How've your Apple quality/customer service experiences been? And related generalities...

In My Humble Opinion
21

Overall very good, when I needed it, which has only been four times.

When my PowerBook G3 would no longer charge from the plug, the Airborne Express dropped off a box, picked it up, and returned in in about 5 days.

When my PowerBook G4 (refurb) arrived DOA, the Apple Store at Sommerset (only one I had back then), I took it in without an appointment, and they had it back in about 4 days.

When my US-purchased iMac started suffering SMART errors while I was long-term in Canada, I was a little worried. They happily directed me to an authorized service center, and they replaced the hard drive then and there.

The last one is a little shaky, though. The service people were excellent, but the timing was horrible! My big iMac had a faulty video card. I took it to the Partridge Creek Apple Store (just up the road!), and for some reason it took a f’ing month for them to realize that they couldn’t fix it and get me a replacement machine (under Applecare, and the replacement machine was a significant upgrade!). It went like this: remove the video card, send it to Apple, wait for a new one to arrive, realize it wasn’t the only faulty thing, remove the motherboard, send it, wait for a replacement, call me to pick it up, thing is in worse shape, repeat the whole process, and then send in the bad Mac and wait for a new one. Yeah, it pissed me off having to be stuck with the 17" Mac the entire time.

I think I’ll never, ever go to the Apple Store again for a repair. The fact that they don’t keep parts in stock sucks bad enough; the fact that the depot has to wait for the “bad” part to arrive before sending a good part back to the store is simply insupportable. NEVER AGAIN.

22

My new Iphone developed a bad case of “can’t hear the towers” when my wife’s identical unit was working perfectly. AT&T made me an appointment at the Apple store, they took one look at it, and handed me a new Iphone.

Impressive.

23

Oh, so that’s why I couldn’t use the online appointment system. It was likely down for maintenance. Over the course of at least 30 calls where they referred me to the store, I would hope at least one agent would have warned me to keep trying to make the appointment online.

24

Didn’t mean to stop the thread dead or derail it, sorry.

Continue with the Experience Stories.

25

I don’t think you did, Chimera, and it’s helpful to be reminded that, as frustrated as a person may be, the poor schmuck behind the counter isn’t at fault.

That’s a lesson many people never learn.