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Redline13

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 20, 2004
297
0
This is Out of Control

I got home today and was suprised to find the cables had arrived. Unfortunately... THEY SENT THE WRONG FRICKING CABLE AGAIN!! I got a Mini DVI- Video adapter and a DVI-VGA cable instead of the Mini DVI-VGA adapter I should have been sent.

I think I am going to give up and just buy the cable and try to get something for these on ebay. At this point I fully expect someone to have taken a dump on my Powerbook when I get it back :mad: :(
 

iJon

macrumors 604
Feb 7, 2002
6,586
229
Redline13 said:
I got home today and was suprised to find the cables had arrived. Unfortunately... THEY SENT THE WRONG FRICKING CABLE AGAIN!! I got a Mini DVI- Video adapter and a DVI-VGA cable instead of the Mini DVI-VGA adapter I should have been sent.

I think I am going to give up and just buy the cable and try to get something for these on ebay. At this point I fully expect someone to have taken a dump on my Powerbook when I get it back :mad: :(
call and complain, they might overnight you one for your trouble and patience.

iJon
 

Redline13

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 20, 2004
297
0
iJon said:
call and complain, they might overnight you one for your trouble and patience.

iJon

That's what I did. I didn't get the right cable in my initial order. I called and asked for it and after a giving me a hard time they sent me the wrong cable twice!
 

aswitcher

macrumors 603
Oct 8, 2003
5,338
14
Canberra OZ
Redline13 said:
That's what I did. I didn't get the right cable in my initial order. I called and asked for it and after a giving me a hard time they sent me the wrong cable twice!

Well third time lucky. :) Just don't pay anything further, like shipping cables back etc.
 

Torajima

macrumors regular
Jan 6, 2004
241
0
USA
Redline13 said:
Has anyone been down this road before or have any advice? Do you think I can get Apple to spring for free expedited shiping to compenate for my lost time?

Sometimes refurbs arrive DOA... that's the chance you get when you buy a refurb.

My company bought a refurb G5 recently, and while it wasn't DOA, it was still unusable in an office environment... the fans were stuck on high, and it sounded like a jet was about to take off.

Rather than send it back to Apple (or Smalldog, where I actually bought it), I took it to a local repair shop and they fixed it free of charge (refurbs still have full one year warranty). I had it back in 3 days.
 

Redline13

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 20, 2004
297
0
I got a call from an Apple tech this morning informing me that the damage to my screen was a result of some one setting something on it and it was not covered! I had to explain to him that I only had the thing a week and it arrived with the white spots. At that point he looked at the case info in front of him and saw that I was correct and it was in fact covered. He then apologised and told me I should have the computer back in 3 or 4 days.

Why is nothing I do with this company going smoothly? I am trying to give them the benefit of the doubt but Apple is scewing up at every avaible opportunity . Is there a special customer satisfaction hotline I can call and complain? I am not looking to get anything out of it I just want to share my dissatisfaction at there bungling in hopes it will lead to someone not having to go through what I am.
 

flyfish29

macrumors 68020
Feb 4, 2003
2,175
4
New HAMpshire
Redline13 said:
Why is nothing I do with this company going smoothly? I am trying to give them the benefit of the doubt but Apple is scewing up at every avaible opportunity . Is there a special customer satisfaction hotline I can call and complain? I am not looking to get anything out of it I just want to share my dissatisfaction at there bungling in hopes it will lead to someone not having to go through what I am.

Wow, I do have to say you have been more than patient with this debacle! If I were you I would copy all your notes from this thread into an email and send it to steve Jobs himself. Someone in another thread who I believe lived in the UK did this *search for it- he had an issue with a computer taking months to repair at apple through applecare I think...can someone help me out here if you remember this thread* anyway, he sent Jobs an email and had a reply from him within a very short time. I totally believe your situation warrents some free goodies...maybe an iPod mini at the very least. You have spend hours on the phone and been very patient...I would not have been as patient. I would go in with the same attitude you describe above about not wanting anything in particular, but spell out how many hours you have spent trying to fix the problems, etc. He will most likely do something for you...I hope at least as you are a terrific mac customer to go through this and still believe in Apple...at least to some extent. :D
 

603

macrumors member
Jan 27, 2004
86
0
re: Why is nothing I do with this company going smoothly?

i feel your pain. my situation is different from yours, but this is also my first Mac, and we have the same machine. to put it nicely, my introduction to the world of Apple has not been a pleasant one.

during the month of February i sent my 12" PB (Rev B) back to Apple 3 times. on the first return, they replaced the hard drive, which was clicking and beeping and readying itself for failure. no problem, it's not Apple's fault that Hitachi or whoever had a bad batch of drives. however, the repairmen scratched up the lid and the bottom of the case pretty bad. i returned it for the scratches, and they replaced the bottom and underside, but scratched the LCD in the process. so i sent it back a third time. no scratches on the LCD, but now it won't go to sleep half the time and there's a clicking noise when i open the lid. something is clicking inside the hinge... i suspect that it's pinching the video cable. sometimes the LCD will not come on when it's awakened from sleep... sometimes it won't even to go sleep unless i put it to sleep through the GUI. the edges of the LCD are also yellow, on all four sides.

on top of all this, the lid is warped and the latch doesn't engage properly. each time i've returned the computer, i also requested that the lid and latch be repaired... it never happened. i've heard suggestions about bending the lid after warming up the computer - i shouldn't have to do that to a $2000+ computer. (by the way, Apple now says that warped lids are normal: http://www.thinksecret.com/news/warpedlids.html)

the people i've talked to at Apple are nice and have told me that this is "not the experience we want you to have"... but their techs botched it up three times in one month, and i had little confidence that it would come back without another problem. after checking out the machine for a few minutes, the local Genius said that i was probably due for a replacement.

so i called again last night and explained the problems. the first guy i talked to was friendly, as usual, and reviewed my cases. i told him i wanted a replacement, that my machine had been "Frankensteined," and that i'm worried that it will develop new issues in the future thanks to the number of parts that have been replaced. (they replaced the HDD each time i sent it in, replaced the logic board the third time, replaced the lid/display housing twice, the LCD once, and the bottom housing twice.) he agreed, and escalated my call to a senior tech. great guy. he said that he's not even sure what they would fix this time since almost all the parts are new.

so i'm getting a NEW machine. lucky for me, they didn't have any old stock in that matched the specs - my original machine was BTO. i'm eager to see if it has Panther and iLife on it (i was two days away from getting the 19.95 upgrade last year - argh).

between the stories about heat death, rubber feet falling off, latches not catching, wobbling on perfectly flat tabletops, keys melting, etc... i should have been smarter than to think that i would somehow avoid all the problems and get a perfect computer. i thought i would be spared if i waited until the Rev B came out, but it seems like they solved some problems and created new ones.

if i had to do it over again, i would not get a PowerBook of any size. i would also not recommend a PowerBook to anyone i know. i 'sold' two 17" iMacs before i got my PowerBook, and if my friends and family had bought something with as many problems as my PowerBook has had, i would be getting a lot of flack about my ill-fated recommendations. fortunately, both iMacs are totally flawless and the owners like them a lot. i'm actually considering selling the new PowerBook and buying a flat-panel iMac of my own. i'd love to trade up to a G5 but there seem to be all sorts of issues with G5s as well... whether those problems represent a minority of all G5s out there or not, i'm not going to convince myself (again) that i won't be the person who gets a lemon instead of an Apple.

people generally don't like to hear these horror stories. a lot of people out there can either accept that their machines are flawed and move on, or wil comment to say that i'm in the minority... i disagree. some machines might be better than others, but the whole Powerbook line seems fraught with problems. and don't even get me started on OS X's UI... i'll let Jef Raskin take care of that: http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~frank/BerkeleyGroks_Raskin.htm
 

Mac User

macrumors newbie
Mar 10, 2004
2
0
The Good...

Given all the Bad and Ugly stories on this thread, esp. about PowerBooks, I wanted to let all of you know I purchased a 17" PowerBook for my office in January and overall I've had a wonderful experience. No problems--knock on wood--so far with the computer and it is a great experience to use. That said, it did not access our MS 2003 server shared files at all reliably (as the latest PR suggests it will), though my IT support thinks it was mainly the fault of the MS Server Mac services module (or whatever it's called). A nice, though expensive, little app. named DAVE fixed all that. Still trying to figure out how to make the VPN work, but I'm optimistic.
Have to also mention, though, that the G4 iMac I purchased for my retired mom back in October 03 died in early February--it was fixed in a couple of days at an authorized service provider at no charge and has been working fine since then. Apple does need to get better, but the March Consumer Reports--as unbiased a source as we're ever going to find--rated Apple as best in computer reliability as well as service. Guess that doesn't leave us any "greener pastures"...
 

Redline13

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 20, 2004
297
0
Thank for the replies everyone. I understand that every company has customers that have positive and negative experiences and I am a little sad that this ordeal has to be my first impresion of Apple. I think I will document this whole situation and try and report it to someone. maybe I will right a letter...

I will keep this thread updated with any changes in the situation. Thanks for the support.
 

sinisterdesign

macrumors 6502
Dec 10, 2003
422
3
atlanta
hang in there...

sorry to hear about the long journey to a new laptop. it's SUCH a pain in the arse, i know. i've owned many a Mac & the only one i've really had problems w/ was my TiBook. it was the first rev of the G4 laptops, so i chalked it up to that & swore that i would never buy the 1st rev of ANY machine anymore (waited until the iPod hit 20GB, waited on the PowerMac G4 to top 1Ghz, and now waiting on a new rev of the G5).

my view is that Apple really pushes the envelope w/ their hardware design & there are a lot of little issues that they just don't forsee until we beat the hell out them for a few months and then they get swamped w/ calls & forums like this. take the iPod, that little scrollwheel is AWESOME, but if they had thought about the ballbearings getting grimey after a while, i'm sure they would have gone solid state from the begining. my TiBook's optical drive has this flimsy little edge where the plastic meets the titanium casing. it ended up eating a couple of CDs before the drive itself was replaced. i noticed they threw the drive bay on the side of the new AlBooks, i'm sure in response to issues like mine.

so, sorry you've had some DOA issues. i ended up sending my PowerBook back about 3 times w/ half of the machine replaced: DVD drive, entire LCD clamshell, and finally the motherboard (that's what was making my LCD blink out, not the display itself. who knew?). it sucked. every time i thought it was fixed & i'd be all stoked to start installing software, something would freak out. all i can say is it's the (bad) luck of the draw. i've had plenty of friends that never had issue 1 w/ their PowerBooks.

good luck...
 

VicMacs

macrumors 6502
Sep 7, 2003
476
6
Dominican Republic
Die Hard

Apple machines are really die hard little puppies... but even the best of things dont come out as planned... and he/she who has to pay for this is just a random person... redline... just consider yourself very unlucky that THESE things happenned to you... that little apart.. i mean.. its weird.. but i dont blame you... ive had my share of problems too, from my first imac SE that just drove the dvd-rom insane, and i had to replace myself because i bought it in the us and live abroad.. to the power supply from hell on my "Windtunnel" which i didnt send back while i had the opportunity and later just went dead on me... and of course the faulty philips combo drive that made me get a 4x DVD+- Superdrive... All there was to it was patience and knowledge that I was fixing what to me was the best machine that MY money could get, and since I know what apple does for my life everyday, it was really a fun taskto fix these problems... of course that you havent had the apple experience, and it sucks to get "new" products that dont work... or dont perform normally.. give yourself a month, hang in there with the Alubook12 and in time you will forget the february/march from hell that just passed... and all your dreams will come true.. AppleStyle...
 

Redline13

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 20, 2004
297
0
The End?

I got a call from my local Apple Store last friday saying my powerbook was ready for pickup. After happy hour I made the trek over and picked it up. The screen was as good as new and things have been smooth since. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I won't be adding to this thread in another week or so.

I have decided to write up this whole ordeal and send a letter to Apple. Does anyone have an address for Apple's customer relations department?
 

flyfish29

macrumors 68020
Feb 4, 2003
2,175
4
New HAMpshire
Send the story to Steve Jobs himself. See my post above, but you really should go to the source and let him know what a cluster F*#@ this has been for you! I applaud your patience! Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
 
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