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Procare a waste of time at Regents St Store

Junk DNA

Junk DNA

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 30, 2008
104
0
London
Just want to vent about what a waste of money ProCare is.

My MBP, needed a new DVD drive and new fan (making a horrible clicking sound) and as I need my MBP for work I coughed up the cash so that I'd get the ProCare "Rapid Repairs"

So I drop off my MBP at 9 am Tuesday and am told that they have the parts in and should be able to get the repairs done quickly.

This morning (friday) I ring first thing and am told they are working on the machine and it should be ready either today or tomorrow. I call them again at 6pm today and am now told that they don't have the parts in and it will be a couple of days before its ready.

What a pathetic service....

Does anyone have an email address for customer support at Procare so I can complain to them direct ????

ARGH!
 
Junk DNA said:
Just want to vent about what a waste of money ProCare is.

My MBP, needed a new DVD drive and new fan (making a horrible clicking sound) and as I need my MBP for work I coughed up the cash so that I'd get the ProCare "Rapid Repairs"

So I drop off my MBP at 9 am Tuesday and am told that they have the parts in and should be able to get the repairs done quickly.

This morning (friday) I ring first thing and am told they are working on the machine and it should be ready either today or tomorrow. I call them again at 6pm today and am now told that they don't have the parts in and it will be a couple of days before its ready.

What a pathetic service....

Does anyone have an email address for customer support at Procare so I can complain to them direct ????

ARGH!
Click to expand...

For the record - since I made this post I've had a couple of occasions to make use of Applecare, and have sought advice from the Regents Street Apple Store on several occasions - and both Applecare & the people at Regents Street store have been brilliant every time.

Think I just had bad luck back in November.
 
Procare or not, they can't make repairs unless they have the parts. In any case, it's good to have realistic expectations.

Glad to hear that your experiences improved though.
 
ProCare gets you in fast. It's a fine service. As for Regent Street's Genius Bar, the folks there are great.
 
netdog said:
ProCare gets you in fast. It's a fine service.
Click to expand...

But not much use if you have dozens of Macs. You have to buy it for each one which is a rip-off on top of AppleCare. I still think Apple need to get their act together and start offering support plans that scale better.
 
The Regent Street store is the busiest in the country so its hardly suprising they cant always offer excellent service 100% of the time, its almost always packed out.

Lying to you and saying they had the parts when they didnt however was unnaceptable. But hey, C'est la vie.
 
kastenbrust said:
The Regent Street store is the busiest in the country so its hardly suprising they cant always offer excellent service 100% of the time, its almost always packed out.

Lying to you and saying they had the parts when they didnt however was unnaceptable. But hey, C'est la vie.
Click to expand...

I think really there was probably just some breakdown in communication or mix up between the different people in their team.

But as I say, since then every time I've taken the MBP in or asked a question they have been brilliant. I can't actually think of another manufacturer/retailer that offers a service anywhere near as good.
 
Yes - there have been a number of times where parts have been unavailable. The problem is that it frequently takes an unreasonable amount of time for the parts to come in - as much as two weeks in some cases.

I think the service is great if all you've had is non-paid-for consumer support before. Only have a couple of complaints with the attitude of the Geniuses, but bearing in mind the number of times I've patronised various Apple Stores it's a miniscule percentage.

As a user of Dell and HP's actually 'pro' onsite services, Procare or not - Applecare at Regent St or elsewhere is a monumental waste of time, especially as I have to use it so often. It is also completely unacceptable that we have to frequently basically beg the business unit for levels of service that I believe we shouldn't have to ask for each time. Even the 'enterprise' site support is sometimes a jaw-dropper in terms of the levels of (non)support in practice.
 
Completely agree with Sesshi here. When you need support at enterprise level Apple are too often a sad joke. I don't care about happy clappy Apple Store staff, if I've got a hardware fault with clients breathing down my neck I want it fixed quick smart and no messing about.
 
My experience with Procare has me conclude and learn the following:
1) Rapid repairs doesn't mean they can fix your stuff by magically making parts in the store—it just means your repair is put in the front of the repair queue; if there are already Procare repairs on that queue, you are behind of those. It generally shortens the repairs from a week to just a few days if not less; there are no guarantees.
2) You can make appointment 2 weeks in advance, can make appointments in international stores in advance, and you are put in priority when in standby. Again it can't help you if there are no spots available.
3) Procare is only for the Genius bar; it does you no good when you call Apple; they can only help you on the phone if you have AppleCare.

AND

From my experiences, my local stores usually orders parts and gets them the next day; I do live in NYC, so maybe they treat different stores differently; Procare or not, they get the parts overnight and they usually do the repairs quite quickly—often within 24 hours. If they are backed up, like during the recent hurricane in Texas (where the Apple repair depot is), they had to return the computers to the store to fix, whether or not you had Procare, it would have taken a few weeks to fix your computer. Remember Procare can only help you during natural circumstances; if they don't have parts you can't expect them to fix it; if they tell you they don't have the parts, but you have to wait, you can ask for your computer back and bring the computer in when they do get the parts. BTW telling you they have parts at first and not having parts later doesn't always mean they lied to you; it could very well mean someone's repaired used the limited supply of parts; may their repair has an unexpected issue, so the technician fixed that too…

And I believe you can get refund on Procare if you are dissatisfied.
 
I simply let mine lapse - given the nature of my repairs and the fact that I usually buy spares there's no significant difference in the level of disruption caused over a Procare-less repair in comparison with proper support from other vendors. I keep One to One going but haven't used it in a while.

I've come to a comparison scale for nature/quality of Apple support/products relative to other vendors:

'Enterprise' = small business
'Pro' = consumer
standard = student
 
'Enterprise' = small business
'Pro' = consumer
'Standard' = tourist/student using the Apple Store as an internet cafe :mad:

;)
 
drlunanerd said:
Completely agree with Sesshi here. When you need support at enterprise level Apple are too often a sad joke. I don't care about happy clappy Apple Store staff, if I've got a hardware fault with clients breathing down my neck I want it fixed quick smart and no messing about.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, what company can be defined as giving 'enterprise level' support?
 
Junk DNA said:
For the record - since I made this post I've had a couple of occasions to make use of Applecare, and have sought advice from the Regents Street Apple Store on several occasions - and both Applecare & the people at Regents Street store have been brilliant every time.

Think I just had bad luck back in November.
Click to expand...

I'm not so sure about that if you had to use applecare multiple times...lol
 
Somebody at the regent street store tried to tell me that the flickering i was experiencing on an lcd test page was an amination(Bull *****). it is a nice store tho... the glass elevator is pimp
 
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