Hello,
On the morning of April 12, I was excited to see the launch date announced for OS X "Tiger." I scraped together enough money to pick up the Family Pack (there are quite a few Apple notebooks in the house) and placed my order late on April 17. I was excited to see a promise of arrival on April 29 of ordered prior to April 26.
On April 25, my order was still being processed. It was updated that afternoon to being prepared for shipment. Then inexplicably, it was dropped back to being processed on April 27. I was a bit surprised, but held good faith in your word that I would receive my package on time.
Then, this morning, I awoke to see my order *still* being processed. Around lunch, I received the email I'd been hoping to avoid all day: "Due to an unexpected delay, we are unable to ship the following item(s) by the date that you were originally quoted."
The only item in that order was my Tiger Family Pack.
At first I was angry, then disappointed, now I'm just frustrated. This happened with Panther, but it was an Up-to-Date shipment to compliment my new 12" Powerbook (my first Mac), so I was more than willing to forgive that. You were doing me a huge favor with the reduced price (even compared to my educational discount), so I really had no room to complain.
This time, however, I simply can not say, "Oh, well." There are reports of people who ordered their packages after mine and received them up to a full week before the release date. This was the proverbial "final straw," so here we are.
This morning, I considered canceling my order at Apple.com and buying it locally from Mac Resource (in Huntsville, AL) or CompUSA (also in Huntsville). I even drove to CompUSA with the intent of doing exactly that. I'd read all day, though, of people who received the same email and had no tracking number or Order Status update, but were receiving their packages.
"Maybe they'll come through," I thought, so I waited. And waited. And waited. I got a shipment notice, but the number was no good. It's still no good. FedEx drove by the house, but delivered nothing. UPS and DHL were right behind them. Needless to say, I was more than disappointed.
I even considered, for a moment, to buy a single-user license (with whatever rebates were available) and just use that on multiple machines. I even drove *back* to CompUSA to do just that. You, as a company, made it too easy for us to buy software and be legal about it. Five OS X licenses for the prices of a single Windows XP license? How can you resist that?
My experiences with Apple have been nothing but positive. My Powerbook has been an oasis in a desert of Windows PCs and was a traveling companion throughout Greece and Turkey last summer. I use iWork, iLife, and Final Cut Express for all of my personal creative efforts. I've been more than happy with my venture away from Windows, Intel, and AMD.
This, however, leaves a huge blemish on our relationship. I can only hope that you find some way to make this right. There were *dozens* of copies in stock both at Mac Resource and CompUSA -- why can't I get mine on time?
Here's to the future,
Chris Brightwell
Too bad their facility is over an hour away from here.
