A-holes at the "Genius Bar"

[BlueSkyJaunte]

My wife got her brother's MacBook as a hand-me-down since he's picking up a MacBook Pro 17 for his design work.

It was pretty dirty, beat up, etc when she got it but it worked fine.

Until Sunday; the HD up and died. Fortunately the thing is still under warranty, so no worries (so we thought).

She took it in yesterday (made an appointment at the "Genius Bar" ) and had to wait over an hour for them to even get to her. Must have presented a nice image of customer service--a 8-months-pregnant lady with a 3-year-old and a laptop standing around waiting for ages.

Anyway, the "Genius" felt so bad that they offered to not only replace the HD under warranty, but to replace the cracked lower case. Purely a cosmetic issue. They also said they'd ship it back to us directly so she wouldn't have to come in and pick it up. Somewhat appeased, she has resigned herself to surfing on our POS Eee PC for a week.

Well, this morning the "Customer Service" people at Apple called and told us they'd replace the HD under warranty ONLY IF we paid $400 to replace the case as that wasn't covered under warranty. They "can't" replace the HD if the case is damaged. . Unfortunately, though my wife is very cost-conscious, she isn't the bulldog type of customer that I am. Instead of forcefully reminding them that the "Genius" promised to replace the case free of charge, she asked if there were other places to have the case replaced. Sadly Fry's and Best Buy are some of the options they suggested.

I told my wife to gather up her documentation and that I'd meet her at the Apple store over lunch. Wonder how irate I'm going to have to appear to get them to honor their original commitment? I should probably warm up my shouting voice and NYC accent.

This trend of degenerating customer service is getting pretty annoying.

[Gogar]

There's always a wait at that place, that's why you can make an appointment on the internet the day before.

"How was I supposed to know that?" ,You scream.

Well, now you know.

If you can't get the HD replaced for free, or the HD and the case, with screaming,

then you can buy a new HD at Best Buy or something for about a hundred bucks and replace it yourself. It takes about 2 minutes. I'm not even exaggerating.

Good luck

[onlycafe]

"I told my wife to gather up her documentation and that I'd meet her at the Apple store over lunch. Wonder how irate I'm going to have to appear to get them to honor their original commitment? I should probably warm up my shouting voice and NYC accent."



get the three year old to throw a major tantrum while you berate the customer service manager.
good luck.

[stomachmonkey]

You need to go back and request an In Store repair.

Techs will order the parts and deal with it on location.

[BlueSkyJaunte]

My wife had an appointment. They still made her wait over an hour. Heading out now.

Maybe I can get her to fake contractions?

[rcecale]

Buy a PC!

Randy

[onewhippedpuppy]

I thought apples never broke?

[island911]

...and that you didn't need a genius to operate.

[equality72521]

Originally Posted by onewhippedpuppy

I thought apples never broke?

No, they never crash

[island911]

Yep, an infinitely spinning beach-ball is not a 'crash'

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Well, I was pleasantly surprised.

I walked in w/ my wife and she got the "greeter" to flag down someone to help us out. As he was digging through the records the guy ("Genius") who helped my wife yesterday came over and listened to her calmly explain what had happened.

They put in a "customer service override" (whatever that is) and promised us that the MacBook will be fixed ASAP at the depot.

I never even had to say a word.

I guess the real a-holes in this story are the losers at the Apple repair depot who apparently have been instructed to do whatever possible to avoid honoring an agreement. Fortunately we had someone on our side for once.

The bad news is that the old lady sitting next to us at the "bar" had really bad gas. Smelled (and sounded) like she'd eaten a gallon of egg salad.

[LakeCleElum]

Originally Posted by BlueSkyJaunte

Wonder how irate I'm going to have to appear to get them to honor their original commitment? I should probably warm up my shouting voice and NYC accent.

[gassy]

We Apple owners never shout.. and our gas smells like fresh bamboo and tea.

[ruf-porsche]

Originally Posted by rcecale

Buy a PC!

Randy

+1

Mac are so over rated. My daughter wants a "Pear" like on ICARLY.

[ruf-porsche]

Originally Posted by onewhippedpuppy

I thought apples never broke?

They just start to rot after awhile.

[techweenie]

So, there weren't any a-holes at the Genius Bar after all?

Just a-holes at the repair depot? I've never had a less-than-excellent experience at the Genius Bar.

[126coupe]

My Mac Book was out of warranty and they replaced the cracked case, No Charge

[equality72521]

Why are Macs over rated? Macs don't worry about virus', spyware, and malware. They don't crash; BSOD! They are easy to use. They actually have better support than pc manufacturers; ever called tech support for a pc (Hello, this is Habib. How can I help you?). I've heard of and have experienced better service from the Genius Bar than ANY pc manufacturer. Sure they cost more but we aren't buying firewalls and spyware and antivirus, and, and, and, ... Did I mention they don't crash?

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Originally Posted by LakeCleElum

Hey, it works, see below.

Originally Posted by techweenie

Just a-holes at the repair depot? I've never had a less-than-excellent experience at the Genius Bar.

My first Mac (well-documented here on PPOT!) was very problematic. The "Geniuses" were absolute idiots when dealing with the issue (computer wouldn't wake up after going to sleep). I spent $300 on un-needed new memory, suffered through multiple cycles where they "failed to reproduce the issue" (after I demonstrated it to them), and they finally told me to piss off and gave me a 10% off coupon on my next purchase.

It took a visit to another Apple store, a lot of yelling, and 2 hours on the phone with a REAL expert (2nd or 3rd level support) to isolate the issue (the motherboard, which I told them was the problem from day 1 since I had done some simple experiments with a variety of memory modules) to get the problem fixed.

FWIW, the guy who helped my wife the first time around (and promised to put things straight the second time around) told us bluntly that he was "new here" so he didn't yet have a biz card to give us in case we had to talk to the repair depot again.

In my experience only the new guys are helpful!

[RedBaron]

Interesting. Last time I went to the genius bar in NH I had a few problems (Video card, case messed up, dvd drive failing, etc) and I walked out with a new in-box macbook pro.