Just got a call from apple

[Rangerhall6]

I dont know if this is a normal thing that apple does or not but i just got a call from them and they were trying to sell me an iBook as hard as they could. They told me about the extra $100 on top of my education discount and all that. I told her that i was going to wait for the update and she asked me how long i would wait for an update and what i wanted to be in the update. Has anyone else had this happen? I was really excited about it b/c it has to mean they are trying to get rid of all their old iBooks for the new ones coming very soon! What do you guys think about this? Does this give me reason to get excited?

[y0zza]

Are you sure the call was from Apple?

[Rangerhall6]

Are you sure the call was from Apple?
It was on my cell phone and thats the number i put on my apple acount so i dont have any reason to belive that it was not apple.

[ITASOR]

It seems that if this was real that almost everyone on here (who has registered Tiger with their phone number) which includes myself, would have gotten this call. Seems fake to me, maybe a credit card scam.

Next time they call, pretend you are REALLY interested. They when she wants you to order it, just say you're on apple.com ordering it right now. If she saying something about welll noooooo order it on the phone...you know it's a scam. Why would apple rather you waste their phone minutes and order it on there and ask questions when you could go through the hassle-free online process.

Another thing to do is to call Apple and simply ask if they are doing this. They may thank you for letting them know that such a scam is going around or they may say "yes, we've starting bothering people on the phone now as well!".

-itasor

[runninmac]

I don't think its a scam. I have herd people on the forums talk about how they have recived phone calls from apple. Sometimes it becuase you have had an item in your checkout cart for a while.

[Rangerhall6]

ok, i just called the number back that called me about the iBook and it told me to call 1-800-MY-APPLE. I called them and i talked to them about it and figured out that it was them that called. Now that i know it was a call from apple what do you guys think?

[vouder17]

ok, i just called the number back that called me about the iBook and it told me to call 1-800-MY-APPLE. I called them and i talked to them about it and figured out that it was them that called. Now that i know it was a call from apple what do you guys think?

Very good work...this is a good sign. Oh boy..i really am in the market for a new iBook/Powerbook. Lets hope they are nice :cool:

[ericssonboi]

Very good work...this is a good sign. Oh boy..i really am in the market for a new iBook/Powerbook. Lets hope they are nice :cool:

I've gotten the calls on my cell phone before too..
If they're unable to reach you, they'll call again..

I added a Powerbook to my cart and about a week later, they called me.
I was given a rep with name and extension number who would deal with my specificly. She would answer any of my questions and i could even place the order with her...

That's customer service for you..

We won't get into details or stories about ppl with the tech support.. lol..

[hob]

I wish Apple would call me at home now and then. All we ever seem to get is double-glazing salespeople... :mad:

[Sammis89]

The same thing happened to me about a week ago, and said he saw that i had been looking at Powerbooks and wanted to know if i was ready to buy one, because he could "Find ways to save you more money on top of the education discount" and then he sent me an email with contac information.

[mrzeve]

They called my cell twice in one day.

The first time they left a message and then they called back 10 min later.

Wanted to sell me apple care for my mac mini.

Told them there care sucked and to kindly stop calling me.

[MmmPancakes]

I'd like to see a significant price cut on the base ibooks...$999 cut down to $799 would be sweet. I don't suppose there's much of a chance they would want to dump their inventory, though.

[question fear]

if you have an apple account on their site, and you've recently run through a hypothetical computer purchase, they will sometimes call and ask you if you are still interested...

[mcarnes]

If they call again tell them that the only way you will buy is if Steve Jobs personally takes the phone order. Hell, he might actually do it! :p

[Rangerhall6]

If they call again tell them that the only way you will buy is if Steve Jobs personally takes the phone order. Hell, he might actually do it! :p
Haha, ill try that one next time they call.

[MontyZ]

I'm gonna put something in my Apple Store cart and see if Apple calls me and wants to offer it for less money...

[sw1tcher]

Had something similar happen to me about 2 months ago.

I had a PB in my cart. Some guy called and asked if I was still interested in purchasing it. I told them I was, but that since Tiger was coming out soon that I was thinking of waiting. I tried to get him to give me a discount so that I could use the money saved to buy Tiger later, but no go. He did say that he was gonna email me with all his info (which he did) and that whenever I was ready to buy, to give him a call and that he'd handle everything.

About a month later, someone at Apple sent me a $30 off coupon.

[evolutioneight]

It's easy. If you want to talk to Apple, go to their store and add a loaded 17inch powerbook and a loaded highend powermac to your shopping cart. If you've ever bought things from the store online before they have your # and they'll give you a shout in a few days. I was just putting together my dream set up with dual 30inchers haha and they thought I was actually interested.

[kwajaln]

I've never received a phone call . . . BUT I do have an iBook G4 and an iMac G5 20-inch 2.0 gHz with an extra gig of RAM from Crucial. Does that count for anything???? :D :D

[UTB_Avid]

We won't get into details or stories about ppl with the tech support.. lol..

Glorified sales reps the lot.

[Tamer Brad]

It's easy. If you want to talk to Apple, go to their store and add a loaded 17inch powerbook and a loaded highend powermac to your shopping cart. If you've ever bought things from the store online before they have your # and they'll give you a shout in a few days. I was just putting together my dream set up with dual 30inchers haha and they thought I was actually interested.

Yeesh ... I sometimes just build the most expensive system I can for fun ... thank God I didn't give them my phone number yet!

[Macmaniac]

It looks like Apple is out trolling for laptop customers, this is indeed a very good sign of an coming iBook update, all signs seem to be pointing towards one. Did you have items in your cart at apple.com/store? or was this just a sales call out of nowhere?

[ChrisBrightwell]

I dont know if this is a normal thing that apple does or not but i just got a call from them and they were trying to sell me an iBook as hard as they could. They told me about the extra $100 on top of my education discount and all that. I told her that i was going to wait for the update and she asked me how long i would wait for an update and what i wanted to be in the update. Has anyone else had this happen? I was really excited about it b/c it has to mean they are trying to get rid of all their old iBooks for the new ones coming very soon! What do you guys think about this? Does this give me reason to get excited?
I had a friend save a custom Powerbook as to his shopping cart @ the Apple.com Education store. He got a call within a few days asking what they could do to help him make his purchase.

Needless to say, they weren't willing to just mail it to him and forget the bill. ;)

[MontyZ]

My cart is full, but still no call from Apple yet.

[elbennet]

I just got a call a few days ago about an iMac, so it's not just the laptops. The next day I got an email from them too with the rep's name and extension number.


It did kind of creep me out at first, so now I feel better that it happened to other too :)

[mariahlullaby]

I've gotten a call before. I used to keep all kinds of things saved in my shopping cart and they called once to see if I wanted to buy them (kinda weird, but cool too). Seemed legit, as they asked for my mom first (the account is under her name) and knew everything in it :p

[BornAgainMac]

I just filled my shopping cart with every Mac they sell and fully loaded. Hopefully they will call soon. :D

[Abstract]

And I'm assuming this is just for Americans.

How many Dual 2.7GHz G5 PowerMacs with 8GB of RAM + 30" screens am I gonna have to put into my cart for Steve to call me personally in Australia!! ;)

[Rangerhall6]

It looks like Apple is out trolling for laptop customers, this is indeed a very good sign of an coming iBook update, all signs seem to be pointing towards one. Did you have items in your cart at apple.com/store? or was this just a sales call out of nowhere?
I did have an iBook in my cart at Apple.com for a while but i took it out about 2 weeks ago. I guess thats why they called but it still seems pretty cool to me and it makes me think that an update is coming soon.

[MontyZ]

And I'm assuming this is just for Americans. How many Dual 2.7GHz G5 PowerMacs with 8GB of RAM + 30" screens am I gonna have to put into my cart for Steve to call me personally in Australia!! ;)
I've got 27 of them in there, and no call so far.

[cjc343]

$5 million+ in my cart... waiting for a call :D

Maybe they'll be willing to send me a few "samples" before I purchase 450 maxed-out G5s and 2 displays for each... (Hey, I can dream, can't I?)

[tuartboy]

$5 million+ in my cart... waiting for a call :D

Maybe they'll be willing to send me a few "samples" before I purchase 450 maxed-out G5s and 2 displays for each... (Hey, I can dream, can't I?)

thought that was funny enough to try my hand at it.

up to exactly $29,344,626.00

If I were a rich man...

http://thewhitespaces.com/images/lol.JPG

[MontyZ]

Maybe if I add 2,000 iPods to my cart, Steve Jobs will personally call me. I know Apple wants to get rid of that overstock of iPods!

[agent229]

haha i just got one today because i put a hypothetical iBook in my cart and left it there. it creeped me out at first too and i totally assumed it was a scam! the guy asked for my email and i just said "i already put it in on your website" and basically hung up, but lo and behold he emailed me right away so i guess it was legit ;) . he was realllllllllly pushing me to make the purchase asap... and offering me some printer rebate... and the extra $100 student rebate and such. i really hope that means they're updating soon! i actually asked him haha. he asked why i wanted to wait and i said to wait for an upgrade, so he tried to convince me that they upgraded everything 6 weeks ago (i guess he meant putting Tiger on there?) and then i just flat out asked if there was an upgrade coming soon (i can pretend i don't know they're ultra-secretive, right?) and he said "we haven't heard anything about that." darn. but still... the pressure to buy, and buy soon, seemed pretty interesting... he also asked me what else i was looking at, and seemed really interested in whether i was favoring a powerbook instead. which i'm not. as soon as i told him i was just looking at other pc laptops first he didn't seem to care... so i don't know how that should be interpreted either.

[spellflower]

They called my cell twice in one day.

The first time they left a message and then they called back 10 min later.

Wanted to sell me apple care for my mac mini.

Told them there care sucked and to kindly stop calling me.

This is the first I've heard anything negative about apple care. Could you elaborate? I'm anticipating buying my first mac in the next month or so, and until now I took it as a given that I should buy the care with it.

ps.: I know this is off the subject of the main thread; could someone illuminate me as to how I should go about posting responses that are off the subject in the future?

[Foniks Munkee]

Apple care is actually pretty dodgy. The average end user wouldn't see it, but if the problems my friend who worked as a certified apple tech, for an apple store are any indication - its not awesome.

Not directly related to the care, but to give you some idea of how their service works (at least in Australia): In many cases they had to take logic boards and other components from DOA machines to replace parts because Apple wouldn't authorise a replacement.

A good example is they will not authorise more than one replacement part for a machine within a period of a week. Yet they knowingly sold logic boards with dry solder joints for some months (forget which machine this is, but I think it was the eMac from 2 years ago, possibly the powerbook). The average failure rate was pretty high, but not high enough to do a recall. It wasn't uncommon for this problem to show up in conjunction with other problems and thus the fights with apple service started.

Its just lucky for a lot of users that apple ships quite a few DOA machines or they wouldn't have been fixed in anything like reasonable time. The secret is in a term called "stitching", because every apple has a serial number, the DOA machines would have the part salvaged, they would claim that the part was from a legit machine get a replacement sent out and install it. Because the serial came from another machine it wouldn't alert apple service.

Apple hardware is great and all, but only if you don't get a dud.

[edit]
and until now I took it as a given that I should buy the care with it.
You should still buy apple care! Despite apples issues, you do have a contract with them that they have to honor with regards to the warranty on your machine. The other think my friend pointed out is that he was doing 85-90 service jobs a month, and a large portion of those occured within months of the warranty expiring. This did not include jobs that were not completed because the cost was prohibitive. He used to get at least a dozen a week were the cost of replacement for a logic board was about the same as a new eMac (probably the mac mini these days) - and thus the customer would forgoe the repair and buy a new machine.

Don't do without it - it will bite you. Just be aware of your rights, read your contract and make sure you don't ding your machine. That will be the first thing they jump on as the cause!

[HELLFISH]

I had PowerMac G5 placed in the online cart at the apple store a few weeks ago. Apple called last week to see if he could "finish out this order for you". I told him I was waiting for the Intel switch and he wanted to know why. :eek:

The sales folks are probably being pushed pretty damn hard these days... I would think the Intel announcement pretty much killed off sales for the remainder of the year.

[wdlove]

My cart is full, but still no call from Apple yet.

It doesn't always happen the same day. Just be patient.

I've received two phone calls from Apple. One was for a PowerBook, which was a couple years ago. Recently it was on a refub iMac G5.

[wordmunger]

I don't understand why everyone wants a call. If you want to talk to them, give them a call. It's a toll-free number!

[Willy S]

I´ve had an eMac in the cart at Apple Italy for 10 days and I was hoping they would call me to give me some incentive to complete the order, but Apple hasn´t called yet and I guess they won´t.

[MontyZ]

I don't understand why everyone wants a call. If you want to talk to them, give them a call. It's a toll-free number!
It's not the same as Apple calling you. Some of us have such low self-esteem that a call from Apple would lift our spirits for at least a week. After a week, we can go back and put more stuff in our cart and wait for Apple to call again so we can feel happy again.

It's retail therapy without actually buying anything!!

;)

[thehuncamunca]

i put an ibook in my shopping basket yesterday
today got a call from apple-was eating at the time so i didn't get a chance to talk to them
this looks pretty good for a new ibook soon