Apple courier may have stolen 2 MacBooks, ... Apple is not going to help
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forums.macrumors.com
It's wild to me that the credit card companies (and the law in general) actually allow this.
The chargeback procedure was created exactly for situations like this, and designed to be maximally friendly to customers at the expense of vendors. One would think that "you cannot exact revenge on customers when a transaction goes wrong" would be credit card rules 101.
Haven’t seen that language in awhile.
That is a very significant part of the problem. The hold cloud service providers have on customers.
I am pretty sure this would be illegal. In the UK I would be going to the small claims court, or trading standards (a government agency) or the card company (which has joint liability for anything bought with a credit card here - not true for debit cards).
https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/global/products/docume...
You can get a debit card quite easily here.
Make it a 2025 goal to get your life off these accounts. By 31-Dec-2025, you should be in the situation where you are not even inconvenienced if Google or Apple or Meta were to suddenly ban your account.
Have you done this for yourself? What was your process?
Most important was taking back my own E-mail and not relying on someone else for it. This took three steps: 1. Get my own domain (this I did over a decade ago), 2. point the MX record to my own VPS and start by simply forwarding to/from Gmail, 3. Actually hosting delivery and serving myself (I use exim4 for delivery and dovecot for IMAP, but there are many other ways to self-host). This can be easily moved to a different host if my VPS provider decides to get rid of me. In theory I can host it on bare metal at home, although I admit I have not actually tried it to verify I can. I'm only dependent on my DNS registrar, which is a bummer but AFAIK unavoidable.
For social media, that was incredibly easy: I last used Facebook over 10 years ago, LinkedIn over 5 years ago, and don't have any other accounts, so I've been off S.M. pretty much forever.
For photos and media, I moved everything to a NAS on my LAN, backed up twice (one stored at home, another stored elsewhere).
Docs, obviously just store locally in a format readable by your own PC. Anything you simply have to have in Google Docs, have a backup locally.
For IoT / Home Automation stuff, I carefully make sure that the ecosystem I buy into is self-hosted and does not require the Internet. Security cameras, thermostats, switches and lights and so on must all be usable and controllable locally. I'm not quite there yet on all of these either, but they are easily swapped out if some manufacturer's lame cloud goes down.
Not sure if I'm forgetting anything.
I've used https://www.fastmail.com for a great deal of years now, which is also home to my calendar as well so there's nothing much of value tied to my Google account.
YouTube subscriptions would be annoying to lose but I subscribe to channels via RSS. At the moment, I'm using http://newsblur.com for that but sometimes I jump around RSS clients. Newsblur recently added backfilling of channel content from YouTube's API beyond what RSS feeds normally surface though which is great.
For plain text notes, everything is in https://obsidian.md compared to say; Apple Notes
One thing I would miss is photos which I currently have in Apple Photos stored in the cloud so I recently set up https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do... which runs nightly on a mac mini at my house and archives everything in a Backblaze B2 bucket. https://ente.io/ seems like a promising alternative in this space.
I don't actually have a good alternative to Apple Health now that I think of it. You can export backups but not automatically. I'm not entirely sure what format a lot of that data is even in.
Realistically, I don't look at it a lot, I just use some of the correlations when they rarely pop up. Something like https://exist.io/ is probably the closest that I actually used to (aspire to) get value out of but don't currently use.
The reality is that convenience is king and it's hard work staying independent from any centralised service, not to mention social pressures.
The middle ground I've accepted is still using it all but making sure you have a good escape hatch you periodically test + backups where you're solely reliant on large businesses who heavily lean on automated account banning.
This is illegal. Signatures are legally protected in the UK (and elsewhere I’m sure) and forging a signature is a crime. I got like 3 Hello Fresh deliveries in a row when I complained of their repeated forgeries before I cancelled.
Did the driver try to make the signature look like your name?
And did the company accuse you of signing it?
Not trying to defend them mind. I just feel like their legal departments have thought of this
I don't know if it needs to state the name next to it, that's a good question, and may also depend on jurisdiction, but I would suggest that if a delivery signature was just writing a name then it wouldn't carry the necessary weight for proving receipt.
Though at the more scrupulous companies they take photos slightly more seriously. Just slightly
Them not taking the photo taking seriously works in your favour.
I think this compounds the issue: if people are committing fraud/lying (taking a picture of a random house as proof of 'sorry you were not in' or forging signatures themselves) because their slots are too full to deliver all packages they're supposed to then whomever is working in logistics won't see it. They will think all packages were at least attempted within that slot and as such not too onerous.
But it's not that anyone will take action. This is exactly the expected outcome: Pay less for courier wages in USA/Europe, and keep the much cheaper (and probably outsourced) customer support hotline busy.
On the contrary, it would be more likely to take action if the complaints are not high enough. This means that they could squeeze the schedule of their couriers a bit more.
At least they tell you the day, not like in Germany. Gets put on the post today, then usually it either gets sorted overnight and delivered the next day, or there's another working day in between. The tracker used to say which it's gonna be after that overnight sorting (so if you check at 2am), but in the last year or so they've switched to telling you it's e.g. after the weekend some day and then surprise show up on Friday for example when you hadn't planned for anyone to be home, wasting the deliverer's time if you didn't decide to work from home that day spontaneously
I did feel bad though for the people doing the deliveries, independent of what company they worked for. You can tell it's an awful job and they're working their butts off, sometimes delivering a package way after hours, like say after 9pm or so. I'm afraid it's like that pretty much in any country, though.
The country went a bit delivery crazy after COVID, so the competition is healthy.
At my partner’s place, the delivery people are excellent, and we never miss a parcel. She has an elevator, in a different part of town, and there’s no Hinterhof. It’s very hit or miss.
Hereabouts, Apple uses UPS for deliveries.
They always require signature, and disallow “pre-signature.” I get a $30 cable; signature required. I get a $50 iPhone case; signature required. I get a $120 peripheral; signature required.
They left the $2,600 computer sitting on the doorstep (no signature required). Luckily, my daughter was paying attention, and immediately grabbed it, but we have had a problem, hereabouts, with highly aggressive porch pirates, that will actually go right into the house, to grab new deliveries.
I was pretty gobsmacked.
Kinda wondered why my package showed up as "delivered" and it was signed by definitely NOT me.
That was a fun thing to unravel.
They have their MyChoice service which you have to sign up for and wait for a confirmation that is sent to you by mail which might take several days. However even if you take these steps it turns out that they will only match your parcels if the sender uses exactly the same address as the one you provided them. One character off and you lose any ability to set how your parcel should be delivered.
Any other delivery service does that easily, without postal confirmation for a specific parcel or any upcoming shipments.
Since I'm at the office during the day I had situations were I simply couldn't receive a UPS parcel for several days because their MyChoice service is useless once the address matching fails.
Remedy is not dependent on the good graces of the credit card companies but of course if that's open to you can start there.
A lot have people have been brainwashed in to believing the customer is required to deal with the delivery company or that the seller has no responsibility once the item has been collected by the courier.
Also, I find it wild that Apple use Uber. Apple exclusively use UPS in the UK I believe (including service collections and deliveries), who I've never had a problem with, and if they stopped that I would only ever purchase from a store
One year ago, I had to contact Apple support because the FindMy feature wouldn't work on my Airpods Pro, which still were under warranty. It looked like they were already associated with another account, which wasn't mine. That made no sense as I bought them myself at the Apple store and only have a single iCloud account.
I went to the store and they acknowledged the issue, and immediately got a replacement which turned out to have the exact same issue. I then had to spend hours on the phone with their customer support. After trying everything without success, the person on the phone told me I'd get a call back in one week to either issue a refund or find a different solution.
That phone call never came. All my following messages to that person were ignored. I finally gave up, but found out I was far from being the only one they had ghosted like that. Reading these stories reinforces my belief that Apple is terrible in terms of accountability when something goes wrong.
My naive understanding would be that you entered into a contract with them to supply a MacBook in exchange for a sum of money. The money was paid, but the MacBook was not delivered to the customer, so Apple are in breach of contract. I would imagine that a credit card company charge back would be the easiest solution if it was paid for by one.
Then you say you went to the store, were given a replacement, and it turned out the same. You didn't try out in the store whether these ones are functional? Which makes sense because why wouldn't they be, but could have saved the trouble. You haven't tried going back to that store, perhaps even at the same time and day of week so that you are likely to get the employee who remembers that they provided support in this situation (by handing out a replacement unit, in this case)? Then you could immediately try out, before taking it out of the store, whether this unit is functional
Either way, they have an obligation to meet the claims put out in marketing statements, including features like FindMy since they say on the website it can do that. If you've exhausted the easy options, you can always take it to something like small claims and get at least a refund that way. Often, a letter saying you intend to suffices
The unit was brand new, however it got somehow linked to some other iCloud account the second I connected it to my phone (which is not an iPhone). Well, the message I got indicated "You cannot use FindMy because the Airpods are linked to another iCloud account" or something like that.
I discussed with the same employee who helped me initially. They called a couple of their colleagues, and because nobody there could do anything to solve the issue, they gave me a phone number telling me this was the only option left.
It was clear to Apple there was an issue on their side, and that they needed to provide a solution. This has never been disputed.
> Either way, they have an obligation to meet the claims put out in marketing statements, including features like FindMy since they say on the website it can do that.
Absolutely, and I made sure to remind them this.
> If you've exhausted the easy options, you can always take it to something like small claims and get at least a refund that way.
Indeed, that could be an option. I just gave up as I was exhausted from spending over 10 hours just for this. At some point, it wasn't worth the effort anymore. But maybe this is what they are expecting us to do.
That saga took a couple months to get resolved and only after the threat of legal action and sending them scary letters (thanks ChatGPT).
The delivery company themselves were extremely unhelpful. Apple on the other hand was very understanding and helpful. It took a few days for them to go through the necessary process with the delivery company, but once done they sent out a replacement, critically with a different delivery company. Apple was proactive in keeping me updated throughout, and always seemed to side with me over the delivery company.
The only snag after that was the pre-purchased Apple care was tied to the undelivered iPad, so it took about a week for one of their specialist teams to transfer it over to the replacement.
He can chargeback, or he can sue, depending on the arbitration laws in Canada.
Lastly, there may be a government agency similar to US states' attorney general that might take a complaint and evidence of a pattern of abuse.
I'm sure he can take them to court over that, but losing access to your files and services for an indeterminite amount of time is a big deal for most people.
(Of course, whether a given person is capable of installing an OS manually (be it macOS or Linux Mint), is going to vary. You may have to ask a friend if what you want isn't pre-installed)
Either they all turned to tech pros because of their Linux usage or they don't have the maintaining issues that were common 10 years ago anymore.
But the reality is that most everyone, including very experienced users, have never and never will install an OS. It’s not a question of difficulty, they just cannot wrap their heads around it.
I do not know one way or the other how easy it is to daily drive Linux.
As for the "but the installation is so difficult" point, perhaps, but would you trust them to install Windows or macOS onto an otherwise empty SSD? I've had more trouble getting Windows onto systems without needing a CD-RW and corresponding CD drive than I ever did installing Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Crunchbang, and perhaps more I forgot. Only Arch was more difficult, but then it's meant/advertised to be that way so no surprise there. I've also tried installing macOS and succeeded eventually, but the system was quite dysfunctional. I'd not be surprised if you do a study with 60 random people and it turns out most of them actually get it done for Linux distributions with lower success rates for the OSes that expect to be pre-installed by commercial deals with the hardware vendor
And all this only applies if you didn't buy a laptop that comes with a FOSS distribution out of the box. I see it as an advantage that you can pick nearly any hardware and run on it what you want, but if you want to limit it to pre-installed systems then there's that option, too
It's not a question of trust. It's a question of commerce. People buy computers, and they use the OS on it. If the Linux community really wants to drive adoption by normies, the focus shouldn't be on ease of use, or ease of installation. They should fight to break Microsoft's monopoly and demand to be an optional selection during every purchase.
I have come across one unsupported printer where you were advised to pick a driver for a similar model number, and even that didn't work for me, but I'll trade that outlier for all the other times where it was so much easier than Windows ever was. One can check the model before purchasing if it's about your own printer (I don't own one anymore, cartridges aren't worth it at the 5 pages per year that I need for outdated transport companies nowadays; copyshops exist)
I'm not into printers and their drivers so I've got no idea what changed or who made this happen, but whoever did this for printers on Linux is a real hero
"Sadly", I recently helped my dad get set up on a new Windows 11 and that seems to have this behaviour now, too, so Windows does seem to be catching up in usability
> (don't let me start on laptops & battery usage)
That one is a real trade-off indeed. It's not all sunshine and roses
Another one is GPU drivers and WiFi chips, but it's a one-time hardware check and setup thing, so for those issues you could ask someone else to install your system to a functional state and anyone can use it from there with the same learning curve as when they'd use macOS for the first time (Cinnamon looks a whole lot like XP, if that's what they're coming from like I was)
No doubt. But it no doubt required a SIGNIFICANT time investment to get to the point where they can just use their machines “without wasting time”.
I install Linux on families computers for years now. And maintaining is zero at this point. The majority of computer usage of a normal user is within their browser and maybe office programs and some gaming. All perfectly fine with Linux.
Possibly true, dependant on what you're trying to develop.
> better digital audio system
ProTools Linux?
Cubase Linux?
Ableton Live Linux?
The vast majority of plugins for above DAWs?
If you're talking about purely the system, then it's all moot without having some software for audio professionals to run on it.
> better game platform
Now I know you're trolling. edit: sorry I forgot the "Compared to Mac?" part at the beginning, this is probably true, but I have zero experience gaming on Mac or Linux.
Basic system tools have been broken on macs for a few major releases now. And I'm familiar with fixing up lots of Darwin-specific issues in software packaging by now. There's seriously a number of downsides here unless you have to use Xcode.
I wrote digital audio system for a reason. Pipewire is currently the best implementation out of the 3 major systems. Whether you want to use it with a DAW or in a different way that requires a Mac-only application is orthogonal here. For a lot of DAW work, you don't even need a fancy sound system to begin with. But also there are DAWs which do work on Linux and there are people preferring them.
> The vast majority of plugins
Yabridge is there for embedding windows VSTs. It's not that bad.
Ex. I've lost a complete day because I didn't know you need to open xcode to confirm the policy of an update I did in the console. I never used xcode before that day.
I contacted Tim Cook's email and someone from the team responded and worked with me through the situation. Fortunately, we had a lucky outcome, and we got our payment refunded, but the entire ordeal took around a month and lots of calls to the CS/live chat support.
By the way, good luck with arbitration, courts, or the police in Canada. They can't even stop brazen car thefts, even if you track down your vehicle and are able to locate it at a rail yard [1]. 28,550 vehicles were stolen in Canada in the first half of 2024. Even rape cases and murder are being dismissed because courts don't have the resources [2]. The legal system is collapsing in that country. I say that as a Canadian who recently left the country for good.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto-man-finds-stolen-truc...
[2] https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/we-have-no-judge-for-you-man-s-as...
What on earth are they doing using a taxi firm to deliver $3000 equipment?
In my case I got a wooden toy instead of a GPU. Reordered the same thing from the same shop and got the right product. But the other case was probably a logistic member stealing the contents. Perhaps an honest mistake, but big tech has the tendency to hire low quality third party services to save a few dollars.
I would immediately fire the managers responsible, because this way you do significant damage to the brand that is way beyond paying delivery services a fair amount.
It already is established that Amazon deliveries have a statistically significant amount of fraud.
When I reached out to support I got a phone call the next day and they offered to send me a replacement or refund my money.
I wonder if the support I got was because of my purchase history. I buy a lot of Apple devices and they didn't want to lose a good customer..
I don’t know what happened at the courier end but Apple shipped me another MacBook and told me to forget about the other one and to leave it with them.
Crazy to think it could have gone this way.
- Couriers make more errors (or are more inclined to outright steal) because working conditions are crap.
- Courier companies save big $ on courier wages because of how much they squeeze out their delivery personel.
- Apple saves big $ on their courier deal because of how much the courier companies squeeze their employees.
In the end, a laptop may be lost from time to time and a customer will be left in distress for a fair amount of time until the issue is sorted out. Someone will need to pay for the laptop, but that has now become part of the cost of doing business.
If I did that I’d be had up for fraud.
You wouldn’t be. That is hyperbolic. This happened like a week ago. The police is investigating a crime. These things take time to be resolved.
It is sad that it happened and it could have been handled better by Apple but the poster whose laptops were not delivered should take several deep breaths, accept that this will take time and politely but insistently apply the tools at their disposal for a resolution.