I was on the road for a few weeks after posting my gripe about Apple losing my new MacBook Pro, so I neglected to post a follow up. That post wound up on the front page of Digg, and I received many comments, words of sympathy and stories from folks who have had similar experiences with Apple and other PC makers.
The very next morning after I posted about the loss of my mac, I received a call from a helpful guy who was a regional manager for customer service. He arranged for my local Apple Store (29th Street Mall in Boulder) to give me a brand new mac with the same specs as the one I ordered. It was ready for me the same day.
And because I already had a bunch of sensitive data on my hard drive on the lost machine, he kept up the search for the old one and located it on a Friday afternoon. They overnighted the hard drive from the old new machine (via Saturday delivery no less) back to the store in Boulder and installed it in my new new machine and I was up and running in time for my Monday morning trip across the pond to London.
The one thing they didn't have at the Apple Store at the time was the extra RAM to get my machine up to 3GB, so I've still got to go back to the store to have that installed at some point, but other than that, I'm now a happy camper.
Kudos to Apple for turning on a dime and fixing the problem quickly once I was able to rise above the noise. Hopefully next time I have an issue it won't take an email to Steve Jobs and having my blog on the front page of Digg to get a response. But that being said, once they recognized there was a problem, Apple did the right thing and made it better in short order.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Customer Support, Macintosh, MacBook Pro
Posted in:COMMENTS (21)
This post was just submitted to Digg. From the way the diggs are growing, it's probably going to make front page again. Just a heads-up FYI.
I used to work for Apple as a Mac Genius. Replacing missing laptops like this is actually moderately common. If anything, your story making Digg may have accelerated their giving up on finding your laptop and just giving you a new one, but they have a process, they were working through it, and eventually it found your laptop.
Had they not found it, you would have gotten a new laptop, rest assured, Digg or no Digg.
Thats pretty awesome; whats better than getting customer support like that?
Kudos? KUDOS?!?!?
No. Actually what this shows is that in their system, they have the ability to do this for each and every customer, so that's what they should be doing. No ands ifs or buts.
But they don't. If they have policies they should stand by them. If they have processes they should stick to them.
Those policies and processes should be good enough to prevent this situation from happening
You think this is good customer support? You were in a CS nightmare, and the only reason that your problem was handled is because there was nationwide coverage of your problem. It was a PR move plain and simple.
I agree with Karmkin,
Apple should be ashamed. They only started giving the customer service AFTER he the public starting seeing your problem.
Its shameful that apple was too lazy to work until you gave them the nightmare of getting bad PR.
your are lucky that you even got a replacement; YOU lost it. There are bigger problems in the world the you losing your mac. Get over your self, take better care of your stuff.
Christian,
How precisely would he do that when he gave his laptop to Apple Support to fix?
I suggest you purchase "Reading Comprehension for Dummies" as a Christmas present for yourself.
huh what r u talking about apple lost it in processing...
Well, cool, you got your laptop back.
It never fails to amaze me that people who complain about the bureaucratic support services and processes always include some kind of "but oh well the products are superior so I'm putting up with it".
Because this is just plain not true.
The quality control issues with Apple laptops go back over a decade and they have not gotten significantly better over the years.
The new Macbooks are the Triumph TR6 of laptops. I know exactly ONE person -- among dozens -- who has not had to take theirs in for repair. You should not only get a support contract with each one you should get a personal technician assigned to you.
If Apple could figure out how to QC the production line, and Steve Jobs stopped being a dick and apologized for all the years he was, I'd buy a new Macbook.
:)
O Christian. Your stupidity has made my day.
not uncommon. I sent my broken iBook in for service and after a month of no word and a call to customer service, they replaced the obsolete iBook with a brand new MacBook with upgraded RAM. They may be a hassle at times, but they always pull through.
They have been doing this for years with or without the media attention. I knew a guy who went through a similar situation in 1995, before the power of the blog. Still, there are many areas in which their customer service and quality assurance need improvement.
ALWAYS BACKUP DATA IF YOUR HARD DRIVE STILL SPINS!!!
ALWAYS BACKUP DATA IF YOUR HARD DRIVE STILL SPINS!!!
Called it. See my original comment to the original post.
They got bad press they got him a new one.
It probably had nothing to do with being submitted to digg, this sounds like a bit of a publicity stunt, but maybe not.
Good news on the laptop either way.
AppleCare sucks. I've been having problems with my MacBook Pro for months, and they still won't replace it.
Maybe I should blog about it...
I had a pretty duff macbook pro which first had the motherboard replaced and then was scheduled to get the CPU replaced except the technicians ignored the instructions the technical support guy had give them to replace it. They sent it back with just the OS reinistalled. When my tech support guy heard about this he just told me the machine would be replaced with the latest model, no more messing around.
I would conclude that like any large organization the quality of service really depends not he individual you deal with.
I would rather not have had the hassle in the first place but in the end I think I did get treated well in the end. I just hope the new machine will be more reliable.
They re great, because they just could accuse DHL, but they fix the problem that the other company had.
Apple is great, but expensive here in Argentina.
So just curious, since you emailed him. Is that "Steve Jobs" comment on the original thread real?