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Apple customer service - three times a lady
God, I hope someone gets these obscure references…
On Wednesday afternoon, I had the occasion to stop into my local Apple Store in Alpharetta, GA. The reason for my visit was that the hard drive in my Macbook Pro had given me quite a scare on Tuesday morning by failing to be recognized by the rest of the computer. A minor quibble, sure, but enough to make me nearly soil my Dockers as I realized I hadn’t properly backed up my Parallels documents and some very important stuff was hiding in there.
Eventually on Tuesday evening I was able to coax it into target mode and recover my data. Wednesday morning though, it booted up and ran great for about an hour before it bit the dust again. I attempted a half hearted flatten and recovery, to no avail. So I made an appointment at the Genius Bar and headed over around lunch time.
Now, a little history is on order to properly prepare you for the big ending. 
Back in November, we ordered a 17″ Macbook for work via Amazon. After a few weeks of it not being able to take a disk image or function properly at all, it turned out to have a faulty logic board, so I took it to the same Apple store referenced above. The mandatory tests were run, and the question came up as to when and where I purchased it. I told them Amazon and that I wasn’t sure of the exact date. I hopped onto a demo machine, logged into Amazon and we printed an invoice from some 25 days earlier.
I walked out of the store with a new, replacement machine (no box, discs, cables or anything - just a receipt and a 17″ Macbook Pro) thanks to Apples in store replacement policy - though I honestly was amazed they replaced a machine that wasn’t even purchased there.
That was (I learned today) December 12th of last year. I ended up using that machine and giving the other employee MY Macbook (which had a larger hard drive and a glossy screen). So for the past month I had been using the replacement unit Apple had given us.
Enter Tuesdays issues and Wednesdays trip to the Apple store. I walked in a few minutes early for my appointment and was greeted by Adam, who invited me to belly on up to the bar. We chatted for a moment and I explained the symptoms (failing tests using SMART tools, clacking noises, failure to write data, lockups, etc.). Adam agreed that it did indeed sound like a drive on it’s way to heaven. He began to write up a repair order when inspiration struck and I told him about switching out last time instead of waiting for a repair.
A minute or so later, we had determined the date of the ‘purchase’ (12/12/7) and Adam made the executive decision to bypass the normal 30 day grace period for replacements and to proceed with switching the machine out with a new one. He even went so far as to take my broken Macbook into the back and switch the memory between machines (mine had 3gb, 3rd party, whereas the new one had the stock 2gb).
So, 15 minutes after stepping into the Apple store, I walked out, for the second time in as many months, with a brand new computer to replace a faulty one. Oh, and I also had a full set of 10.5 install discs instead of the stupid upgrade drop-in discs the second machine had shipped with. Cool.
You might be thinking, wow, that’s awesome and it’s too bad other companies don’t step up to the plate like that. But wait, there’s MORE!
Over the course of a year, I go through computers like mad…testing one, then passing it on, trying what’s next and moving along. As such, I on occasion forget to de-authorize these systems via iTunes. Last year I needed to de-authorize all machines and had to wait until mid-July, which really sucked.
But, in this case I had lost three authorizations due to faulty hardware and system switches. So when I got back to the office and started to rebuild I was irked to discover I was out of authorizations and couldn’t ‘do all’ again until July.
So I went to the iTunes support site, filled them in on the machine switching situation (including the Apple store name and number as well as my info) and asked them to grant me mercy via their fancy electronic begging form.
By the time I got home, around three hours later, I had an email informing me that my request was taken care of and I had a clean slate of 5 machine authorizations available. And at the end of the email was an apology for my inconvenience and the news that the rep had credited my account with two free songs.
Folks, I bitch a lot about Apple and what I perceive to be stupid decisions and silly mistakes, but I have to tell you that in all this time I have never had a bad time with their customer service. It has always been stellar and today was no exception.
So thanks to the Alpharetta Apple store and Adam, as well as the anonymous iTunes Store support rep who graciously handled my request and went beyond and above.
Feel free to post your experiences with Apple support below (comments are free and don’t require you to register).
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