AppleCare Canada is absolutely useless

[Cadium]

Just to give you guys an update, a rather surprising turn of events:

I e-mailed Steve Jobs the other night, calm and collected, and asked that this issue be resolved as soon as possible. I received a phone call from Apple Corporate Executive Customer Relations who wanted to follow up and investigate the issue in which I had e-mailed Steve about. I explained the situation to him and he proceeded to contact the AASP and inquired about the state of the MacBook Pro and to have the repair expedited, which was fine. Received a phone call on Thursday stating that the repair was complete and that I could go pick up the computer, which I did early Friday afternoon.

When I entered the AASP's building, I was confronted by the owner who also had someone else there to witness that the machine was in working condition and he claimed that I said there were "deep gouges" and key-marking all over the back of the display on the computer (which was not the case, rather I had said that the casing above the SuperDrive was *BENT* and that there were some scratches along the unit, as well as the keyboard/trackpad not being fully functional). I opened the computer and verified that the keyboard/trackpad were indeed working (typing into a window for example and moving the mouse around/double clicking on icons) and gave the computer a look over to make sure that the damage had been corrected with the casing, which it had been.

I'm sorry but last time I checked, if I swore at work, much less at a customer, I'd be fired on the spot, it's unacceptable and unprofessional. You can see where this is going.... the owner of the AASP then proceeded to tell me that "I had better get rid of the machine, because my [censored] name, e-mail address, and serial number have been forwarded within Apple and to all Apple Service Providers in the province and nobody would be willing to help with this machine." He also went beyond this and said, in these exact words, "I don't know what kind of [censored, starts with F ends in ***G if you really want to know] scam you are trying to pull, but you're on your own now." I have never in my entire life seen anyone operating a business speak to their customers in such a way, it really threw me back; he then handed me the machine and told me "to stop the bull**** with Apple" and "get out and never come back to this business again".

When I got home I started re-loading my settings on the machine, and when I went to adjust the volume I noticed that it instead tried to trigger Dashboard. When I looked closely enough, I realized that the mapping on this keyboard was different from the one that it had been shipped with; my MacBook Pro had the keyboard with the second Enter key next to the right Apple key and the volume keys were next to the display brightness keys. A little bit of Googling confirmed that thought, the keyboard that was installed had different hot keys at the top and a command key in place of the second Enter key. I also tried to turn on and adjust the keyboard backlighting but it will not work, I've even tried putting my hands over the ambient light sensors/speaker grilles and while the machine is set to fire the backlight, the display dims but the backlight does not come on, at all. To top it off, the fans still run as fast as they can possibly go.

Pretty unamused at this point, a total of 2 weeks without the machine and it's still not working properly. I contacted the person who called me from Apple Exec. Customer Relations, and informed them not only of the issues that were still unresolved with the machine, but also of what transpired when I picked the machine up from the service provider. They apologized for what happened at the service provider's place of business and looked into the matter further, and confirmed that the AASP installed the wrong part in the computer.

I received a call back later in the day from the gentleman at Apple stating that I will know at the beginning of this week as to what will happen with the machine; he said most likely it will either it will be mailed in to engineering to have it repaired properly, or it will be replaced with a new unit. Not sure which of the two is going to happen, and quite honestly I don't really care at this point, I just want my computer working properly again. I'm tired of having to argue in order to get this issue resolved, for something that should never have occured in the first place.

[aussiefloyd_fan]

tell them that you are walking on foot to the united states and will be posting live stats

and tell them that you could probaly walk to the us get an address there before they could fix it up there in caNADA

apple caNADA damn bit of help

[sn00pie]

Wow, I'm very disappointed to hear about your ****ty experience with the AASP. I'm glad that the email to Steve got you somewhere and it seems like your issue is close to being finally resolved. I guess its a definite pain in the ass if you don't have a Apple retail store near you.

By the way, what was the name of the AASP? Is it Mac Station? I live in Canada myself and would probably schedule a visit to a Apple store if I had any problems. I've contacted AppleCare phone support previously and had no problems, they didn't fix my software problem but the employees I spoke with were very informative and sounded like they knew what they were talking about.

Good luck :)

[Cadium]

Wow, I'm very disappointed to hear about your ****ty experience with the AASP. I'm glad that the email to Steve got you somewhere and it seems like your issue is close to being finally resolved. I guess its a definite pain in the ass if you don't have a Apple retail store near you.

By the way, what was the name of the AASP? Is it Mac Station? I live in Canada myself and would probably schedule a visit to a Apple store if I had any problems. I've contacted AppleCare phone support previously and had no problems, they didn't fix my software problem but the employees I spoke with were very informative and sounded like they knew what they were talking about.

Good luck :)

No, it's not Mac Station. I would prefer to keep the name of the AASP private at this time, at least until this issue gets resolved through Apple. However, once things are settled out I'll probably post it.. or, if it doesn't get resolved and I wind up contacting a lawyer (which I really dont look forward to doing).

[Tech Star]

Wow that really sucks. :( In the US Apple Support is excellent and you can't have it any better. It sounds like in Canada it just sucks (well the non Apple Store Authorized People). If I was in your place I would have told that ****er off in that store in front off EVERYONE and I rarely tell anyone off or get that angry.

When I read what he had said I got really annoyed and got mad. Give me a plane ticket and I will fix this crap for you. :p

I really hope that you get this fixed and for your selling question, it sounds as if the Dell is better. So sell the Macbook and keep the Dell.

I don't own a mac btw, with my suggestions that I am telling you.

[Cadium]

Wow that really sucks. :( In the US Apple Support is excellent and you can't have it any better. It sounds like in Canada it just sucks (well the non Apple Store Authorized People). If I was in your place I would have told that ****er off in that store in front off EVERYONE and I rarely tell anyone off or get that angry.

When I read what he had said I got really annoyed and got mad. Give me a plane ticket and I will fix this crap for you. :p

What annoys me the most is that this was supposed to be a simple repair, logic board replacement, have the machine back in my hands fully functioning... how hard is it to do a good job these days, honestly?

[Cadium]

Anyone know which way this could go, from past experiences with Apple? This was my first Mac so I'm not too keen as to how their customer service works, other than the fact it's supposed to be good. :p

[Cadium]

Well, tomorrow's the day... I'll keep you guys updated on what happens. Keeping my fingers crossed.

[Sophism]

To be fair your problem is not with apple. Most of your issues appear to be with this particular service center. Granted they are Apple authorized but thats not a difficult thing to get. I would keep plugging away with the exec team and see what happens. How old is the laptop? If it is new enough you might just try asking for your money back with the exec team and return it to em.

[Cadium]

To be fair your problem is not with apple. Most of your issues appear to be with this particular service center. Granted they are Apple authorized but thats not a difficult thing to get. I would keep plugging away with the exec team and see what happens. How old is the laptop? If it is new enough you might just try asking for your money back with the exec team and return it to em.

Yes, and I understand that, however there's not a whole lot that I can do considering there's only one service provider in this area. The laptop itself is about 9 1/2 months old, and this is really the first problem I've had with it since I purchased it.

[Cadium]

I'm glad to say that this issue has been resolved. :D

[Sophism]

Care to elaborate?

[Cadium]

Care to elaborate?

Apple are sending me a new computer and I am sending them my old one once everything has been transferred.

[sn00pie]

Congrats... I take it it won't be a brand new late 2008 MBP?

[RAID 0]

Man, you had to go through a lot to get a simple fix done. Let this be a lesson to all of you;

You can get farther with a kind word and a gun, than you can with just a kind word.- Al Capone

[Rudy]

glad to see you got it fixed :)

[Cadium]

Congrats... I take it it won't be a brand new late 2008 MBP?

Yes, it is, which surprised the hell out of me.

[Rudy]

after all the bs you went through I'd say you earned it

[Cadium]

after all the bs you went through I'd say you earned it

I've got to give a lot of credit to the gentleman at Apple Executive Customer Relations, he always followed up when promised and was very patient and thorough in getting this resolved. I believe the service provider is also under investigation.

[Denis W. Veteran]

Good to hear. :) That long post you made up there... wow. What douchebags.

Now that the issue's been resolved, mind sharing the name of this AASP?

Also for the record, about your XPS: the support's in North America. The repair centre Dell owns or contracts to is just north of Toronto. I got my fried GPU fixed within a grand total of two business days.

[sn00pie]

Are you selling it now?

[Rudy]

di you get the new macbook pro yet? how are you liking it compared to the old model?

[Rockett15]

Wow, that is one crap AASP. I'd definitely be interested in finding out which company it was (as an owner of multiple Macs in Atlantic Canada)

Luckily I've never had an issue with either machine that required support.

[LTD]

Apple are sending me a new computer and I am sending them my old one once everything has been transferred.

Good.

I've heard of other customers getting this after going through only about half of what happened with you.

I'm sorry you were treated so atrociously. Shocking that it was from an Apple-affiliated operation.

You'll get some bad apples in the bunch. Glad it worked out for you, though.

[Brian M. Veteran]

Good.

I've heard of other customers getting this after going through only about half of what happened with you.

I'm sorry you were treated so atrociously. Shocking that it was from an Apple-affiliated operation.

You'll get some bad apples in the bunch. Glad it worked out for you, though.

Unfortunately, this is an increasing trend, which is a shame, as Apple's support has always been top notch here in the UK.

I had trouble with my launch day Aluminium MacBook (was pretty much DOA), and I still haven't got the problem fully sorted (warranty etc, because they screwed up with the warranty, all they could do was make me purchase AppleCare at ?199 and then send me an iPod Nano and iPod Touch with it, that I could sell to recover the cost of the AppleCare (when I should have had a 3 year warranty as a student anyway)). To top that all off, they initially sold my replacement machine which was reserved for me, so I had to wait ages for them to replace it. They then said that they'd call me the minute they got stock, which they didn't (I called as a "new customer" and inquired about stock and caught them out).

The only reason I agreed because after 3 weeks of battling, I couldn't be bothered, and the next stage was to take them to court, which I really didn't want to have to do (hopefully I'll make the money back on the iPods to cover the AppleCare). While the person from Customer Relations who was dealing with it gave the impression that he was trying his hardest, it was still a constant bashing of not calling back, and getting ever harder to contact him).

Bearing in mind that I was dealing with Apple directly here, it shows the way in which their own support is heading. And apparently the ~?17,000 I've spent with them in the last year means absolutely nothing.