oreillynet.com — I had an interesting opportunity to compare Apple and Dell support handling recently. The results may surprise you . My Dell Lattitude D600 notebook had a sudden hard drive failure about 2 months ago. Last night, my 8 month old MacBook hard drive died just as suddenly. But, let’s see what happened after that.
Dec 29, 2006 View in Crawl 4
threemagicDec 30, 2006
Apple hardware? My Apple HD's say Western Digital... I'm not sure what that means though ;)
Closed AccountDec 30, 2006
Sorry, 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.
yabosDec 30, 2006
I'm sure it's cheaper for them to try and get you to go to the store. They already have lots of pickups from the store every day so yours can just go on the same truck. If they have to send a box to your house it costs them more. I think the guy should have just been extremely insistant that he has no time to go to the store. People have to work and taking time off work to get your HD replaced isn't a good thing. For the MBP I can see them wanting to send it in at least because it's really a lot of work to replace the MBP HD. The MB HD is easily replaced though so he should have talked to a level 2 or higher up person.
teacher40yrsDec 30, 2006
I have had nothing but good experiences with Apple care. Their service has been prompt, and I was always treated as a respected customer.One thing that needs to be mentioned is the fact that Apple sales have taken off so fast that it caught the company flatfooted and they have had to rush to train tech reps. (got this from a rep on the phone after talking with him for a while).Apple service has always been at the top of national surveys such as consumer reports and other PC magazines.
elv1s77Dec 30, 2006
Apple has notoriously bad hardware. A recording studio I worked at had 2 new G5's that didn't boot. And I have a coworker who has had problems on and off for the past 6mo w/ the powerbook dvi output. For what you pay they should send out a "Mac Genius" to personally fix your machine.
laserdiscDec 30, 2006
@ff7I think the numbers do matter considering the ratio here. How many Dell PCs are out there compared to all the Macs still in use today? Also unless you're an Apple store, people won't be necessarily bringing their Macs to you. Not to mention Apple doesn't sell low end computers, just computers with inadequate memory and CD burners otherwise they are a good machine. Cheaper Dells equals crappier Dells thus the failure rate is going to be higher. I'm not arguing with you that Apple Macs aren't better than Dell's PCs it's just that the average Dell isn't an XPS.
carpeaquaDec 30, 2006
Let me tell you what happens to a Mac user in Singapore.My 3 year old AluBook's HDD failed suddenly last month. I went to the biggesst Apple in Singapore right away and waited for 20 minutes only to meet a non-genious (there is no Genius Bar here) person who claimed he was a technician. I told him what happened, the report of AppleHardware Test, and a few other diagnostic results. He, then, turned on and forced off SEVERAL times! Then said, "yes, it had failed". Then he said I should buy 80G 5400RPMone to replace. Price? US 160! (outside Apple, 80 USD). And he said it would take 3days even there was a stock. So I asked what if I bought one outside and let them replace it? He said the service charge would be US 160! Was their HDD then free? So I gave up with them, bought a Seagate 120G 5400RPM at USD 100 and replaced it myself following iFixit site's instruction. Took 20 minutes to finish.This is what happens outside US. Well, Hong Kong and Japan were much better than here indeed. South Korea...not too bad.Oh, when I had a chance to report to Apple Singapore re this, they said, "so what? you were out of warranty and fixed it yourself. So? Why are you reporting this now?"This is a response from APPLE STORE at WHEELOCK, Singapore.
superkduperDec 31, 2006
Apple users LOVE to eat dick! Don't threaten them with that one.
skellenerMar 15, 2007
**UPDATE**My second 4th gen. 60GB iPod died last night. It's only 7 months old (since it was replaced by Apple). Again, I simply made an appointment at my local Apple Store. Arrived on time. Was helped immediately. The tech saw that it was dead. He replaced it on the spot. I was there for a total of 15 minutes. The iPod extended warranty was the best $59 I ever spent. So far they have replaced two dead iPods for me - instantly! Just wish these things would stop dying!