As of late, I’ve had a couple of encounters with Apple’s Tech Support due to a faulty battery and a number of strange other occurrences taking place on my MacBook Pro. While everything is still not completely solved, I’m overall very satisfied with Apple’s Customer Service. This was much better than my 1st (and even 2nd) experience. I suspect the difference was Apple Care. It just seems like I was treated better because of it.
Picture Courtesy of CellPhones.ca
I’m not sure I ever really blogged specifically about the event, but I had an awful 1st experience with Apple’s service. I had an iPod die on me a couple months after the warranty had expired (coincidence? I’m skeptical. And no, I was not smart enough to get Apple Care), and I took matters into my own hands to fix it. I bought a hard drive off of ebay, pried apart my beloved iPod, and replaced the drive. It still didn’t work, so I made the hour trip to the Apple Store after setting up my appointment with a “Genius” online. I handed the guy my iPod, he tried a few things, and pronounced my iPod drive dead. I pulled out my second drive and asked him if he could replace it/test that hard drive to see if it worked. He asked if I had taken the iPod apart myself, and when I informed him I had, he looked at me as though I pulled out a new highly communicable form of AIDS. He told me to pretty much get lost, and I was out 2 hours of my life and an iPod.
In the end, the hard drive I bought ended up being bad (could have gotten a refund – so I wasn’t defrauded on ebay – but things got lost in the shuffle of multiple mailings… it’s a long story). I ended up selling my broken iPod for $50 on ebay… with the description “broken iPod.”
This time around, my tech support call was due to my battery on my MacBook Pro not acting the way it was supposed to. My battery life was… not very good, and after my battery reached about 20%, my computer would simply shut off. No warning message, no stand-by, no nothing. So I grabbed my enV, and dialed Apple Tech Support. I’m finding this is often times simpler than setting up an appointment and going into Apple. After I answered their automated questions (No, I have not recently installed Leopard; no, I don’t want help setting anything up. No, I’m not a terrorist.), I was almost immediately transferred to a service rep. This was the 1st of three people that I talked to (overall) regarding this and another issue. He was friendly, but I felt like he was talking down to me as if I knew nothing about my computer. I suppose that’s not his fault, as I’m sure many “technologically ignorant” people – to put it lightly – call in frequently. Hey, I was just happy the guy spoke English.
He then went on to tell me I first needed to re-calibrate my battery. I knew this was supposed to be done every month, but it’s not really a convenient thing to do. In order to get my new battery, which I was pretty sure I needed, I had to go through the whole calibration process. You have to work with the system sometimes, you know? This process involves letting your computer run ’til it dies, then plug it in and let it charge WITHOUT BEING USED for 24 hours. Yeah… this made me realize how much I depend/use my computer in a day. That experience may be worth a blog entry at a later time.
So I called Apple back, a day or so later, and informed them that the calibration did nothing. This guy (rep #2) was very friendly and helped me get the service I needed. I had a legitimate conversation with him about some random stuff (talked about school, Ohio, Idaho, etc. 
), and it was kind of cool feeling like I was talking to a real person. We had an awkward moment where both us started talking, paused, started talking, paused, longer pause, started talking, and so on for literally 20-30 seconds… thankfully it was followed by laughter. He then told me he was shipping out a new battery, and asked what my other questions were.
I went on to explain my other issues – I cannot eject anything in my User account (including my external hard drive, CD’s, and disk images), my eject button on my keyboard doesn’t do anything, my 2nd monitor sometimes does not display the correct resolution after a reboot, and I was having GarageBand issues – and I told him I was considering wiping my computer. He recommended it and said there’s nothing like it, especially if I hadn’t done a clean install of Leopard. I had just done the simple “upgrade” when I installed Leopard, so this made sense. Now that I backup my entire hard drive every night, this didn’t/doesn’t seem like such a daunting task, as I’m guaranteed to have all my information to recover.
I was then transferred to the Applications dept. for my GarageBand issue. This guy (rep #3) was also very friendly and pleasant to talk to. He was really down to earth and seemed to enjoy his job, which never hurts. He actually told me, quite enthusiastically, about how he got to play a part in a blind lady’s life, helping her figure out how to use GarageBand without having sight just by being tech support. Makes you wonder about Apple. They must be doing something right. He attempted to figure out what my problem was (when trying to play music on my keyboard or with GarageBand’s Musical Typing, I get a bunch of static, hisses, and pops if I play relatively fast). He couldn’t figure it out, so he walked me through reinstallation of GarageBand, and I was on my way. This didn’t solve the issue, ha ha ha, but I honestly didn’t really care. I was enjoying talking to the guy and hearing about his job. I’m fairly confident a clean install of my system will do the trick. That’s my project for the weekend… wish me luck.
My battery arrived in literally less than 24 hours. That’s service. Now I just have to put my battery back in the self-addressed box and mail her back. The whole experience actually made me want to be tech support for Apple. Does that make me a loser? Both guys just seemed to enjoy their job, and I’ve always wanted to see what tech support is like. I already have a good summer job lined up, so I guess my tech support dream will have to wait .ÂÂ
Until next time…
F-STOP NINER dude! I am pretty sure it was faulty and that is why you were having all of your computer problems! ITs pretty simple to fix, throw it into the HCX mainframe and back it up with a PCO and run a google search on it and it should work like a charm. If you had any trouble following all of that give me a call and I can go over it again with you. Hope this helps buddy.
Cory
Im not even sure how to start with this. Your iPod broke out of warranty. Technically they don’t have to do anything for you to begin with. Then you went and did something that would’ve violated your warranty, if it were even still covered. I don’t really understand what you were expecting from apple. Did you want them to give you a brand new hard drive and fix up your baby for free. Lets be real honest here – Apple is a company that is driven by profits. They only do things that are profitable for their shareholders, and seeing as you are a college kid, i don’t think you are. This is why you get horrible responses from most tech-support, because people think that they are smarter than the ones they are getting help from. Doesn’t work that way.
If you really think you would like going into customer service, listen to yourself for a second, and you are on the better half of customers, as you have technical knowledge. Realize that the people you deal with are the ones who set up policies, there simply have to enforce them. You are lucky enough to get a $50 dollars for a broken iPod of whoms death you directly contributed.
As a side note about your warranty conspiracy theory, look into how companies make warranties. They, again, are set up so that they make the most profit. They set a year because anything longer than that is no longer profitable. Remember, Apple isn’t your best buddy who wants to make you smile. They want to be the most profitable company they can be.
Good Day
In haste, I wrote “are the ones” this should be “aren’t the ones”
appologies – Supertrail -
@Alexander
Thanks for your response! You do make a few good points, and yes, you address a tendency I have to complain about things. We’ve all got our flaws, right? However I feel the need to defend/clarify myself at least a bit.
I understand that companies operate in a way to make money. I can still voice my frustration with that fact, right? No, I didn’t expect a new hard drive/iPod. That’d just be crazy thinking. I just thought they might try to help me a bit more than they did. I hold no grudges against whatever Apple Genius helped me. Don’t shoot the messenger, right?
I didn’t directly contribute to my iPod’s death. Everything worked minus the hard drive (which I didn’t “kill” myself). A simple hard drive replacement was all that was needed. I just didn’t feel like dishing out the $$ (about $120) for a new one when I could get the new Video iPod for about a hundred bucks more. That little conspiracy theory comment I made was made simply to make things interesting. Ha ha, yes I felt very fortunate to get $50 for my “broken” iPod
.
If you haven’t, read some of my other entries about Apple (and notice the positives I mentioned in this post). I am very much a supporter of them and their products. They have taken care of my technical problems several times, and I just chose to briefly mention one case in which I was a little frustrated.
Cheers!
Hi there- I just got an old mac powerbook g4 from a friend and I upgraded it to Mac OS X. I am new to garage band so I went to take my first one on one lesson and then went to try it out on my own afterward. I have a yamaha motif sx8 and I bought a midisport uno (usb to midi) from guitar center. Then I hooked everything up and there was no activity of my keyboard coming out on garage band. Is there something I’m missing? I just tried loading the cd for m-audio into my laptop and its coming up saying Cannot open file The file “/Volumes/M-Audio USB MIDI Installer/M-Audio USB MIDI Installer.mpkg” cannot be opened (-43). What do I need to do to make this work? The guy at the apple store made it look so easy.
Thank you
Valerie
Hey Val,
I’m not sure what the problem might be. I have an M-Audio Keystation, and I haven’t had any problems. The big difference is that I’m plugging in directly via USB.
You might try a couple things…
Hope that helps!