Having purchased a brand spanking mac 6 months ago, I was a little disapointed when I fired it up and the hard drive was 'ticking', but hey these things happen. I got straight on the phone and ordered a new one which arrived and had no ticking problem. However, the replacement did have a flicker on the left hand side of the screen... I decided to live with that as it was intermittent and I couldn't do with the hassle of ordering a second replacement. So, 6 months on and the bulb in the screen finally gave up the ghost, leaving me with a permanent shadow on one side. Again, workable, but frustrating. So I called apple and made a genius bar appointment to discuss. To cut a long story short, I followed this up with a trip to the store, with my 27 inch mac (very heavy) to have the LED replaced. The team were excellent and my mac was ready for collection under 2 hours later. An arduous trip home with the mac followed, which resulted in a strained shoulder, but, the mac was repaired right? So imagine my distress when I fire it up and the hard drive is 'ticking'....
another call to apple and am told that I can have a courier collect the mac for repair, which would leave me without my mac for approximately 3 days, depending on whether the hard drive would need to be replaced yada yada yada.... or, I could once again, lug the beast back in to the shop and hope for a 'while you wait' repair. I opted for the latter.
Having cleverly devised a strap attachment which would lessen the pain on my already injured shoulder, I repeated the difficult trip into the store.
At this point, I would just like to say the front of house team that dealt with me on both occasions were absolutely faultless and did everything they could to help to get things sorted out quickly.
It turned out that some restraining tape had been dislodged by the repair team during the first repair which was the culprit for the ticking, but at this stage, I was just relieved to be heading home with a fully functioning 'quiet' mac.
After hauling the mac back into position I decided that the screen really could do with having all of those pesky fingermarks removed and so I set about a cleaning session. Well, frustrated doesn't quite cut it when you realise that the dust and marks you are trying to clean are on the INSIDE!!!!! Oh my God, I ask you, how does that get missed? Not just a small amount either, but all over the damn screen... how am I supposed to be able to retouch images if there are marks that look like 'noise' on the inside. It's not like the screen just 'pops' off and can be wiped down – we are talking about a fully sealed unit here.
Alas, another phone call to apple ensues, the assistant I spoke to is very apologetic, but explains that I will need to bring the machine back in for a full clean in store. REALLY?!
So after being promised a call back by the manager, and not getting one, calling them again and being assured a manager would call me before they closed, again no phone call, I am left little option but to vent into the media. What I really want to know is when apple are going to get their service issues resolved, after all, the converts are rapidly losing patience!? I can't imagine another brand of a similar size dealing with this kind of scenario in the same way. I would expect some bending over backwards to make amends and ultimately resolve the situation, plus a little bit of grovelling would go a long way at this stage. So, has a series of bad apple experiences put me off for life? The jury is still out at the moment, but it has made me think twice... and perhaps it will do the same for all of you who read this.
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