Apple Fails at Customer Service | Hacker News Reader

Apple Fails at Customer Service

garmhold.blogspot.com

33 pointskaffeinecoma29 comments

DOA probably isn't the right term here. Neither machine was DOA. Anyway the point of advance replace is a good one. Apple also doesn't have on-site service which is a major issue for big heavy computers that are typically used as professional workstations. Apple, as a company, seems rather clueless about enterprise level support. They're missing out on a small but insanely profitable part of the market. People will pay a premium for the best support possible. This goes for computers and software developers. How many iPhone developers would pay a few thousand dollars a year to get A list treatment? (a lot I think)

"DOA" was Apple's term when I called in both machines (I'm the author of the blog.) I think they intend it to mean that the machine arrived "flawed", rather than developed a problem at some point post-delivery.

Apple applies the same principles to customer service that they do to their products.

Rather than tier service -- and by design treat some people badly and some people amazingly -- like many companies do, they work hard to find a good middle ground where everyone is sufficiently happy and receives almost the same level of service. Necessarily, this means some people used to amazing support will get worse support and those used to shitty support get better support.

Whether you like it or not, it seems very strange to me that someone would say Apple is "clueless about enterprise level support." Of course Apple understands how the industry standard is for enterprise support. They most likely consciously do not copy it.

Enterprise support is what you need when you're selling $3,500 towers because that's the where most of the sales come from. Not many consumers drop that on a PC.

And an Apple MP3 player must have an FM radio built-in because all the other companies put them in their players.

I don't see the connection. Not all statements about Apple are wrong because one is. Apple sells about as many desktops to enterprise in a year as the average Best Buy and this is probably part of why.

My point is that most companies, like Dell, sell their consumer machines at a horrendously low profit margin. They make it up in enterprise sales.

Apple, however, sells consumer machines at a tremendous profit. The value you think Apple should see in enterprise is negated by their own business model being different from the industry norms.

My Apple MP3 player does have a FM radio built-in.

It's a less good example now they've added one to the nano.

No, they're completely clueless about it. There's no doubt about that.

I attended a mac users' group meeting once in which an Apple rep tried to convince us that their SAN system was better than Dell's because of the price... I looked on with contempt because he was ignoring the thing that you're getting from Dell: support.

Sure enough, when Apple started hyping their big mac installation, they obsessed with their price compared to Dell's... completely ignoring the fact that Dell's price included installation, a 3-year on-site support contract, a building release, and even network setup (hardware).

And then when I worked for a company that made MacBook Pros an option for developers, the IT staff ended up hating them. Their prices were 2x that of the Dell laptops with comparable configurations, and Apple couldn't handle support at all -- when the IT guys contacted support for a recall, the support staff at Apple were lost when our guys had 50 laptops to send back...

Naturally, when I heard that Dell was outsourcing customer service to India, I stopped buying Dell. (They couldn't outsource their corporate support to India... fortunately for them -- I suspect that if they had, they'd have lost a lot of bids to IBM and HP.)

I hadn't thought of it that way but I do see your point. It does makes me wonder how their bigger customers interact with Apple Support and how that differs from an individual customers.

I think the reality right now is that, for the most part, they don't. IT centers that have to support hundreds or thousands of users aren't going to buy macs, because they'd run themselves ragged supporting them.

That's not meant to imply that macs fail more often, but if you have 500 computers under constant use, you'll get some form of technical problem pretty much all the time.

Configuration issues are solvable by getting the IT staff to learn how to work with Linux, but hardware problems would become untenable very quickly because IT can't keep taking machines to a mac store to get new parts for it.

Imagine the same situation with 5000 macs... you'd have to have an IT staff of 500 people just to keep up with hardware failures that you can't escape from simply because we live in the real world, and physical things break, especially when they're under constant use.

This is truly the one amazing thing Dell has over Apple.

One of the fan filters on my Dell laptop got clogged, which caused the graphics chip to overheat (resulting in slow graphics performance and blasting fans). I called Dell in the afternoon on a Monday and did 15 minutes of troubleshooting. They said it might be a problem with the model of graphics card or motherboard.

The next morning there's a Dell tech taking my machine apart, fixing it, and walking out in 20 minutes. Total disruption to my work was less than an hour that week.

Another time I was traveling (for work) in another country and I broke my laptop (dropped it). Dell had a contractor in my office with replacement parts the next day. I didn't have coverage on it though, so that time cost me a few hundred. I'd probably have been SOL with Apple though.

Yeah, Dell are great at support. </sarcasm>

My Dad's PC had a DVD-ROM drive that died. I was on the phone to Dell support for A WHOLE DAY. THe problem was trivial, but I got shunted around, told to try all the crappy shovelware shit they'd put on the PC that I'd uninstalled, etc.

XP's built-in CD burning just plain failed to work. Dell support tried to tell me that the CD-ROM drive was not compatible with XP's CD burning (totally nonsense). I even had to give them my credit card number to sign up for their software support (as well as the cash I'd paid for next-day hardware support), because "it might be a software problem, so you have to pay for software support." At least they had the decency to refund that.

They'd established (or rather, I had) that the drive was faulty, so they wanted to mail me a drive and I could fit it. As I'd paid for next-day on-site warranty I told them they could take a running jump.

Next day, hardware guy turns up, replaces drive in about 10 minutes, fixing the problem.

A WHOLE DAY on the phone. I've never bought Dell support again.

Consumer level support is completely different than enterprise support. --Generally with enterprise support, companies like Dell assume someone competent has already done initial troubleshooting. It's cheaper for them to pay people to spend the day on phone rather than sending someone onsite for something that might not actually be a hardware issue.

I'm not saying it's right, that's just the way it works, unfortunately.

Yeah, I had a similar thing happen; bought the laptop in the US, HD failed while I was in Austria, and they had a guy with a new one at my door the next day. I was getting all ready for a fight/hassle/expenditures, but the whole thing was very smooth and professional.

This might add some light on the phone calls from higher up the chain - and also has the advice that this month is the time to contact Apple Support. http://www.cringely.com/2009/12/ask-and-ye-shall-receive/

(The gist of Cringely's post is that Apple want to top the JD Power listings for quality and support. This means that this month apple will bend over backwards to ensure they're keeping people happy)

I also had a serious issue with my new MacBook Pro I purchased for business use.

Upon arrival, it constantly froze for between 2 to 30 seconds during any kind of task. Extremely frustrating and disruptive to productivity. I took it back to the Apple Store, and they told me they needed to swap the hard disk.

Fine. Time Cost : Trip during business hours to the Apple store, and perhaps 2 hours waiting around. 1-2 days without PC. Backup/restoration of all backup data.

After this, I went to the Apple store and got the computer back, and took it back to the office. It was exactly the same as it was before - constantly freezing.

I took it back again. This time, they said it must be the logic board. I argued this - a lot of other people on the Apple forums are also complaining, and they say it's due to incompatibilities by having shock detection systems on both the hard disk and the MacBook Pro itself.

In the end, Apple said fine, let us take the PC and run tests on it. Within 1 or 2 days, we'll know what the problem is, and we'll be able to fix it.

Well, I asked, how long will it take you to fix it after you figure out exactly what the problem is?

About a week, they replied.

This is when I started to get a bit upset. This machine I bought for business is not capable of performing the simplest of tasks, and they want 8-10 days to fix it?

Further, it has a serious work preventing problem, and Apple causally asks for a full week diagnosing and fixing this laptop, which I need to use daily for business tasks.

I complained, and eventually got them to simply replace pretty much everything in the PC (HDD again, logic board, memory).

They then said "Alright, because you have a built-to-order machine, we don't have the parts here. We'll need to send it out, and it'll take about 5 days."

Upsetting. I naturally complained again.

"You should get the business pack. It only costs 20,000 yen (or something along these lines), and you get priority service for a year. You'll get your laptop back in 1 day. All the businesses have this."

Once again, upsetting. To have wasted days of my time trying to get Apple to fix it, and then to be hit with a surcharge for them to fix a problem in a reasonable time frame that is likely THEIR fault in the first place!!

I complained, spoke to a manager, and had this fee waived, and they promised to return it within a day. Finally, this was a satisfying solution.

I submitted my laptop, had it back the next day, and still had freezes, but they weren't as bad. I almost went off Apple forever, but then a few weeks later they introduced some firmware changes that cleared up my problem.

Now I am very happy with my laptop, and I believe it's the best machine I've ever used.

However, I couldn't help but compare my experiences with "AppleCare" and how they support their flagship business laptop, to any experience I've had with the most basic PC configurations from Dell.

Dell will come on-site almost immediately, fix things quickly and efficiently, quickly ship replacements of broken equipment or broken PCs/Laptops.

It's a dream to get support from Dell.

But look out if you have an Apple machine you plan to use for business.

I've only experienced issues once with a local store, and a call to Apple's Customer Hotline (or whatever it's called) fixed that real quick. I was in a situation similar to yours (starting a new job, had to have the machine), and I was told I had to wait for them to repair it. After a number of back and forth conversations over a day or so and the manager ignoring me for a second time when I tried to appeal in person, I called the hotline.

The store called 2 hours later to tell me to pick up a new, updated machine, ready to use with my data transferred over (keep in mind the issue I took the original machine in for was super minor).

I know it's anecdotal, but every time I've had to interface with Apple people, it's been nothing but pleasant (even with the App Store).

I think the tech support you had could have been a lot better and I will say that such issues usually pop up for me with dell. Dell does 1 thing right and that is NBD On-Site Warranty.

Also, I don't understand why you had an issue with advance shipping of you Mac.

I bought a macbook pro which was DOA this summer and was in a similar issue where I had just started the job and needed the laptop. I explained this to them and they faxed me a contract which specified that they will send me a replacement and I had return the original within 30 day. They took down my credit card details but I confirmed it with them that my card will only be charged if the laptop is not returned within the 30 day period. I just needed to print that paper, sign it and fax/scan and email it to them which I did. I spoke to Apple on the Monday, got the contract taken care of on Tuesday and had the computer by Wednesday morning.

Also, note that that Monday was WWDC and they managed to solve all this DURING the launch of a the macbook pros and more.

Do send me an email if you want me to send you a copy of the contract(Advance Replacement).

Hey ajaimk, I'd love to get a copy of the contract (with personal details redacted, of course). Could you send it to me at kaffeinecoma@gmail.com ?

Thanks.

I've had much, much better service by having my computers repaired by the local indie Mac shop. They generally were a lot more responsive and friendly, and they did the repairs on-site and billed it back to Apple.

Plus I didn't have to make an "appointment" to lug a G5 or Mac Pro all the way through a shopping mall.

I can't say I'm all that surprised... I had to argue with one of their "geniuses" about an issue with my Air. He tried to get me to reinstall the OS to fix a failing drive (S.M.A.R.T. was even reporting that the drive was failing).

Took them a week to replace the drive. It probably would have been less hassle for me to just buy a new drive and replace it myself.

I see the point about having an enterprise level of support.

I also see two edge cases.

I've had an LCD screen replaced (fo' free) 2 years outside the warranty period —

My first Mac, so it made an impression.

So all you had to do was wait for a postage-paid box and send it back?

As an aside, Apple's Bluetooth mice have always seemed terrible, IMHO.

What's the point of buying AppleCare?

Like any other extended warranty, the point is to make a nice profit for them and give a warn and fuzzy to people who are not strong on math.

If it was me, I'd have:

#1 Used software to manually control fan speed (watching temp).

#2 Bought a $10 USB Bluetooth device.

I hate shipping/going to stores for support.

If it was me, I had assemble my own machine. But neither my story, nor yours is related to apple support.

"For some reason the fans just started going full-tilt all the time"

Sounds like a kernel panic to me. My brand-new iMac did that on its first day right out of the box ... nothing on it but system software. First, and only, time - go figure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_panic

The Mac fans are (apparently) under software control, and a number of testing routines also rev up the fans. It can be unnerving when you first hear it.

No, a Kernel Panic would result in a crash. All modern computer fans are under software (BIOS/firmware) control. I also tried re-installing the OS to no good effect. The machine was totally functional, except for the fact that it was miserable to be in the same room with because of the noise.

That's ... okay, whatever you want to call it, that's what it was called in the past when there was a problem. (I don't see why I'm getting downmodded for trying to help...)

See this page for many more examples (hope it helps): http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/powermacg5/topic2215...

Here's more recent one: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10364393

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