Reading a post this morning from Seth Godin prompted me to post this.
I was in Detroit last week visiting family and the second day there I had problems with my 2 year old iBook. It’s been a stellar performer to this point, and since I run Leopard, I always keep a time machine drive with me.
Anyway…. my computer would only go part way through the boot sequence then shutdown. Since I didn’t know what to do, I took it to the Apple Store in Twelve Oaks. I knew there was a store there since I had bought a shiny new 16GB iPhone there the day before. BTW, this was my first visit to Detroit so I wasn’t aware of many options.
On arriving at the store, I was greeted by a pleasant individual who directed me to the Concierge service where I booked an appointment with a Genius at the Genius bar. I think I only waited about 15 minutes before I was able to see someone. 10 minutes later he told me that my hard drive needed replacing. My options: send it away for a flat fee of something like $271 and they will fix whatever is wrong (7-10 working days) or get the hard drive replaced myself. Since I didn’t have my OSX install disks and I was heading back to Canada in two days, I asked about them installing the OS which he said they would be happy to do.
Next morning I’m back with a new hard drive that was installed at Best Buy, but there is a problem with the OSX installation. Finally the tech figures out that the extra RAM in my machine is faulty. It’s Kingston, which he tells me has a lifetime warranty. (I didn’t know). He pulls it out and proceeds to install…. 45 minutes later I’m good to go. I’ll migrate my data from my Time Machine drive later that night. He pops the RAM back in, since he wants to leave it the way I brought it in and I’m off.
That afternoon I start to migrate my time machine data and all hell breaks loose. I finally find a steak knife to remove the RAM but it appears it’s too late. My iBook won’t even recognize my Time Machine drive. It looks like my data or something got corrupted.
8:50pm I pull back into the Apple Store hoping they are still open. (Best Buy said they could do nothing since it was a mac formatted drive) The Genius I’ve been working with for the last two days happens to still be there. He’s not sure what to do, so he directs me to another specialist. 25 minutes later they have checked out the drive, changed some permissions, deleted some files and voila! I have a Time Machine drive back and working. Store closed at 9:00pm, I’m still there at 9:20pm and not feeling anyone pressure me. On top of that I was not charged for anything they did at the Genius Bar on my off warranty iBook.
FREE… NO CHARGE!!!
A customer service success story.
Apple may do some things wrong, but I’ll tell you they should do some things right. If I didn’t already have an apple, I would probably be buying one from an Apple store.
Thanks Aaron
The sad thing about all of this is that there are no Apple stores anywhere near my home. And I mean days away. Makes me almost want to move to Detroit… NOT!
What’s your experience been with customer support and service?
#1 by Canada Kayak Trip on Jun 12, 2008 - 2:56 pm
Good to hear you had a pleasant experience with Mac. I have a pro and one day the battery stopped charging, I took it in a store and they were able to diagnose the problem and get it fixed over a weekend. I was so happy. Apple has a place in my heart.
#2 by MorganLighter on Jul 01, 2008 - 4:57 pm
Dave – Great story and another ‘star’ for Macs. I recently had a similar incident with my PC laptop – the only difference was I took the steak knife to the ‘tech’ that didn’t know his butt from buttermilk. – Good to talk to another ex-Michigander?
Aaron – You should move – there’s a real estate fire sale going on. You don’t have to move to Detroit – there are other cities.