My visit to the Apple Store
antoniocangiano.com
antoniocangiano.com
This was two years ago. Unfortunately since then I did not have any troubles with my Notebook, so I had no opportunity to call in the Dell support. Actually back then I did not have a problem either, but I was not sure about that. My notebook's hard drive would emit a faint clicking sound occasionally - only noticeable because being fanless, this was the only noise the notebook would create at all.
Apparently it is normal, but when I called Dell about it, they insisted on exchanging the drive just in case. Because I was contracting at the time, they offered to come around to the office at the company where I worked. When the Dell technician arrived the next day, I went into an empty room with him and he exchanged the hard drive within minutes. Then he left.
My notebook has worked without any problems ever since.
I didn't tell my girl-friend about it, because she doesn't care, but whenever I see a chance to recommend a Dell product, I wholeheartedly do so.
Hm, this would have made a great blog post, but now I wasted the story on HN already. Ah well...
PS I didn't even have to pay for the warranty, as you can usually get a 3-year at-home warranty from Dell for free.
Also an additional thing with Dell - when ordering something always ring up and talk to a rep before completing the order. Mention you're interested in purchasing in future if all goes well, but the price concerns you, and if they have any upgrades available - they will usually throw in a free processor/ram/warranty upgrade as these things are relatively cheap for them depending on the time of year.
I'm about to buy my girlfriend a Dell Mini 12 for Christmas (she only uses laptops for Office, Web, Messenger and Skype) and see what deals are available.
While my Dell relationship has been great there have been moments where I had unsatisfactory customer service. I got industrious and tracked down the email addresses of CTO and head of Australia (I'm an Aussie) and shot them an email expressing my frustration. I was promptly contacted by a top level Sales assistant (who was Aussie, not outsourced - apparently there's only a few of these dudes) who sorted things out very quickly and threw in some stuff to boot.
I would recommend them to anyone as long as it's understood that they are out there to make money like any other company, and you have to approach them looking for a bargain that's not advertised. This works best if you have a history of purchases, are placing a large order, or mention that you're a "decision maker" regarding hardware purchases in a technology company (if that's the case).
I have waited more than 50 days for a replacement part (battery) for my Air to arrive, and -- since it didn't arrive -- thanks to the local law, got a replacement Air. It broke two months later (sound card) -- it's been in service for three weeks now.
My MacBook Pro's hard drive failed -- it took two weeks to replace it, and I paid for it even though I had a warranty (they said it was my fault that the HDD failed). The next week after warranty expired the battery broke, and I had to buy a new one. Even though they had a recall program for batteries that broke with the same symptoms, my battery was not eligible for recall because of a different serial number.
My girlfriend waited 5 (!) months for a replacement battery for her MacBook to arrive. (Local laws that require no more than 45 days for repair didn't work in that case, because she bought her MacBook in Scotland.)
Ask me why I still love Apple products. I don't know.
Ask me why I have three Macs. It's because one of them is always being repaired.
I own a Mac and I am definitely pleased by their support. My hard disk crashed, top case chipped away due to a bad design in this version, Apple happily replaced this all in a day, in India. And as I write this my RAM is beeping indicating some hardware problem yet again and it has been just around a year. Now am I happy, definitely "No". You can't be making 10 trips to the apple store and still feel good just about how they treat you.
For the same money I could have bought a Dell or a HP, threw it away when i was not happy and bought another one. I would have still saved some money.
He spent... well, almost a full work day (!) on the phone, arguing with one rep or another, convincing them that something had broken, before they sent a tech out (to their credit, it was fixed then).
I spent... 10 minutes. I called, told them about the problems I was having, asked for a repair-via-mail, was promptly granted it, gave them my address, and was on my way. Yeah, it took 4 days longer than his method, but I saved myself some pretty major aggravation.
From my experience you can also ask to speak with the Gold tech support guys who are local to your country (that's the case in Australia anyway).
This is regarding Dell support, btw.
I have gotten good service at Apple stores, and (as in life) it pays to be nice to the person you're dealing with. Overall, however, I find them fairly confusing; hard to find stuff, don't know where to pay, etc.
An undercover retail article said that Apple Store employees are given an incredible amount of freedom in the store: they're allowed to roam around and talk to customers however they see fit. The idea is that if you hire a Mac fan, train him only minimally, and free him from any sort of store restraint, then he'll be much more responsive to customers. It's a really smart idea and in my experience, it works.
1) A simple firmware update rendered your screen unusuable 2) They only replaced your battery because they had sold you a faulty battery in the first place.
They are not being nice they are fixing mistakes that should never have been made in the first place.
This story is about a positive customer service experience, where 1) the service person lacked a prescribed solution to the original (firmware/screen) problem, but the customer left satisfied and 2) the service person was attentive enough to solve a second problem (out of warranty, at company expense) that the customer hadn't even expressed as a complaint.
If you can't see why that's uncommonly good service, you're not paying attention.
Of course it's not that way all the time, at every location, for every customer, but it indicates Apple's atypical strategy of having their own retail stores with that kind of one-on-one support is one that can have atypically big pay off in customer satisfaction.
For comparison, Best Buy's GeekSquad would have charged the customer a minimum of $50 to even look at the problem, and on the off chance they even knew about the recalled battery, would not have been able to replace the it on the spot for free. Local shops are mostly the same story. In short, the author could not have had had the same loyalty-generating positive experience with any other brand of computer.
The design of the MBP is surely aimed at discouraging you from upgrading the HD, you practically have to dismantle most of the laptop. I took it to an Apple Store in London who would not help as it was out of warranty. The store employee advised me I would be better buying a new one than repairing the laptop. So I went to an Apple Authorised Repair Shop where they quoted £120 just to look at the laptop, then parts and labour (again this would likely be £600+). I then went to an Unauthorized Apple repair shop where they took 6 weeks to repair the issues and charged £250 to replace the superdrive. The only faults found were a broken clip jamming the superdrive and a reinstall of Leopard. It is not easy to get Apple parts to repair it yourself.
So a design flaw cost me 2 months without my Laptop, the Apple Store were not interested without serious £££'s, and the Apple dealer was the same.
Your experience with other shops is irrelevant when regarding Apple's customer service, as those shops aren't Apple. An authorized shop can charge whatever it wants for out-of-warranty repairs, and an unauthorized one, well, you're really grasping at straws if you think Apple has anything to do with that.
I don't see how anything you've written here is a counterpoint. It's just an anecdote about how much money you chose to spend to have someone fix your mistake.
My point with the Apple Store is they were unhelpful and unprepared to take the time to diagnose the problem. Their attitude is if your laptop that is more than a 2-3 years old you should buy a new one.
I mentioned the other Apple Dealers to point out that spare parts for Apple Macs are normally ridiculously overpriced and hard to come by. PC Laptop repair shops are happy to repair other laptops for a fraction of the price but will not touch apple products (why?).
I don't see how the store was unhelpful, given what you've already described. What nerve they have--when you walk in with a broken out-of-warranty laptop--to suggest replacing it with a new, functioning, under-warranty one. How rude and unhelpful it is to suggest a solution with a 100% chance of enabling you to have a functioning machine again! Instead, you wanted free out-of-warranty repair, which is not a service they offer. Their "attitude" has nothing to do with it: they can't give you what you want, and you didn't want what they offered.
And again with the non-Apple shops, you're being completely obtuse. Apple does not own those shops or set their rates. Being "authorized" only means that they can do repairs under warranty and receive service manuals and parts directly from Apple. Every other laptop vendor has a similar program. If a shop ripped you off, you can take it up with them. The OEM has nothing to do with it.
Finally, as I said before, you're not speaking at all to the original subject. Instead, you're bitching about how much money you spent fixing your mistake.
Given that no matter where I go I can't avoid things being potentially broken, I'd rather be well taken care of, instead of not.
Apple make a choice to allow a certain failure rate or to skip testing of updates as getting it right 1st time is not as profitable as allowing mistakes which may or may not be cleared up at the Apple Store.
Things breaking down, or manufacturing defects, can be reduced, but never eliminated.
So there are currently two choices in the market:
- Things that break down often, with no customer support. - Things that break down often, with great customer support.
I think it's pretty clear which one I'd choose :)
I had a Gateway (acquired by MPC), same thing happened three months ago. I sent it in after an on-site repairman couldn't fix it.
Two months later, MPC doesn't answer their phone and doesn't reply to emails. In fact, MPC filed bankruptcy earlier this month, so it looks like my laptop is in limbo.