First Poor Customer Service Experience with Apple

[MUBiomed]

I recently spent (i.e this evening) over 1.5 hrs on the phone with Apple technical support. I am not one to usually call support but here was the issue.

I was having trouble with my system around three days ago and decided to wipe the 2011 MBA after making a TM backup. After wiping the main partition I could not restore the OS via the Recovery HD option due to an error message. "What the heck I thought, why not use the newfangled internet recovery feature." I wiped everything and made one new partition on the MBA in the sig. It starts internet recovery, I connect to my WiFi and BOOM....nothing happens. Wait for it....nothing. Globe spins, network selection choice with full bars, then...nothing. After trying this forever and browsing the web for a solution I call Apple technical support to see if something needs changed with my router/network settings (firewall/ports/etc). They finally decide after 1.5 hours that I have three options.

1. Take it to an Apple Store for reinstall (nearest one is 2.5hr drive)
2. Send it in to them for reinstall (at least 1 week turn around without my main laptop)
3. Pay them for a full Lion reinstall disk and they would send it to me so I could do it myself.


I could not believe what I heard. I sat on the phone with you for that long and you offered me that? I clarified with the rep that since Apple chose not to include re-install media with the laptop and decided to implement a new "recovery feature" that was not working correctly I must now pay again for an OS on a system that I already bought an OS for?

She confirmed my statement.



Ultimately I decided to send it in (now I have to wait for a box). I have usually had excellent service from Apple but this really irritated me. Sorry for the long rant.

 

[ZipZap]

First thing to do when you get it back...make your own USB recovery drive.

 

[AAPLGeek]

I empathize with your situation.

Why Apple doesn't offer USB reinstall key with a $1000 notebook is beyond me.

 

[vitzr]

I empathize with your situation.

Why Apple doesn't offer USB reinstall key with a $1000 notebook is beyond me.

While I agree with you. The fact is, Apple is obsessed with squeezing out every last penny of profit. It's as though their survival depended on it. They certainly don't act like the incredibly successful company they are.

They would rather forsake a good image in the eyes of their customer, for the money, than to build goodwill by doing the right thing.

 

[Robyr]

First thing to do when you get it back...make your own USB recovery drive.

Its not even possible. The only way I know of to restore the new Airs is through the internet recovery, or with a retail cost. When you create a "USB recovery" disk, you are just making a bootable drive that has the same stupid internet recovery.

My problem with the internet recovery isn't functionality.... it works, but hot damn its slow as hell. It took me 5 hours to pull Lion on a 24Mb/s connection. That sucks.

 

[KPOM]

While I agree with you. The fact is, Apple is obsessed with squeezing out every last penny of profit. It's as though their survival depended on it. They certainly don't act like the incredibly successful company they are.

They would rather forsake a good image in the eyes of their customer, for the money, than to build goodwill by doing the right thing.

I generally disagree with this statement. They wouldn't have repaired my water damaged 2010 MacBook Air for free if they had no interest in building goodwill.

 

[Aboo]

I recently spent (i.e this evening) over 1.5 hrs on the phone with Apple technical support. I am not one to usually call support but here was the issue.

I was having trouble with my system around three days ago and decided to wipe the 2011 MBA after making a TM backup. After wiping the main partition I could not restore the OS via the Recovery HD option due to an error message. "What the heck I thought, why not use the newfangled internet recovery feature." I wiped everything and made one new partition on the MBA in the sig. It starts internet recovery, I connect to my WiFi and BOOM....nothing happens. Wait for it....nothing. Globe spins, network selection choice with full bars, then...nothing. After trying this forever and browsing the web for a solution I call Apple technical support to see if something needs changed with my router/network settings (firewall/ports/etc). They finally decide after 1.5 hours that I have three options.

1. Take it to an Apple Store for reinstall (nearest one is 2.5hr drive)
2. Send it in to them for reinstall (at least 1 week turn around without my main laptop)
3. Pay them for a full Lion reinstall disk and they would send it to me so I could do it myself.


I could not believe what I heard. I sat on the phone with you for that long and you offered me that? I clarified with the rep that since Apple chose not to include re-install media with the laptop and decided to implement a new "recovery feature" that was not working correctly I must now pay again for an OS on a system that I already bought an OS for?

She confirmed my statement.



Ultimately I decided to send it in (now I have to wait for a box). I have usually had excellent service from Apple but this really irritated me. Sorry for the long rant.

You should have escalated to the Tier 2. Generally, Tier 1 technical support doesn't have much power to do much outside of the standard guidelines. If you would like them to make an exception for you, generally ask to speak with Tier 2.

 

[vitzr]

I generally disagree with this statement. They wouldn't have repaired my water damaged 2010 MacBook Air for free if they had no interest in building goodwill.

Thanks for your post. It brings up a point I've been meaning to mention.

I agree that customer service as well as tech support & Apple Care do a fabulous job in taking care of the customer.

The problem is much of what they do is the result of the "front end" of the business failing to do their job properly. As a result it drives up the price of the products to us. Here's an ideal example.

In may of 2010 I ordered a fully optioned $3,200 15" CTO MBP. To make a _very_ long story short... It was delivered with eight huge scratches that were deep and over 40mm long on the lid and palm rest. It took three replacements and months before getting one that did not have those scratches.

Obviously a batch of them got scratched, but shipped anyway. Had I not been a very patient, loyal, understanding Apple enthusiast I would have given up after the second month. Each time was treated as a new purchase which meant they ran my card and I had to wait for a refund further delaying the process. Their complete lack of quality control in that situation was atrocious.

So my earlier statement was in reference to Apples decision to get cheap and not include media which would cost them very little.

 

[omegaphil6]

My 2010 Macbook Air came with a USB recovery flash drive.

 

[ejisfun]

My 2010 Macbook Air came with a USB recovery flash drive.

Yes, the 2010 ones do, but the 2011's don't because of Lion's new recovery partition.

 

[onthecouchagain]

I looked up how to make a Lion bootable USB drive. Is this the same as what's being talked about on this thread, regarding the "recovery bootable USB drive"?

If so, how do I make one if my Macbook Air 2011 already comes with Lion pre-installed? How do I get it from the App Store again? Is it a simple matter of redownloading it? I'm not at home to check, but I could have sworn when looking in the App Store, it said something like "installed" and I couldn't get the install icon again...

Given this thread, I want to make one now.

 

[calderone]

I looked up how to make a Lion bootable USB drive. Is this the same as what's being talked about on this thread, regarding the "recovery bootable USB drive"?

If so, how do I make one if my Macbook Air 2011 already comes with Lion pre-installed? How do I get it from the App Store again? Is it a simple matter of redownloading it? I'm not at home to check, but I could have sworn when looking in the App Store, it said something like "installed" and I couldn't get the install icon again...

Given this thread, I want to make one now.

http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1433

 

[onthecouchagain]

http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1433

Wow, that simple?

Why are websites telling me I need at least 4-8 GB USB drive, when the Apple site says I only need a 1GB drive?

For reference's sake, I'm looking at this site: http://www.macworld.com/article/161069/2011/07/make_a_bootable_lion_installer.html

EDIT: I just read this from my own link: "(Note that the resulting disc or drive will not boot a 2011 Mac mini or 2011 MacBook Air, which ship with a newer version of Lion preinstalled. To reinstall Lion on one of these models, you must use Lion Internet Recovery.)"

Then I guess this doesn't even apply to me. My Air is 2011. I see now that this is to install Lion on other computers.

So, let me try to clarify something: If I have a 2011 Air, and it already has Lion Recovery inside, then I don't really need the Lion Recovery Disk (USB) do I? It's basically a bootable USB that does the same thing as Lion Recovery already inside my Air. Am I getting this right?

 

[blevins321]

Its not even possible. The only way I know of to restore the new Airs is through the internet recovery, or with a retail cost. When you create a "USB recovery" disk, you are just making a bootable drive that has the same stupid internet recovery.

My problem with the internet recovery isn't functionality.... it works, but hot damn its slow as hell. It took me 5 hours to pull Lion on a 24Mb/s connection. That sucks.

You can do it (the non-Apple approved way) to get one that will be the actual Lion install and not just a bootable recovery partition. HERE is a popular guide on how to do it. (Post 12)

 

[Robyr]

That USB boot disc will not help anything, guys. It literally boots you in to the same recovery mode that is already on the machine which, you guessed it, forces you in to a 5+ hour download. THIS is why its such a crock of crap.

----------

You can do it (the non-Apple approved way) to get one that will be the actual Lion install and not just a bootable recovery partition. HERE is a popular guide on how to do it. (Post 12)

^^^ This guy has the right idea. Its atrocious that Apple wont give a non-hacked way of doing this for their users.

 

[onthecouchagain]

That USB boot disc will not help anything, guys. It literally boots you in to the same recovery mode that is already on the machine which, you guessed it, forces you in to a 5+ hour download. THIS is why its such a crock of crap.

----------



^^^ This guy has the right idea. Its atrocious that Apple wont give a non-hacked way of doing this for their users.

Thanks for clarifying. So, what is the point of the Lion Recovery Bootable USB then?

 

[Robyr]

Thanks for clarifying. So, what is the point of the Lion Recovery Bootable USB then?

Catastrophic failure/corruption of the stock partitions. Accidental deletion, new SSD, its a good utility, but Apple really could have gone a step further and let me have a usable install image...

 

[onthecouchagain]

I'm confused. Can someone tell me what the point of doing this is? http://www.macworld.com/article/161069/2011/07/make_a_bootable_lion_installer.html

if I create that, and my 2011 Macbook Air dies somehow, can i plug that baby in and reinstall Lion?

 

[blevins321]

Thanks for clarifying. So, what is the point of the Lion Recovery Bootable USB then?

Might be a good thing for something with slow internet to have. Although they'll still have to do a 4GB download of the actual OS. Or, it includes Disk Utility in case any repairs have to be made.

Also, older models of Macs don't support Internet Recovery but would benefit from booting to download Lion without having to have Snow Leopard installed first.

 

[KPOM]

On a side note, this is one reason why I like to keep a clone of my SSD on an external drive, even though I also have a Time Machine backup. At minimum, I could get back to a reasonably recent installation before restoring from Time Machine.

 

[klover]

Really? You are going to send it to Apple? What a waste of time.

You said it yourself, you shouldn't have to pay for something you already own. As such, there are plenty of Lion images (full install images like the app store download, not recovery versions) on the net that you can download and copy to a bootable USB drive. You've already paid for the code, go get it.

 

[theSeb]

This reminds us why full image backups via apps like CCC are so important.

 

[57004]

Try setting up your wifi with no password (temporarily, of course). I had the same problem with the MBA 2011 that I wanted to return (I wiped it a bit too thoroughly), spent 2 hours trying to get the internet recovery to start.

It didn't work with the USB Ethernet adapter and it didn't work with my router configured with a simple WPA password. With the USB adapter it would stick at "24:00" duration, with the WiFi the globe would keep spinning with no progress at all (like with yours).

But when I got another router I had lying around, set up no password at all, it loaded straight away. Maybe this will work for you too. Just don't forget to set up a password again when you're done

 

[MUBiomed]

You should have escalated to the Tier 2. Generally, Tier 1 technical support doesn't have much power to do much outside of the standard guidelines. If you would like them to make an exception for you, generally ask to speak with Tier 2.

That was the options given to me by Tier 2 Support. If I hadn't been on the phone for so long I might have really pushed it (especially since we have owned so many Apple systems over the years), but i gave up.

Really? You are going to send it to Apple? What a waste of time.

You said it yourself, you shouldn't have to pay for something you already own. As such, there are plenty of Lion images (full install images like the app store download, not recovery versions) on the net that you can download and copy to a bootable USB drive. You've already paid for the code, go get it.

The only computer I have access to right now is a Windows 7 system. Most torrents for Lion are .dmg and I havent found a great way to convert them to iso. I am downloading a program now that might work. I just wanted to get the box on its way.

Try setting up your wifi with no password (temporarily, of course). I had the same problem with the MBA 2011 that I wanted to return (I wiped it a bit too thoroughly), spent 2 hours trying to get the internet recovery to start.

It didn't work with the USB Ethernet adapter and it didn't work with my router configured with a simple WPA password. With the USB adapter it would stick at "24:00" duration, with the WiFi the globe would keep spinning with no progress at all (like with yours).

But when I got another router I had lying around, set up no password at all, it loaded straight away. Maybe this will work for you too. Just don't forget to set up a password again when you're done

I tried this as well but no luck. I was also hoping to use my thunderbolt display to get an ethernet connection for the internet restore but no luck there either.

 

[agentphish]

it sounds like you have a larger issue than just needing a software re-install. There could be an issue with your logic board, airport card or SSD.

Internet recovery is typically reliable in my experiences.

You could also ask tier 2 to transfer you to the next level, customer relations. They can do almost anything if you have a reasonable request.