be unnerving when you first hear it.

~~~
kaffeinecoma
No, a Kernel Panic would result in a crash. All modern computer fans are under
software (BIOS/firmware) control. I also tried re-installing the OS to no good
effect. The machine was totally functional, except for the fact that it was
miserable to be in the same room with because of the noise.

~~~
teeja
That's ... okay, whatever you want to call it, that's what it was called in
the past when there was a problem. (I don't see why I'm getting downmodded for
trying to help...)

See this page for many more examples (hope it helps):
[http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/powermacg5/topic2215...](http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/powermacg5/topic2215.html)

Here's more recent one:
<http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10364393>

