Apple Care Efficiency When Macs Break? 232
cyber-dragon.net asks: "I have long been a staunch supporter of Apple and Macs, however my recent experience with trying to bring them into my department, at work, has been disappointing. We had a Mac Pro (the big quad processor monster) die after four days. Of course, this kind of stuff happens, and everything else has worked flawlessly. I even dealt with the inevitable teasing about the shiny new Mac being a lemon.
Almost four hours dealing with Apple Care, three hours dropping off and picking up my computer at different stores, as per their instructions, trying to get this done quickly — I am beginning to wonder if Apple really wants business customers to rely on these machines. Much as I may dislike Dell, when my Linux box died it was fixed in four hours, and I spent maybe 20 minutes of my time setting up the repair. I have spent seven hours of my time so far on this Mac, and it still will not power up. Is this just me or have other people lost critical business machines to the depths of Apple Care inefficiency and lack of business level support?"
when my dell died (Score:4, Insightful)
When my roommates apple laptop died, he took it to an apple store and they took care of it for him. I guess it really depends on the apple store, as I would think that like any other chain, YMMV.
Re:AppleCare is great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless the problem is so widespread that they don't want to acknowledge it even exists until a class action lawsuit is brought against them. I love Macs and have used them for a long time, but I'll think seriously about buying another one after the hell I went through with the last one...
Macs for business use are still silly (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, if you have some fancy design business, where deadlines are measured in weeks or months, as opposed to minutes as they are in retail, then sure, you can probably afford to ship off a box and wait for a few weeks until it gets fixed. Unfortunately, that's not a luxury that many smaller businesses can afford.
This is what true "lock-in" (hardware AND software) looks like in the IT industry, and it's not pretty.
Re:Macs for business use are still silly (Score:5, Insightful)
What is silly is trying to run a business that way. Every place I've ever worked (even on a shoestring budget start-up companies) has done the same thing while dealing with Dell and Apple and Lenovo and our other suppliers of workstations. You standardize on a few suppliers (where I work now we have Apple and Lenovo). You keep a couple of spare machines as backups for when one breaks and give it to the user so they have no down time and ship off the machine to be fixed. When it is fixed you test it then it becomes one of the spares. When we had consumer Dell machine we had to keep a significant number of spares (10-20%) because failures were so common. With both Lenovo and Apple we have more like 2% extra to serve as spares. Even a day of downtime for a professional is about the same as the cost of a laptop when you figure how many tasks suddenly were derailed and waiting for some IT guy to try to swap parts and get something working again is absurd compared to a ten minute restore from backup. The cost evaluation of doing business some other way seems really high compared to the cost of having a few spare machines on hand.
In real business it is common to standardize on a few suppliers so "lock in" the way you describe it is standard operating procedure and results in fewer problems for IT and better prices. Its also a lot easier to buy 50 extra power supplies for each manufacturer and leave them in all the conference rooms, rather than try to manage them from a dozen different vendors.
AppleCare Support is NOT for business (Score:5, Insightful)
I was previously the CTO of a small marketing agency in NYC. We were an all-Mac shop. When we had serious trouble, calling Apple was not helpful. We came to rely on local companies like TekServe [tekserve.com] for business-critical support (though it's not cheap). Consider this free advertising for them: they were great.
If you use Macs in business, I strongly advise you to find a local shop of Mac experts and rely on them.
Consumer support vs Business Support (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to play into the Mac baiting/idiolatry, but Apple does have some of the highest customer satisfaction numbers in the industry, year after year.
I'm sure there will be dozens of horror stories posted about here Macs & Apple, we can do the same for any brand. The truth is in numbers and again, Apple leads the industry in customer satisfaction and retention.
Your issue seems to be a mismatch between what you bought and the service you want.
You didn't buy a system with a business support contract. Apple does have those, but they're not in the Apple Stores. Instead like every other large vendor they have a division dedicated to business customers & their specific needs.
Instead you did the equivalent of going to BestBuy (albeit a much nicer looking one with staff far beyond any "Geek Squad" bufoonery) and are getting standard consumer service. Actually it's far better then you'd get from BestBuy et al, and if you sprang the extra $99 for AppleCare you'll get even better, but it's still walk-in service.
Your complaint really has nothing to do with Apple per se and instead with consumer customer service. Replace "Apple" with "HP" or "Gateway" and the store with "Best Buy", "CompUSA", "Microcenter", or whatever, and suddenly your complaint becomes much clearer
I'm sorry to hear you've had a bad experience with your Mac. I've friends who buy the kind of support you're looking for, where there is next-day service at their office for their Apple products. I've other friends who are certified in Mac repair, who give the kind of service you're looking for, show up, crack open your Mac, if they have the part handy replace it on the spot or if not retrieve it from a depot.
Instead you purchased we'll-look-at-it/fiddle-with-it/send-away-for-part s/send-the-machine-away-for-repair.
Re:Macs for business use are still silly (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about. HDD, RAM, Wifi, and optical drive hardware installation instructions were provided in the box, in a paper book, with every Mac I've bought in the last 5 years (where applicable), and you are welcome to do them yourself if you have the aptitude.
The Apple site will happily inform you [apple.com] on how to replace the RAM on your iMac. You can also find a complete summary of user-serviceable parts/options for a G5 here [apple.com].
Please post a link to this warranty you read.