I would like to share my experience with Apple’s customer service with regard to my MacBook. First of all I guess I should say that it’s actually my wife’s MacBook. I originally bought it for her in December 2007 to go along with her iPhone and it is her only computer. After about six months the drive failed. We were able to recover most of the files (music, photos, etc…) but it was still a pain.
Over the next 18 months I visited the Genius bar at the Mac store all too often. When I brought it in for the third drive failure they said that maybe the drive controller should be replaced, and I agreed. This meant that they would have to send it off to the repair depot. A few days we received it back with a new drive as well as a new system board (apparently the drive controller is embedded into the system board.)
It didn’t take long before we realized that the screen would black out if it was held at just the right angle. How frustrating! We sent it in for a drive issue and it came back with a display problem! I knew that it would have to be sent off for a few days again, and we could live with the screen the way it was, so I waited to send it off.
Last week we had some travel, so I decided it was a good time to get the screen fixed. I needed to get the serial number of the unit in order to submit a warranty claim. The serial number is inside of the battery compartment so I had to remove the battery. There is a ‘button’ about the size of a nickel which needs to be turned with a screwdriver in order to release the battery. As I was removing the battery, button broke. Add one more thing to the list of what has gone wrong with this laptop!
I got the request submitted and made yet another trip into the Apple store. I spoke with a Genius and he told me what I already knew. That they could fix everything, including the newly broken button, but they would have to send it off for a few days. Once more I had walked into the store with a laptop and came out with a piece of paper.
A couple of days later I got an email from Apple telling me that my repair was on hold because they detected accidental damage which voided the warranty. They included a picture of the plastic button which was broken. This obviously had nothing to do with the screen blanking out, but they wanted me to pay over $400 for the repair. Needless to say, I had a different opinion.
I called their customer service department and was transferred to a senior customer service rep. Her name was Lynette. I explained everything that had gone on, all the way back to my original hard drive issues. She was very nice and listened as I explained my frustration with everything I had experienced. She then surprised me by suggesting that they send me a brand new MacBook! Of course I wasn’t going to argue with her. She said that I clearly had a bad experience and she wanted to make it up to me.
This was all on a Saturday. On Tuesday at 10:30 AM my new MacBook arrived via FedEx. I transferred the information from the old drive, which they sent to me, in about 90 minutes. I went from an Apple hater to an Apple lover very quickly. It is a current generation (so about 2 1/2 years newer than my old one) with updated software and better in every category than the one I had.
UPDATE 5/6/2010 1:00PM CDT
I just got a call from a guy at Apple to make sure that I had the system up and running. That’s impressive.
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