An Apple customer with an odd screen ailment visited a San Jose-area (Calif.) Apple store to have it repaired, but came away with a wild story that covers the highs, the lows and everything in between. His stay at the store spanned five hours and…well, I don’t want to give away the suspense! Read Xavier’s tale on the Notebooks.com Web site and decide if Apple is taking good care of its customers.
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Joe
November 8, 2008 at 2:03 am
Gary Allen
November 8, 2008 at 4:17 am
Smedley
November 8, 2008 at 8:41 am
Efrem
November 8, 2008 at 8:51 am
Paolo
November 8, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Guido
November 9, 2008 at 3:13 am
Johnny Mozzarella
November 10, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Paolo
November 10, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Your comments...
The plural of up is ups and down is downs, just like the plural of cow is cows.
Apostrophes are never used to indicate a plural. Why has the entire world suddenly gone insane and thinks this is somehow correct?
Joe — Insane? Hey, I’m a guy who spent two days camped in front of an Apple store waiting for it to open. Now that’s insane.
“…but they definitely pulled strings for polite customers and repaired units while they waited in some cases.”
Ahuh. Don’t piss off the cook. The Geniuses have the power to do literally *anything* it takes to resolve your issue.
Shriek, name-call, and stomp, and you’ll get nothing. Act as that guy did, and you’ll be taken care of. Simple as that. Fair? Maybe not, but neither is cussing, yelling, and making the life of someone tasked to help you miserable. You’d be surprised at how preciously few people realize this paradigm.
It’s called the “greengrocer’s apostrophe.” The expression dates back to a long time ago in England, where grocers (a) didn’t have to be educated, (b) wrote a lot of things that used plurals (like signs reading “Carrot’s 6d/lb”) and (c) displayed those things to the public, some of which was more educated than the grocer.
Why is it so common today? I haven’t a clue. As Joe posted, apostrophes are never, ever used to indicate the plural of an English word. That simple rule may be the only rule in English that has no exceptions at all, yet people who have no trouble remembering the far more difficult rules about being offside in hockey, or placing semicolons in a programming language, can’t or choose not to get it.
The Apple Stores are not all the same…
Believe me, the unique one we have in Italy, is crap… You’ll never see here in Rome that kind of service. Just came back today from there, one Genius man at the bar (12 meters or more of bar, with at least 18 people waiting) and a lot of Genius *dark blue shirt* assisting the Specialist in the sales arena. Additionally, I found (and unfortunately for the second time in a month) an arrogant Italian Genius (not to be modest, but I believe I’m a bit more Genius than him) treating me like a piece of ….
Funny thing is that we are a company which makes is business on Mac, we have tons of AppleCare, tons of ProCare, and a big quantity of PC.
I don’t know if apple will never read this comment, but please, send your inspector (Mystery Client) in Rome… during the weekends… you’ll find a very interesting environment.
If you are in Italy or Rome and want to have Apple to take care of your laptop… is worth to take a cheap plane and jump to London.
Thank you VP Retail!
Paolo
A Beef with Apple.
I just recently had the same experience dealing with Apple..
In November 2006 I bought a 17″ MBP with a glossy display from Apple Online Story in Germany, It was a great unit and served me well. about 9 month later the screen was acting up and it would take for ever to reach full brightness, So under warranty Apple replaced the display and the power adapter witch was also showing signs of wear. Well as it happens almost a year after the warranty ran out the new display was showing black blotches on the screen witch looked like dirt. I called Apple service and told him the problem. He asked if I had gotten Apple Care? I said no, sadly. Well any way he gave me a number, so I could take it in to the local dealer in my area and have it looked at. Well my friendly dealer toke a look at it and wrote a report to Apple. Well two days later I got the message that Apple has declined the repair because the unit is to long outside its warranty period. (witch I could i understand) but wait… Here in Germany there is a warranty that goes beyond the one year if it looks like a manufacturing defect. So I called Apple again and said I wasn’t very happy that the warranty has bean rejected and that the unit is still under (Gewährleistung) and what they thought about that? well after being forwarded to another customer representative, and relating my story al-over again I was asked if I would be happy if the would replace the whole unit with a new one, but since my MBP 17 2.33/2GB/200GB was not available any more if its ok that I get a MBP 17″ 2.5/4GB/320GB instead. Well a little dumb-founded I said ok. and 4 days later had my brand new 17″ MBP with a full 1 year warranty.
Apple takes very good care of it’s “pro” customers.
If you come in with a problematic MacBook Pro and they ask you what you do with the machine, you will get treated differently based on your response.
If you say you use your MBP for email and surfing the web, you will probably be waiting for a repair.
If you say you use your MBP for video editing or running you design studio, you’ll be given a higher level of service.
There is a difference between buying a “pro” machine and being a “professional”.
Having AppleCare and or ProCare also help.
Being a prick or trying to bribe the geni never works.
“The Geniuses have the power to do literally *anything* it takes to resolve your issue.” -Smedley
Smedley, this isn’t exactly true. Geni have limits. Managers have less limits. It never hurts to ask for a manager. Always be respectful and state your case clearly.
Well, not to mention that in the Italian Apple Store they don’t neither ask you WHY are you a business user, or well, what’s the business, and if you ask for a manager (possibly they are just scared about him…) they always say that is not on duty there, and they can fix everything (but this is not the case I guess)… so…
I have the pictures I took at the genius bar… so depressing.. a lot of people waiting and just one Gene…. well… I don’t care anymore if they will fix or not my laptop, I’m just sad that also Apple now will descent at the same level of the others.. really, so sad…