Apple Customer Service Experience - Part 1
>> Monday, August 25, 2008
Earlier this week, Apple made news as achieving exceptionally high customer service ratings, the same day that Michael Arrington bemoaned the lack of quality in some recent Apple products he purchased. Naturally, the tech blogosphere exploded with commentary and comments on both sides of the argument. Gruber elegantly smacked Arrington down, the increasingly irrelevant Scoble chimed in with some nonsense, overly smug Mac owners pointed fingers at their Windows-PC owning brethren and screamed "nyeener-nyeener." One of my sisters, a Dell owner, can't understand why people are so down on Dell customer service, until I explained that unless you pay the extra money for business/gold level support, you're stuck with dealing with minimally trained off-shore CS people who want you to reinstall Windows when you're monitor is malfunctioning.
Me, I couldn't care less about the results of this survey. Since the early-1990s, when Apple expanded tech and warranty support beyond the first 30 days, my experience has been nearly 100% satisfactory. Of course, there have been a few times when I've spoken with CS reps who don't quite seem to know what they are talking about or were unaccountably snarky, but in 15+ years of Apple-provided tech support, the experience has been consistently excellent.
As to Michael Arrington's comments regarding build quality - he seems to be living in a world where Apple had, until recently, an unassailable position in quality and out-of-the-box performance. Unfortunately, that's never been true. There have always been lemons - both of my sisters (the Dell owner and the Mac owner), have both had some serious quality problems with their Macs. The first generation of PowerBooks were awful, the Titanium PowerBooks were only marginally better, the Rev A G4 and G5 towers were problem-prone, the first generation of the flat-panel iMacs had serious rattles and mid-plane issues, the first generation of the 30" Cinema Displays had an alarming tendency to pinkness, the first generation of G4 iBooks had logic board problems, and on and on. And let's not forget the battery life issues for the first and second generation iPods - there was a rather protracted lawsuit on that one.
What has trumped the problems people have had with quality and build issues is how Apple has dealt with the problem. I've been lucky - in 22 years of Mac ownership, I've had only a handful of problems - a burned out power supply on my original 512k Mac, a prematurely drained internal clock battery on my PowerMac 6100, and a MacPro logic board that farted and played dead on iDay last year. A pretty good record, considering the number of Macs I've owned over the years, until I purchased a refurbished 17" MacBook Pro last June. My 15" PowerBook was in perfectly good condition, except that it was very finicky with software that's been built primarily for the Intel Macs. I had to give several heavily animated presentations in July using Keynote at The Convention in Ohio, and the PowerBook didn't have enough horsepower to carry it off. I was going to commit to either a MacBook or a 15" MacBook Pro, when I checked the refurb list on the on-line Apple Store. There, I found my dream model - the 17" with the glossy screen. It was the immediately prior generation - 2.3 GHz, with a 160 GB hard drive, but it was about the same price as the 15" I was thinking of buying. I'd been assured by friends who had bought Apple Store refurbs that 95% of the time, the refurbs are actually new products that had been opened and returned and couldn't be sold as new (rather than products returned for problems and then repaired). Since the refurb was covered under the same warranty as a new unit, buying the 17" seemed to be a no-brainer decision.
I got the MacBook Pro, and it was as good as I hoped. The only trouble I had was when I was playing with the Spore Creature Creator. It seemed to really stress the processors - the back got extremely hot very quickly, and there was one time I left the program running and closed the lid. The MBP wouldn't wake from sleep, and I forced a reboot. After that, I was careful to close SCC before putting the MBP to sleep, and ever experienced the problem again. I was delighted with the laptop, and it performed as expected during my conference and presentation.
Unfortunately, things turned sour as soon as I got home. Literally. After driving 12 hours straight through from Columbus to New York, I unpacked the car and dragged just the essentials back upstairs, which meant just my laptop (the suitcase filled with dirty laundry could wait until the next day). I wanted to check my office email, but much to my dismay and complete bafflement, the MBP just shut it self down. I rebooted, and it happened again. I rebooted, and it wouldn't event start up.
I called AppleCare the next day, and they had me run through the some troubleshooting tasks: resetting the PMU (remove battery and power cord, and hold the power button down for 30 seconds) and resetting the PRAM (hold down the Command, Option and P, R, and M keys and then start the computer until it chimes twice). I was able to get the MBP running long enough to pull off all of the presentation and associated audio files, and it shut itself down about 10 seconds later. The next day (Friday), after work, I went to the Apple Store to drop it off for repairs. I was a little startled to find that there were no appointments for Mac issues until the following TUESDAY (this is why the surging popularity of the Mac platform is not necessarily A Good Thing). I was; however, able to do a Quickdrop, which was actually quite fine, since it was unlikely there was anything a Genius could to fix the MPB. The guy who did the intake on the Quickdrop advised that the earliest anyone would be looking at the MBP would be Monday.
Sunday morning (a day earlier than expected), I was a little startled to get a call from the Apple Store, letting me know that they were shipping the MBP off to the depot in Houston for repairs. I got the standard warning that if they found physical damage or water damage inside the case, it would cost me $1800 (I must have heard wrong), and that it could take up to 10 business days to complete the repair. I wasn't terribly discommoded by the prospect since I still had the 15" PowerBook for the bedroom. I just wanted the MBP fixed. ...
Part 2 follows
Me, I couldn't care less about the results of this survey. Since the early-1990s, when Apple expanded tech and warranty support beyond the first 30 days, my experience has been nearly 100% satisfactory. Of course, there have been a few times when I've spoken with CS reps who don't quite seem to know what they are talking about or were unaccountably snarky, but in 15+ years of Apple-provided tech support, the experience has been consistently excellent.
As to Michael Arrington's comments regarding build quality - he seems to be living in a world where Apple had, until recently, an unassailable position in quality and out-of-the-box performance. Unfortunately, that's never been true. There have always been lemons - both of my sisters (the Dell owner and the Mac owner), have both had some serious quality problems with their Macs. The first generation of PowerBooks were awful, the Titanium PowerBooks were only marginally better, the Rev A G4 and G5 towers were problem-prone, the first generation of the flat-panel iMacs had serious rattles and mid-plane issues, the first generation of the 30" Cinema Displays had an alarming tendency to pinkness, the first generation of G4 iBooks had logic board problems, and on and on. And let's not forget the battery life issues for the first and second generation iPods - there was a rather protracted lawsuit on that one.
What has trumped the problems people have had with quality and build issues is how Apple has dealt with the problem. I've been lucky - in 22 years of Mac ownership, I've had only a handful of problems - a burned out power supply on my original 512k Mac, a prematurely drained internal clock battery on my PowerMac 6100, and a MacPro logic board that farted and played dead on iDay last year. A pretty good record, considering the number of Macs I've owned over the years, until I purchased a refurbished 17" MacBook Pro last June. My 15" PowerBook was in perfectly good condition, except that it was very finicky with software that's been built primarily for the Intel Macs. I had to give several heavily animated presentations in July using Keynote at The Convention in Ohio, and the PowerBook didn't have enough horsepower to carry it off. I was going to commit to either a MacBook or a 15" MacBook Pro, when I checked the refurb list on the on-line Apple Store. There, I found my dream model - the 17" with the glossy screen. It was the immediately prior generation - 2.3 GHz, with a 160 GB hard drive, but it was about the same price as the 15" I was thinking of buying. I'd been assured by friends who had bought Apple Store refurbs that 95% of the time, the refurbs are actually new products that had been opened and returned and couldn't be sold as new (rather than products returned for problems and then repaired). Since the refurb was covered under the same warranty as a new unit, buying the 17" seemed to be a no-brainer decision.
I got the MacBook Pro, and it was as good as I hoped. The only trouble I had was when I was playing with the Spore Creature Creator. It seemed to really stress the processors - the back got extremely hot very quickly, and there was one time I left the program running and closed the lid. The MBP wouldn't wake from sleep, and I forced a reboot. After that, I was careful to close SCC before putting the MBP to sleep, and ever experienced the problem again. I was delighted with the laptop, and it performed as expected during my conference and presentation.
Unfortunately, things turned sour as soon as I got home. Literally. After driving 12 hours straight through from Columbus to New York, I unpacked the car and dragged just the essentials back upstairs, which meant just my laptop (the suitcase filled with dirty laundry could wait until the next day). I wanted to check my office email, but much to my dismay and complete bafflement, the MBP just shut it self down. I rebooted, and it happened again. I rebooted, and it wouldn't event start up.
I called AppleCare the next day, and they had me run through the some troubleshooting tasks: resetting the PMU (remove battery and power cord, and hold the power button down for 30 seconds) and resetting the PRAM (hold down the Command, Option and P, R, and M keys and then start the computer until it chimes twice). I was able to get the MBP running long enough to pull off all of the presentation and associated audio files, and it shut itself down about 10 seconds later. The next day (Friday), after work, I went to the Apple Store to drop it off for repairs. I was a little startled to find that there were no appointments for Mac issues until the following TUESDAY (this is why the surging popularity of the Mac platform is not necessarily A Good Thing). I was; however, able to do a Quickdrop, which was actually quite fine, since it was unlikely there was anything a Genius could to fix the MPB. The guy who did the intake on the Quickdrop advised that the earliest anyone would be looking at the MBP would be Monday.
Sunday morning (a day earlier than expected), I was a little startled to get a call from the Apple Store, letting me know that they were shipping the MBP off to the depot in Houston for repairs. I got the standard warning that if they found physical damage or water damage inside the case, it would cost me $1800 (I must have heard wrong), and that it could take up to 10 business days to complete the repair. I wasn't terribly discommoded by the prospect since I still had the 15" PowerBook for the bedroom. I just wanted the MBP fixed. ...
Part 2 follows
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