Apple Service - Thumbs Up
 

Quality service is so rare these days, I think it is worth noting. My kids finally killed our iPad, so I sent it in for service (no local Apple store). I paid online and dropped the iPad off at the UPS Store, who took my service number for boxing and shipping, no hassle or extra payment. Dropped it off on a Saturday, had a like new refurbished one delivered to my house on Wednesday. The $275 fee included the boxing and overnight shipping both ways, pretty good considering that an identical refurbished model still sells for $450. It exceeded my expectations in every way, top notch!

Cool. I am also more than satisfied with them. I dropped my immediately-beloved iPad on the third day I owned it and the front screen shattered even though their dopey magnetic cover was on it. I was looking at spending $699 for the second time in three days... I brought it into the Apple Store to see what a new screen might cost and instead they handed me a brand new one. I was warned it was a one-time thing, and I went out and got a mil-spec case for it.
It's gotten hip to rip on Apple now, but I don't.

At 11/12 warranty months my front switch started to be wonkey on my iPad2. They sent a shipping return box, evaluated the problem & sent a new replacement - with monogram - at no charge.

Ian

Well I got a couple memory modules shipped crosscountry three times faster than it took to get Apple Store to send me an email with the 'redemption code' for a software upgrade. Memory modules showed up in 3 days. The email took a week and a half.

Apple is good. Windows product they treat you like a wet rabid dog at the store when something goes wrong.

rjp

I am a lifelong PC guy. I bought an Apple MacBook Pro with flash hard drive after my Vaio laptop died the second time, and took the data with it. I am still learning how to use all of the features, but the iCloud is such a fantastic business tool. I am definitely more productive, and can do document stuff much faster and better with the Mac.

When I had problems and needed tech support, I got snotty attitude from the phone tech who hung up on me. I called back and asked to speak to a manager. They looked up my purchase history, and realized that I own their top of the line laptop and 3 iPad 4s, as well as their software and two keyboards and such. They put me on the phone with their senior supervising tech manager, who squashed my problem like a bug in about 30 seconds. I was so impressed, that I am now convinced that Apple is the best customer service company around. They integrate the hardware, with the software, and support. You realize that they are serious about the "customer experience", and it is not just sales talk. And I am no Apple fan-boy by any stretch.

But I still say iTunes sucks sweaty donkey balls.

They have no plans to let go of their 24% profit margin.

Seems to me that they are earning it!

And what is the point of this post?

My 3.5 years old imac was out of warranty when it failed.

Within a week the Apple store phoned to say they had cracked the screen, would I be happy with a replacement instead of the repair.

Went to collect...

New imac, 27 inch screen, twice the processor power, twice the hard drive space, twice the ram, new wireless keyboard and mouse - just had to pay for warranty for 3 years cost 140 pounds.

They know if they just start telling people to eff off they'll end up like A lot of companies I'm not going to mention. The same way if pelican shut down the BBS and cut back on customer service to save a couple bucks most of us would never buy anything from them.

Dont dis Apple, the fanboys will cry....

I'm not dissing them. I'm just saying they are intelligent and they know they've got a good thing going and they're trying to keep it that way.

I own several Apple products (MacBook Pro, iPods, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV 2). All the products are pretty awesome, but the real value, IMHO, comes when you own multiple Apple products. They all seamless integrate with each other, which is truly amazing.

For example -- right now, I am streaming my Pandora music from my iPad to my Apple TV which is connected to my home theature system. I have done the same with my wife's MacBook Pro, and my iPhone. I also use my iPhone as a remote for my Apple TV. You can tell their R&D teams work together, based on the seamless integration and familiar interface from product to product. Not even IBM does this well. (Example: IBM's mainfarme DB2 environment does not work well with IBM's own DFSMShsm environment.)

A couple of years ago, my wife's MacBook Pro's hard drive failed. Unfortunately, I wasn't using Time Machine to backup that system, so I did lose some data. Apple Store replaced the hard drive and upgraded the OS Snow Leopard - and they only charged me to cost of the hard drive. Since then, I have that lappy connected to an external hard drive and I used Time Machine -- what an amazing backup utility.

One gripe I have occurred today -- I lost power in the middle of upgrading the firmware on my Apple TV, and I got the "LED flashing light of death." But a quick web search indicated that if I connect my Apple TV to my MacBook via micro USB cable, I can reset the unit thorugh iTunes. Sure enough, it worked, and within 30 minutes, I was back to normal.

And I agree with the general sentiment- the iTunes interface needs improvement.

-Z-man.

Vinny! Is this sour grapes?

Most of my limited Apple experience has been great but the latest OS for my iPad seems a bit ordinary... Everything seems to run slower than it did :confused:

I like our current Apple devices, but I agree that the new iTunes sucks. Apple maps also needs help, it has led us to the wrong places (close but wrong) in the last two days while visiting family in Dallas.

Is there another music program to move music files? I want to move songs to an SD chip and play them with a Roland Wav player.

I buy all of my music through AmazonMP3.com. I have a few hundred songs that I play at our retail establishment. Sounds amazing in 8,000 sf through an Allen & Heath mixing board and QSC K8s.

Google maps is back in the IOS App store so no need to use Apple maps any more.

Yup. The UI isn't as slick but I think the data is better, plus they have traffic.