Apple.com service abysmal - help!

Refurbished machines are dependent on machines being repaired and refurbished. If the machine isn't ready, it can't be shipped.

I don't believe that anyone is trying to keep you from meeting deadlines, it's just that things can go wrong and apparently did.

Talk to them nicely and they should be helpful. If they're not helpful, talk to the supervisor. They have limits but obviously they can't do anything to help you with the 14th, in any case.

Good luck!

 

here's my experience:

I recieved my MBP after waiting 10 business days for it to ship. I finally recieved it 3 weeks from the day i ordered it, and sure enough, it's got a terribly yellow defective screen. So I call up support. I tell the agent my screen is yellow and she says "oh, sure we have been seeing that. I can get you a replacement if you want." ok, sounds alright. She transfers me over to Sales. The sales guy says "Ok, you are here for a replacement. What is your Case #?" What? A case number? The first agent didn't give me one! Ok, so she puts me on hold for about 10 minutes, and connects me back the the support dept. This agent started asking me all these questions about it and was really skeptical of the problem. She had me take out the battery and hold the power button, and do all sorts of weird crap. Then she says, "ok, I think I may be able to offer a replacement, but I have to talk to someone first." So I am on hold for 15 minutes, and she comes back and says I can get a replacement. She transfers me to Sales again, and the guy enters the replacement into the system. He says I will be getting an email or phonecall with 24 hours with shipping instructions. I wait a day, and get no response from them. I call back and this agent keeps asking me if I want to purchase apple care or not. How does that help me? Finally she says she has to ask somebody about it and puts me on hold. I wait, and I wait. 90 minutes on hold, and the terrible music is driving me nuts. I hang up, and call back. This time I was a little bit forcefull with the agent. She says she has to speak with someone. 10 minutes later this guy is on the line from sales saying he is so sorry, and now I should definitely be getting the email. He says he is going to give me a courtesy call tomorrow to make sure it worked. So the next day, I get the email and send off my MBP. The guy calls me and asks if everything was ok, and I ask him how long it will take to get a replacement. He says, "well, just go to the Apple Store site and configure a new MBP and see how long it says it will take to ship." What??? I said, "you mean, it will take another 3 weeks to get the replacement?" "Yeah, probably something like that" he says. Are you serious, I already had to wait 3 weeks for them to send me a defective one, now I have to wait again? So I hang up and call support again and ask them. This woman assures me that it will ship as soon as they recieve mine at their warehouse. I tell her what this other guy says and she said he was mistaken. So I call support AGAIN to get a 3rd opinion. This person agrees with the FIRST guy, it will take 3 weeks! WHAT IS GOING ON?? Basically, nobody over there seems to have a clue, and I continuously see (from posts on these forums, and from my experience) that the people at apple like to make false promises about things just to get you to go away. Also, responses very widely depending on the person you talk to. Do they not have training? It was a terrible experience for a first time mac buyer.

to sum it up, I feel for you man, I have no idea when my Mac is finally going to get here, and with my luck, it will probably also be defective.

 

Unfortunately, Apple outsources their phone support (as do most companies), and frequently there can be a serious disconnect between manufacturer and call center entities.

Having worked in the call center business for five years (see: Wikipedia.org: Sony CISC), I can tell you for a fact that internal policies are subject to change, and where and how far you get frequently depend on the rep you talk to and the policies of the team he/she is a part of, the procedures in use by them, etc.

What I would strongly encourage you to do is to go to a local Apple store, have a polite chat with their Store Manager (remember, he or she may be a representative of Apple, but they're not a part of your unfortunate situation) and see if they can put you in touch with someone who can actually fix the problem.

PLEASE NOTE: I am NOT saying that the store or Store Manager it/themself can help you, but to simply use them as a means of direct access to someone within the actual Apple corporate chain of command who has the authority, autonomy, and intelligence to act to resolve the problem, as clearly you've reasonably exhausted all other over-the-phone options.

 

When I ordered a PowerBook back in the day it arrived DOA (dead on arrival). I called support and was forced to try some silly things to get it to work and then they told me I could replace it. I was told point blank though that it would take another 3-5 weeks. That and a few other off hand comments by AppleCare reps got me worked up enough to cancel the order entirely (I was also getting this new product called an iPod which I wasn't sure would be any good at the time). This was my first Mac since having a IIe and after my last chat with the Apple Reps I figured my switch would be a miserable memory worth forgetting.

However, I spoke to friend (the one who got me excited about Mac's in the first place) and he convinced me to make one last call and ask for a manager. He said just be polite and ask for a manager, if they try to help you just say "I'm sorry but I'd really like to speak to a manager." I did that and here I am today with many Mac's under my belt and having convinced many folks to switch like me. It didn't take a month to get my PowerBook, though it did take two weeks or so and they gave me a free laptop case and some other goodies. But the important part was that they were nice to me. No one I talked to on the phones up until the manager was helpful or even apologetic— I didn't want a personal apology, but just a half-hearted "we here at Apple are sorry things turned out so badly" and I got exactly that.

So, what's the moral here? If you aren't being treated properly ask for a manager. You won't always need one —I haven't— but when you do they will make the crappiness disappear... as long as you are polite.

 

This kind of thing is probably appropriate for the e-mail Steve Jobs line of action... someone at Apple corporate will read it. It's good for them to know about stories like this because, even if it had not been possible for them to get you a computer any sooner, and even if everyone in the chain of people with whom you spoke acted in good faith (both of which I think are fairly likely), Apple almost certainly does not want to be in the business of soothing customers with misinformation. In other words, CSRs should not be telling you that you are being upgraded to overnight shipping when this isn't possible or true.

Overall, I guess I don't see the 13 days in itself as excessive, but they ought to have better fulfillment forecasting, and so they ought to have a better idea of what's in the pipeline. They don't even offer to sell refurbished units, as far as I know, unless those units are already in the pipeline (if that were not so, they'd offer them all the time and then ship as soon as they became available, instead of constantly updating their website with current offerings). Understanding that they may be selling the computer before it fully completed the refurb process in order to reduce inventory holding time, they still probably should be able to do better than what you saw. And more to the point, either give you useful information (i.e. true or likely to be true) or else tell you straightly that they are not able to provide information you want.