What is Digg?156 Comments
- monergism, on 10/12/2007, -8/+87Sounds like you didn't update your firmware. Bad for you. Also, because it's RAID 5, you could have, in theory, remained running until you had an oppurtunity to schedule downtime.
I am glad you don't work for me. - alexvalentine, on 10/12/2007, -5/+44It amazes me that Apple doesn't get more criticism for its support process. I had a Powermac G5 1st gen a few years ago that had all types of problems. Apple wouldn't pick it up, I had to drive out to a remote service center 45 minutes away on my own dime. Apple will not send replacement parts for obviously broken and easy to replace components. They ended up sending me a replacement 2 months later, after the tech couldn't fix the problem. I sold the replacement immediately, and swore off Apple.
http://slashdot.org/~asv108/journal/87438
http://slashdot.org/~asv108/journal/61081
Now, I'm planning on picking up a MacBook PRO because I'm doing a lot more content creation, and Apple is by far the best system for photography.
http://alexvalentine.org/blog/?p=351
I love Linux to death, its my livelihood, but its not there for content creation yet. Previously, all support of Apple laptops was done through the mail, unless you wanted to do a local option. I find it really annoying that Apple would demand you go to one of their retail stores, which tend to be in insanely busy locations and swamped with people. - betterth, on 10/12/2007, -11/+38@bonesaw
You sound like one of the delusional linux fans.
Linux is still not user friendly. Not to the average person. Once you don't have to spend two hours searching for the right libs just to run a program, then maybe it'll be a little more user friendly. But let's face it, half of the decent linux programs out there come with guides on just how to install the damn program.
And as long as you have to use the command line to perform basic tasks, you can never call an OS userfriendly, because to the average user, the command line is the devil. - insomniac8400, on 10/12/2007, -14/+36Why were you suprised? Are you saying you used to feel that Apple's hardware was immune to failures? iKoolaide!
- renegadeafk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23When you call tech support and they can hardly speak ***** english
- WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25Personally, I have to agree that Apple's CIP (Customer-Installable Parts) policy is incredibly brain-dead. They think that customers are unable to change their own hard drives, optical drives, video cards, and other PCI cards (for pro desktop owners), even if you've done it before and assure them that you're well-capable. It's an incredible hassle to have to leave your computer at the Apple Store or send it in to them. For hard drives in particular, they really need to be more flexible with their CIP protocols for customers that are knowledgeable enough to handle it. You send them the old part back anyways, so it's not like they are unable to verify the claims afterwards. This is just poor customer service, even if Apple primarily caters to inexperienced users.
- JeffH, on 10/12/2007, -23/+44"Anyhow, glad you got your chance to rip on Apple."
Look, i'm not a fan of Apple either, but Digg is extremely bias so please don't feed the trolls. Apple fans are the only fanbase that can match the obnoxiousness of Nintendo fanboys.
As for the article, seems fair. Everyone has their different experiences with customer support, so this doesn't mean Company-X is better than Company-Y always, but it does highlight a few key things like how Apple Care and Apple Stores are not integrated with support related issues (which is completely ridiculous). - insomniac8400, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18They are not talking about returns. They are talking about how Dell will ship replacement parts quickly and Apple wants you to drive to a store to have a guy who know less about comptures than you do take a look at it.
- cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -5/+22If you depend SO MUCH on a RAID array you need two separate but mirrored RAID 5 arrays. Preferable in different locations.
What happens if the RAID array controller dies? SOL my friend. No vendor is going to ship you all new drives or go fishing for one with the old firmware. That would be up to the HDD manufacturer and you know THEY won't do that... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16In the summer the monitor on my Inspiron E1505 was failing. I went online to do the Dell chat support. After a bit of chatting back and forth the guy said that I'd have to ship my laptop in. I got the box to ship my laptop in the next day, the day after that I sent it out and I got my laptop back a week later fixed. And since it was under warranty, it was free! Dell has great customer service in my experience.
- sammyc53, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14"No vendor is going to ship you all new drives"
Wrong, Dell ships me new drives all the time. I say "Hey, these Maxtors suck, and they are know to fail, send me all new Seagate's". They are in my office 4 hours later. Not sure about Apple, I have not used their server support.
"Unfortunately the firmware on the new drive is newer than the firmware on the existing drives, so when I plug in the new drive from Dell and get the array rebuilt I get all sort of firmware mismatch errors."
I've never heard of such a thing. Dell raid controllers let you use different manufacters, and different disk sizes in the same array. Why would firmware matter? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17If the failure of the original drive dealt with the platters/write heads/mechanical failures etc, you can probably swap the control board off of that drive and put it on your new drive. Voila - tricky firmware downgrade.
- pathy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14I can't recall any places for statistics - but, from personal experience atleast, with hardware it's generally 'It'll break in the first few months or it'll go forever'.
I remember with my laptop, a few weeks after having it one of the optical drives went, got the replacement drive two days later, and it's been working fine since. - DDoSAttack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11This is what is known as a "team"...
Just because the "team" fails doesn't mean that individuals cannot stand out in a positive light. Think about going to eat at a restaurant. The host/hostess can have a piss-poor attitude, the food can suck, but your server is fantastic. In that scenario a fair report would be: The restaurant sucked as a whole but server X was great despite all the obstacles that they faced. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+18I sure hope you're being sarcastic.
- skribble, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13@insomnitr00LL
You act as if iLife is the only option, shows how much credibility you have. You really ought to get a life.
FWIW he may wish to use Aperture, or Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop whatever... Also the reason that most photographers use Apple is that it has superior end-to-end color matching (colorsync) which is something Windows has never mastered (there are 3rd party solutions, but over all they all fall short). (What this means is that what you put in, you see on screen as intended, and what you see on screen is what prints out.)
I mean seriously if you looked you could probably find valid grips about Apple, but trolling about one of Apple's greatest, overwhelming strengths is just plain ignorant. - Eldorian, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13Lucky with Dell on that one.
It took Dell a month to fix my laptop. 2 phone calls - 3 service visits from a tech and then me sending in the laptop and them fixing it and sending it back.
Told them from the beginning I thought the video card went out on it - they changed the motherboard, processor, ram, and practically everything else in the machine.
Finally when I sent it in they replaced the graphics card and that did the trick.
Also lucky from talking to someone from the US. Everytime I call Dell, I get sent to some place in Asia and am usually on hold for 45-60 minutes. - Pezza131214, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I was going to post a horrible story about Dell customer relations and myself, but I've decided not to. I'll cut it short by saying that I've had to deal with Dell Tech support and Apple tech support on multiple occasions. Sometimes I get good service from the two, and sometimes I get poor service from the two. Since each company has so many departments it's hard to make generalizations.
Sometimes they're prompt, and decisive, and sometimes they fail hard. I honestly think it's the luck of the draw, with both companies... - skoles, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12I'd be ticked too. My G5 is out of warranty now, but if I had a problem like that (outside of a Mobo replacement) and they told me to take it to the Genius Bar I'd tell them to eat a dick.
Me: "So you want me to drive 20mi to the mall. Lug my 75lb tower from the parking lot, through the mall and to the Apple store. And then hope they can replace it so I can then lug it back through the mall and drive another 20mi back home? ***** you, send me a box."
ACC: "Sir, that's our poli-"
Me: "Supervisor please." - skribble, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8ColorSync is why people use Macs for image processing. Windows has nothing like it, though some 3rd parties make some very expensive systems that does reasonable color matching for Windows.
- octopi, on 10/12/2007, -8/+16I was surprised to have my Macbook drive die within a few months too. However, I took mine to a Genius Bar (albeit, on a weekday in November) and the laptop was returned to me in "about 4 business days." They mean a week.
Nothing too sticky to deal with, though. - V1ncent, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Support from Dell is pretty good, especially with laptops. If you say you know what you're doing and can replace the screen/drive/keyboard they will go ahead and ship you the replacement part, everything you need to mail back the defective part and a *refurbished* screwdriver. I really never knew there was such a thing as a refurbished screwdriver but there is. THANKS DELL!
- kilofox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I agree with you monergism....I have an issue with posts like this too. Someone thinks they have been wronged, and in many cases such as this one in particular, by a company be it Apple, Dell, Verizon, Cingular, Honda, Ford, Comcast, Charter. They post their PERSONAL EXPERIENCE about it, and while I can in many cases sympathize with them, do they really expect me to believe that their experience is indicative of what a company's customer service is like?
Some people have had just the opposite experience with Apple... so where does that leave us? Who do we believe? In most cases people only mention things like this when they think they have been wronged... rarely when they have received excellent service.
Nothing against the original submitter.... but your story doesnt enlighten me in any way, nor should it. - acrowe, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12I can't tell you how many people say "I know what I'm doing" and don't have a clue about what a hard drive really is (they thing its the big box under their desk).
So on one hand I agree that it would be nice if they would loosen the restrictions, on the other hand I understand why they don't.
We found a local Apple Authorised Service Center that is great. They tend to have a day or 2 turn around on the things we need done.
The apple stores actually have to send it to a service center and do the work there before sending it back.
So I would say find a local service center that does the work in house (ie. they have apple certified technicians) - bias, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7"The Apple tech rep said the drive was probably dead but *would not* ship a drive to me. Instead, he insisted I go to the Genius Bar at a local Apple Store."
you mean this is the option? Go to the Apple Store or Have fun with your dead harddrive? - gaberowe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I had Dell over the phone tell me to take my laptop apart step by step. They actually had me check quite a few things (and they have that built in hardware checking utility). If you are a business customer for Dell it is frackin awesome. They come out the next day and will replace your motherboard for you while you wait--stuff like that. I had my motherboard die twice, and they replaced it the next day both times. Pretty amazing. Unfortunately I'm not a business customer anymore.
On my personal machine, I recently put in an upgraded processor in my Dell 600m--guess how many screws it took to get to the heat sink above the processor??? Two... that's it... the ones that held on the keyboard. Popped out a plastic piece, unscrewed the two screws and pulled back the keyboard and there was the heat sink. Undid the 4 screws holding on the heat sink and there was the CPU.. couldn't be easier. I have had really good luck with Dell, so I hate it when people say that Dell sucks, but I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why, I've just not had any problems. - GregR, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8A few years back my motherboard on my Mac died. It was two weeks out of warranty and they covered, so compared to my experience with the Dell's at work where it took three tech visits and a week of downtime to get a desktop fixed I'd say that it depends more on who you get on the tech call than the company itself.
- copper7op, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I have never called Apple, but i Do call Dell several times a week, and they're the easiest people to deal with, we have over 20 000 dell's in the company, and I'm the one that always calls dell, and I have no hassle
***** the apple experience. - monergism, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I can't stand "my experience is the norm".
Sorry, I've worked with many vendors. There is nothing common about any of my experiences. I can rate HP, Dell and Compaq in terms of support.
It also helps to learn how and what to ask for when getting hardware replaced. - highdef, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I would have to argue with that. I think it just depends on which Apple Store you go to. I had a logic board go bad on a Dual Mirror G4 at work. We were in the middle of a large project and the project file was on the hard-drive in the G4. So I asked for the hard drive so we could continue working on the project on a differnt computer. I was promptly given the hard drive in an anti-static bag. They tested the logic board install with an external Firewire drive and I installed the hard drive when I brought the computer back to the office. This was at the Michigan Avenue Store in Chicago.
- leanweb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5sorry you got bashed so badly, but you should know better. it is the responsibility of the admin to keep all firmwares up to date. and certainly check f/w compatibility before installing new drive. so, you fouled up. bite the bullet, learn from this event.
of course if you think its dell's fault, you can't learn from it and be doomed to repeat this mistake.
good luck! - hotdamn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5He is probably referring to Apperture, not iPhoto, which, contrary to Adobe's Lightroom, is a fully finishined product.
- fjc8, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5He has a Dell Latitude, a business notebook not sold by Dell Home, so he probably got Dell support in Texas.
- 37prime, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Glad to know that the author of the article is a hard drive killer!!!!!
Joking aside,
Replacing Hard Drive on PowerBook G4 and MacBook Pro not easy at all by comparisons.
The MacBokk is a lot easier.
Most PC notebooks have easily accessed Hard Drive. - Lamtd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Last month the HDD on my IBM laptop died; I called the tech support during the afternoon, less than 5 minutes of waiting time, then 5 more minutes spent on basic troubleshooting + call logging. The day after, a guy brought me a new HDD and took the old one back. I must say I was quite pleased with the customer service.
And I know that HP tech support just work the same. Shame on Apple. - noahhoward, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I don't think I could do it, not to Windows anyway, I'd have to use Linux or something. My windows PC just frustrates me ever since I started using other OS's.
Everyones experience is different though, it all depends on what you know and what you do. - ChillyWilly5280, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The HDD in my iBook was acting very wonky, and SMART said it was failing. I called AppleCare, and the next morning there was a shipping carton (the nicest, well designed shipping carton I've ever seen) on my doorstep. Shipped it that day, and two days later it was back in my hands in good working order.
Total down time: three days.
Now the fan in my PowerBook is going bad and AppleCare says I have to take it to an Apple store. I am waiting until after the holidays to avoid the madness at the store, using a cooling pad in the interim. Why the difference, I don't know. Go figure. - betterth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I've always had amazing support from Dell, personally. I use an Inspiron 6000 for school and some work stuff here and there. The battery issue that cropped up, they sent me the new battery in three days and took mine for free. Also replaced an optical drive with next day shipping on the part.
Heh, AppleCare though. Wow. My iPod wasn't feeling well about three weeks after I got it. I called AppleCare (and found out that in the 90 day warranty, you are allowed one phone call, beyond that you have to pay $30 a call). Fortunately, the tech walked me through a software fix. But a 90 day warranty standard is pretty ***** for a consumer electric device. Not to mention the single call policy. And not to mention the whole "planned obsolence" of the iPod, so that when the battery dies it's not economically feasible or really possible to fix it -- they want you to just buy a new iPod.
Those are just my experiences with those two companies, however. - cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6My Latitude died 4 months ago, say on a Monday. By Tuesday they had a shipping box back to me, I shipped it to them that day. They got it by Wednesday and fixed it, and shipped it. I had it back by Thursday. Otherwise Dell almost always has any parts to me next day when our road warriors' computers take a dive.
WTF does this mean? Dell does hardware fixes quite well, now for their India based support personnel. Meh, not so much... - madblunted, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I myself have had horrible support with Apple. I had my powerbook's keyboard fail, the 9,o,l,., and left and right arrow keys were failing erratically. I called them, they had me do the same thing, take it to my local Apple dealer (the CSR agreed that it was a hardware problem). They in turn wanted me to take my computer to them to diagnose and repair it. I took my computer to the Rapid City SD store Apple store http://www.compuvill.com/ (computer village). They took my powerbook, I created an administrative account for them and figured I was going to get a new keyboard. A week later, I get a call saying my computer was done, I picked up my computer, and was charged 135 dollars.. I was bummed, but happy to get my notebook, the technician said that they had to reinstall osx, okay I figured, if you say so, I took my computer home, and what do you know, it failed again. I called them back furious, because I live about 100 miles out of town, they told me to bring it back in.. did I? No, I hung up on them, called the Apple tech support back, after backing up my hard drive, and initializing and reinstalling osx. Still keys were still failing. I told the tech on the phone my fiasco, he then sent me a box and said to send the notebook back to Apple. I asked what about this friggen Apple dealer who in my opinion did nothing for me but set me back about 150 dollars including gas to get there and back.. The tech or CS rep said he will look into it and see if I can get my money back, nothing has happened yet... I also did get my powerbook back w/ a new keyboard and mousepad installed.
Works fine, but if you live in the Rapid City area, don't take your computer to Computer Village.... http://www.compuvill.com/
I would fight the Apple reps and make them send you a box to get your component replaced or whatever. I like Apple computers, I just think their tech support sucks.. The computer village in rapid city sucks in general, they have one of them old bearded techs who look burnt out, and probably is tired of doing that line of work... - PSUstoekl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I'm an apple fanboy, and I actually dugg it. Living in the middle of PA, the nearest apple store is probably 200 miles away. Probably for this reason, whenever we have one of their products go down (my 3g ipod, my brother's iMac G5), a quick call to tech support is placed and the NEXT DAY an empty package (complete with packing tape) arrives at our door, very impressive! I'm rather bothered by apple's reliance upon their tech support to insist upon people taking massive time out of their schedule to come into an environment where new products are obviously going to be thrown on them--- it seems very antithetical to the entire idea of "support". Nevertheless, I have been pleased with the entire mac experience over the years, and can't say enough about the great experiences I've had with my macbook.
- shteinb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I also am very pleased with the Dell experience. I've personally had a laptop keyboard replaced with a turn around time of 4 days out of Boston. Everything is shipped over night, and repairs take one day, I was very impressed. When I do repair work for others, Dell support is very gracious and agreeable. Having harddrives replaced is a snap, technicians very rarely argue with me.
- ohmar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I would like to give props to the Genius Bar guys (and gals). Honestly, they must put something in teh water. I was there, and some lady was bringing in her computer that needed to install print drivers for software in rosetta and a 4 year old printer. I couldnt beleive it, and the guy just kept pace with her and fielded teh complaints of people waiting left and right. My only complain with the genius bar is that the 'appointment time' is somewhat misleading, as it is really just a queue. For people dont realize this appointment -> place in queue, it can be very frustrating when you show up for your 2:30 appointment and dont get help until 4:00.
- cawpin, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6@betterth - You sound like one of those delusional linux haters. Linux is user friendly in many of the distros now. My mom could install and setup Ubuntu. Its package management is wonderful. If you don't know the name of a program you search Google or the Ubuntu forums and find it. Then you search for it in Synaptic and install. It can't get much more friendly than that.
- threemagic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Apple hardware? My Apple HD's say Western Digital... I'm not sure what that means though ;)
- kd1s, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Interesting service experience. Let me tell MY Dell story. A year ago I bought the SO an XPS M140 but instead of the Intel Pro Wireless card got the Dell 1370 card on it. My M140 has the Intel Pro Wireless adapter.
Anyhow two months later the machine would not connect to the wireless router. I could get the wired network to work just fine so my diagnosis was bad wireless NIC. Called Dell support and got someone in India. Went through the script protesting all the way that I'd already done this step or that when finally the rep told me to hose the machine and re-install Windows XP. So I warned him that if I did that, and the problem turned out to be what I said it was in the beginning, Dell would lose a lot of business from me. So I backup files, hose the machine and re-install windows and guess what, still can't connect to the wireless network.
So I called them back and enumerated exactly how displeased I was by telling them my next $20K in gear at the office would come from HP and not Dell.
Curiously when I call Dell now they're more than willing to play ball on both pricing and service. I wonder how that happened. - ihlemic10, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@Highdef
They most likely gave you the part becuase it was for a company owned device. They would not give Home users that part but since you were from a company who pays alot more than a Home user. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Sorry, but you deserve what you get for using a sloppy solution like Dell for a RAID server. You read that right. You want to play with the big boys and get 0% downtime? Get a real server like Network Appliance or EMC. If not, love your downtime, because its what you're going to keep getting.
Yes, they also have firmwares that need to be flashed onto drives. You know what they do? They flash each drive individually in the background. Then, you reboot at your leisure, at a time of your choosing, when you CAN afford the downtime. Same with OS upgrades. Think they're expensive? Yes, they are. Think about what your company lost each time you had to take the server down for 30 minutes. Stop playing around with stuff that is one step above homebrew. - JohnA, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This is exactly why many companies frown upon Apple hardware... they have no provisions for enterprise-level support.
For example, I dropped my Dell laptop down the stairs, shattering the LCD. We had purchased "CompleteCare", which is the same price as AppleCare. The difference is that CompleteCare covers everything, whereas AppleCare really doesn't cover accidental damage.
Called on Tuesday, on Wednesday, a technician shows up at our office (we're in the sticks, so it was about an hour drive for him), replaces the part, and we're on our merry way.
When I had to send in my MacBook because of a faulty ethernet port, it was gone for 10 business days. Since I am a programmer, this was completely unacceptable. I had "handed down" my Dell to another employee when I got the MacBook, so I ended up buying a Gateway laptop from a big box store just so I had something to work on while the MacBook was in for service.
As for the MacBook? It's sitting on my shelf... the hard drive is going bad on it, so it needs to be sent in for the 3rd time. Just too busy to get around to it. Sigh. - blakholephysics, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Funny, I bought my 80gb iPod the day it came out and had already replace the new earbuds because the rubber rim had started to peel around the edges. That whole process was very easy. They sent me a pair of new earbuds and had me use the same package to send my old pair back. The whole transaction took 3 days and I didn't even have to give up a pair of earbuds without a replacement the whole time.
Now I have run into another problem and my hard drive has died in the iPod, not really much of a problem data loss wise and Apple is promptly replacing my old iPod for free. I am pretty happy with the service that I get from them. Phone support is nice and everything replaced has a 90 day warranty. I am surprised that my new iPod's hdd only lasted 96 days though. -
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