Those who know me have heard me sing the praises of Apple both for their products and for the type of company they are. Today is not one of those days. I use a MacBook Pro laptop computer to run my business. Apple products are not cheap. But I’ve always been willing to pay more for better quality and better customer support. My macbook is only two years old, so I would not expect a total failure so soon.
On Thursday evening it died – before I could get any site updates set up for Friday or beyond. I brought it to my local Apple store the next day. The guy informed me that the logic board (motherboard) was bad and that they would have to send it in for repair. It would take 5 – 7 days to get it back. I told him that’s too long, that I have a business to run. He suggested I take it to an Apple authorized repair shop. The tech there confirmed the bad logic board. He said a new part would normally arrive overnight (Monday since it was Friday already.) When he put it on order, the status from Apple was that it was out of stock. I contacted Apple and after being on the phone for an hour was informed that it could take up to four weeks and that there was nothing they could do, but try to get it in two weeks.
That is just wrong. People like me make our living with our computers and can’t be without them for weeks. I don’t think my members would be too happy if they saw no updates for two weeks or more. I bet I’d lose a bunch of you too. I could understand if my laptop was several years old. But it is barely 2 years old and still under warranty (that I paid extra for.) I’m wondering if I’d get this kind of lackluster support from Dell or Toshiba.
Fortunately, I decided to remove my hard drive before leaving the repair shop. I now have it hooked up to my PC, which is able to access files on it thanks to a product called MacDrive8 from Mediafour corporation. So I can at least keep the site updated for my members although I can’t edit video at this time. If I had let the Apple store take my computer and ship it away (hard drive and all) and then keep it for weeks, I’d be out of business before I got it back. The fact that a $3000 computer barely lasted two years is bad enough, but the way Apple handles such a situation is not acceptable.
Apple is a very innovative company and puts out some great products but their concept of customer support leaves much to be desired. Apple just had the most profitable quarter in its entire history, yet they can’t have parts in stock to support their customers. Thanks for nothing Apple.
