Apple has returned my computer. Cleaned it up really nice. No charge for the repair. I shipped it out on Monday. FED EX made the first delivery attempt to return it to me yesterday...nobody home. They re-delivered it this morning. Its running as fast as when it was new. My sister's life has been spared.
Wow, that's great to hear. You know Apple has had some major customer service issues in the last 6 to 9 months or so, and that's putting it mildly. I had some issues (that progressively got worse) on my iPhone 4S since I got it. Apple played the same play each time; they would stall around for about 45 minutes until you actually got to speak to a "tech support" rep and then, each time, they managed to drop the call and never call back. Absolutely pathetic!
This time things were different. My phone is far worse and I'm laid up after knee surgery with nothing else to do. I'll just give you the reader's digest version and the facts. First, it took just over 11 hours of my time to get a replacement phone on the way. During that time I spoke with 24 different people and was 'mysteriously' disconnected (while I'm calling from a land line) 7 times.
When I FINALLY got to a 'senior' Apple support tech, he admitted that they are aware that they have "severe" problems (he said customer surveys of how they liked their support are unbelievable) with customer support due to their fast sales growth. Most polls and tech sites pretty well agree that even HP has better support than Apple right now. Fortunately, this senior support tech, after he read all the notes from just TODAY, immediately ordered a replacement phone for me and waived that extremely annoying $29.95 fee. He did tell me that they are now doing "intensive" re-training and making more changes in support staff than any time in their history. Hopefully I'll see a new phone soon. It takes 3 or 4 tries to call out, it doesn't ring most of the time, and it almost always drops the call; no matter where in the country I am.
I'm glad to see that they are beginning to make strides to correct their terrible service, but I now really fear what would happen if my new iMac I use for work goes out. My calm, even tone but persistant, calls to Apple would likely become quite animated and potentially rude if I get the same treatment. I expressed as much to the senior support tech who finally helped me and he sent me his personal cell number just in case that happens. I only hope he stays employed there. My case today will be used as an example of what will get you fired to new techs. He even likened their situation to GM; relying on past quality and taking their customers for granted. Then add a rush of new customers, and that spells customer support hell for the consumer!
I'm curious Bob, were you calm and mild like I was today or did you threaten to rip their fucking heads off and shit down their throats if they didn't fix your system? Maybe the polite method only gets you ignored and dropped.
When the tech came, he determined that the video card and sound card were also bad - I knew that, but was just planning on picking those up somewhere. I wasn't home, he ordered the parts from Compaq and then installed them the next day. Never had a lick of problems with that computer after that. We were still using it up until our house fire.