Apple starting to redeem themselves – A Review 1
in my eyes anyway. I went through a long period of being very angry at Apple (the makers of Mac computers) for their way of not providing repairs. I even vented on my blog if you’ll recall. I took that link and emailed it into their corporate center as well as wrote them a not so nice letter by way of “survey”. Rather than deal with their 4 day window of replacing my dvd drive, I chose instead of say flub it… I’ll just transfer things from cd from my old (reliable) Dell pc to my Mac via our home network. That work-around didn’t help me fix my broken Adobe program that I really wished worked but other than that, I could get around being at Apple’s mercy.
Please keep in mind that I love my actual machine, it’s a MacBook Pro and the repairs that have been needed on it have been reasonable. It’s just their process of getting a repair done that I take exception to. Since I’d so publicly expressed my anger at Apple the last time, I felt it deserved a follow-up.
Well this past week, I knew I was once again going to have to bite the bullet. My battery was toast. I couldn’t leave my machine unplugged for more than 4 minutes before it died. In order to buy a battery I had to make yet another appointment with the Genius Bar. I figured while I was there I’d finally get my DVD drive fixed. I couldn’t stand the thought of getting worked up by them again so I begged my husband to take it in my stead. Somehow between the house and the time the Genius opened my laptop one of my memory sticks died. hmmmmm curious. We will have to fix this ourselves (no biggie).
They confirmed that yep, my battery is gone, I’d gotten more than 630 cycles out of it which is more than double than their baseline. $136.00 for a replacement, check. Then they confirmed (again) that Yep, my optical drive is dead, they’d keep my laptop and fix it within 1 to 2 days.
Yesterday was Day 1, less than 24 hours (ok, so like 20 hours but still)! I was shocked, amazed and thrilled when my Caller ID said Apple Store. I think I even answered the phone with a giggle. My machine was fixed and I could come and get it… but (BUT!?) my “genius” Will told me that today was the launch of the new iPhone and there’s crowds of people standing outside the store in line and that I should just go to the front of the line and tell every orange shirt and policeman I saw that I was there because I’d been called to pick up a repair. Got it.
I felt like a rock star, pushing my stroller with Nathan in it… having Ian hold onto my belt loop and Random holding Ian’s shoulders. We made a little family train and rolled people over with the stroller, shouldered through the throngs with a loud “EXCUSE ME!”‘and made our way to the front of the line. People grumbled and glared but I got through! WOO HOO!
Thank you Apple for semi-fixing my machine (all that they should have). I’m working on half memory right now (I’m not referring to half of the memory I lost when I had children) while I wait for the memory company to send me some more but Apple did their thing, they did it politely and somewhat quickly (and let me feel like a “rock star” for a moment with my “backstage pass”)! I still don’t get why they can’t just pop in a new DVD drive on the spot… it’s a SIMPLE repair! But it’s a heck of a lot better turn around than last time.
