Apple Standard and ProCare Packages

[aarond12]

Rocket Science

No offense to anyone who may be an apple "genius" but those guys are morons. They're almost as bad as the dell reps.

Heh, heh. Okay, so many of the Mac Geniuses aren't particularly sharp. They are retail employees and don't make a lot of money. For what they're paying the Mac Geniuses, the ones in the two Dallas stores are pretty good.

As far as Dell techs, I beg to differ. I have to call Dell about once a month for a broken PC at work. Their phone techs only follow the flowcharts provided to them. They are incapable of independent thought. I call them up, tell them what's wrong, tell them the troubleshootings steps that I've performed to prove what's wrong, and still we are on the phone an average of 80 minutes -- no exaggeration.

Real-life example: Network card not showing link lights; no network connectivity in BIOS/PXE boot, Windows, or Ghost. They had me troubleshoot Windows drivers for over 45 minutes before I escalated to a supervisor. I asked the supervisor why Windows drivers would affect the operation of a NIC in BIOS or DOS (Ghost). He had the gall to tell me, "I beg to differ. It does affect them." WTF?!?

We have an equal number of Macs where I work, and I've had to call in for service 3 times. Each call lasted about 5 minutes. Ahhhh. Nice.

 

[briankonar]

....cut the bad attitude, the guy simply made a mistake...it's not like he was out to get you......

but what you dont understand is he was out to get me...he had it all planned.

i think people should have to pay if it's an actual case of needing assistance (not just a question). these apple stores need to bring in more cash than just via computer sales...or they will turn into a HUGE money drain.

 

[gopher]

Let me tell you, if these rates are a single price for an entire incident no matter how long it takes to solve, then an independent consultant can't compete with them. Most independent consultants I know charge by the hour. When you are on the phone with AppleCare, it is $49 from the beginning of an incident to the solving of that incident, as long as you keep your case number. If you have many separate kinds of incidents, that's where purchasing AppleCare pays off.

 

[jsw]

Did anybody else read this and immediatly fall on the floor laughing? There is no corporation on the face of the earth that will send an individual another user replacable part because the user thinks it's broken. Hmm.. Hello? Apple? I just bought this new G5 and the SuperDrive is all broken, can you send me another one so I can sell it on eBay.

Hey, for what it's worth, I thought my power supply was bad. I was a bit peeved that I had to take it into have it looked at (yes, I understood why, but man these G5s are hefty beasts).

As it turns out, they swapped the whole G5. My G5 now has two months less usage than it would have had. And no problems since. So, I guess I'm pretty happy I had to bring mine in.

But...on the other hand, when my Nokia Communicator (which used to run $300 or so) got flaky, they did send me a new one and then had me send the old one back. Of course, they held an amount on my credit card until it came in, but, still, some places will send you a new part and let you return the bad one without it being seen by a tech. Actually, my parent's Dell had a bad DVD - Dell shipped them a new one with a bag for the old one to be shipped back in. Yeah, probably one of maybe ten good Dell customer support stories in existence, but it happens.

 

[Low]

Did anybody else read this and immediatly fall on the floor laughing? There is no corporation on the face of the earth that will send an individual another user replacable part because the user thinks it's broken. Hmm.. Hello? Apple? I just bought this new G5 and the SuperDrive is all broken, can you send me another one so I can sell it on eBay.

lol

 

[solvs]

Did anybody else read this and immediatly fall on the floor laughing? There is no corporation on the face of the earth that will send an individual another user replacable part because the user thinks it's broken. Hmm.. Hello? Apple? I just bought this new G5 and the SuperDrive is all broken, can you send me another one so I can sell it on eBay.

It's not just you. I had to re-read it a couple of times just to make sure I read it right the first time.

I actually am a tech, I'd still bring it in. It sucks that you'd have to bring in a heavy G5, but it's better than guessing.

 

[ZildjianKX]

If Apple needs more $$$, maybe they should increase the cost of their hardware, it's dirt cheap

 

[jsw]

If Apple needs more $$$, maybe they should increase the cost of their hardware, it's dirt cheap

Yeah, they really should start selling it for more than it's worth as scrap.

 

[zot72]

As far as Dell techs, I beg to differ. I have to call Dell about once a month for a broken PC at work. Their phone techs only follow the flowcharts provided to them. They are incapable of independent thought. I call them up, tell them what's wrong, tell them the troubleshootings steps that I've performed to prove what's wrong, and still we are on the phone an average of 80 minutes -- no exaggeration.

The last time I had to call Palm for technical support, I was shocked -- I told her the problem I was having, and the troubleshooting steps I had performed, and she replied that there was only one check left on her list, then she'd send a replacement.

Now, when I tried that with Logitech, that one didn't go as well...

 

[aarond12]

The last time I had to call Palm for technical support, I was shocked -- I told her the problem I was having, and the troubleshooting steps I had performed, and she replied that there was only one check left on her list, then she'd send a replacement.

Well, I'm impressed. At least there is another company out there, other than Apple, that actually trains their phone techs to use their brains, rather than a flowchart.

I've had excellent service with Apple. I think a lot of it has to do with the computers themselves. If something doesn't work, it's pretty clear what's broken. With PCs, there are BIOS settings, drivers, corrupt registry entries, IRQ and DMA conflicts, etc.

I had to replace a CD-RW drive in a Mac. It was not reading any CDs. Apple gave me one test -- boot with Option held down and a Mac OS X CD in the drive -- and when that failed, they sent out a new CD-RW drive.

I've had several CD-RW drives in the Dells fail. Every time I call up tech support, I have to reset the BIOS settings, uninstall and reinstall the Windows drivers, remove the drive and try it in another computer, try a different IDE cable, verify the jumpers are correct on the drive, etc., etc., etc., all for a drive that was previously working just fine. UGH!

It also doesn't help that Dell outsources some of their support to India. I can't understand their accent! Nothing against Indians. They probably have difficulty understanding this Texan too.