With all the doom and gloom people seem to be concentrating about when it comes to Apple, I thought I'd share my story about great Apple customer service. I'd be really interested to hear your stories as well.
Some time ago I purchased an Early 2011 MacBook Pro 15" with AppleCare. It was a good little slugger and I took it everywhere with me, using it non-stop (it was the aluminium equivalent of a well-loved teddy bear). However a few years later it began developing this annoying problem where it would get stuck in sleep mode and just wouldn't come out unless you held down the power button; even though it would stay charging and the backlit keyboard would stay on.
Fearing it was an issue with performance, I upped the RAM to 16GB, and put an SSD in it. Sadly, the issue persisted. So I shimmied over to the Apple Store and explained the situation. At the time I was running BootCamp frequently so I had rEFIt running. When the Apple Genius saw it boot up, he looked a little concerned and said he couldn't work on it because the EFI had been modded. He then watched me delete rEFIt when it booted into OS X, was kind enough to keep that between ourselves, and then took it in.
I received it back a few days later, with a new Logic Board in there. Unfortunately, that one had a dodgy headphone port when playing back music! So they took it in again, duplicated the issue, and mentioned it must've been a D.O.A. LB.
At the time the sleep mode issue was well-documented and I genuinely was concerned that by the time my AppleCare was up, I'd have an expensive brick on my hands. So I politely explained that I didn't have faith in the machine, although the service was second-to-none.
Just as a brief summary; I took it everywhere with me, so it had a few dents, quite a lot of scratches - plus more RAM than Apple stated is supported in the machine. Not to mention a non-OEM EFI. Despite all this, they replaced my system with a brand-new MBP 15", box and all. Plus I kept my old charger so I've got two 85W chargers running about.
And I kept all my old upgrades! They said I had to do the hardware swaps (something about them not being allowed to touch non-Apple hardware). So I took a screwdriver and an external HDD to the Apple Store, in order to do a Time Machine backup, wipe the SSD when I transferred it to the new Mac, and restore from my Time Machine.
They looked at me quizzically when I explained what I was going to do, asked "is it running Mountain Lion?" (it was), and told me to pop my old hard-drive into the new machine. Booted up instantly. No driver issues, no problems like that at all. I was gobsmacked. (It wasn't exactly the same story when I opened BootCamp!)
So yeah, there's my essay. I can't think of another computer company who would willingly do that considering the circumstances, and it's fair to say my faith in the brand has never been higher since that experience. Thank you, Apple.
Any stories of great service you'd be kind enough to share?
Some time ago I purchased an Early 2011 MacBook Pro 15" with AppleCare. It was a good little slugger and I took it everywhere with me, using it non-stop (it was the aluminium equivalent of a well-loved teddy bear). However a few years later it began developing this annoying problem where it would get stuck in sleep mode and just wouldn't come out unless you held down the power button; even though it would stay charging and the backlit keyboard would stay on.
Fearing it was an issue with performance, I upped the RAM to 16GB, and put an SSD in it. Sadly, the issue persisted. So I shimmied over to the Apple Store and explained the situation. At the time I was running BootCamp frequently so I had rEFIt running. When the Apple Genius saw it boot up, he looked a little concerned and said he couldn't work on it because the EFI had been modded. He then watched me delete rEFIt when it booted into OS X, was kind enough to keep that between ourselves, and then took it in.
I received it back a few days later, with a new Logic Board in there. Unfortunately, that one had a dodgy headphone port when playing back music! So they took it in again, duplicated the issue, and mentioned it must've been a D.O.A. LB.
At the time the sleep mode issue was well-documented and I genuinely was concerned that by the time my AppleCare was up, I'd have an expensive brick on my hands. So I politely explained that I didn't have faith in the machine, although the service was second-to-none.
Just as a brief summary; I took it everywhere with me, so it had a few dents, quite a lot of scratches - plus more RAM than Apple stated is supported in the machine. Not to mention a non-OEM EFI. Despite all this, they replaced my system with a brand-new MBP 15", box and all. Plus I kept my old charger so I've got two 85W chargers running about.
And I kept all my old upgrades! They said I had to do the hardware swaps (something about them not being allowed to touch non-Apple hardware). So I took a screwdriver and an external HDD to the Apple Store, in order to do a Time Machine backup, wipe the SSD when I transferred it to the new Mac, and restore from my Time Machine.
They looked at me quizzically when I explained what I was going to do, asked "is it running Mountain Lion?" (it was), and told me to pop my old hard-drive into the new machine. Booted up instantly. No driver issues, no problems like that at all. I was gobsmacked. (It wasn't exactly the same story when I opened BootCamp!)
So yeah, there's my essay. I can't think of another computer company who would willingly do that considering the circumstances, and it's fair to say my faith in the brand has never been higher since that experience. Thank you, Apple.
Any stories of great service you'd be kind enough to share?
