Longish superb customer support tale...

[G27]

Well, I have a rather longish Apple story I feel needs to be shared...

My 20" iMac (early 2006 model) fell out of AppleCare warranty on May 8th. On June 1st I awakened to notice it was turned off. Curious, I turned it back on, only to see the dreaded question mark-folder. I spent an hour or so trying to get the HDD to come alive, to no avail (no worries as I have Time Machine running on all my Macs). Unfortunately, as I tried using DiskWarrior, the system got progressively worse, until finally the screen wouldn't light up at all and there was no boot chime. Uh oh...

I took it to the Apple store, where it stayed for almost a month as they tried to find out what was wrong. Unbeknownst to me, eventually, they replaced almost everything in the iMac, never once asking for my approval to do the repairs. I received a call a week ago saying "it's ready, because it took so long, we're not charging you anything for the repair". I was thrilled! The bill turned out to be over $1k, and Apple did it for free. Cool, huh?

But it doesn't end there.

I brought the machine home, restored from my TM backup and realized the airport wasn't working, so I went through all the trouble-shooting to no avail - back to the Apple store. I wasn't pleased about it, but I was still glowing from their generosity so I didn't complain. Three days and a new (also free) airport card later and I was back home, ready to enjoy my Mac again.

Airport was still broken.

OK, now I'm upset. I spent the weekend calming down before doing an erase/install to insure something from my TM backup wasn't corrupting some network settings. Nope, still no airport. So I drive it all the way back down to the Apple store and wait for about an hour as the Geniuses look it over. Finally, Andy (I got to know several of them pretty well, in part due to my laid back approach to all this, which surprised even me) walked up to me and said "Mr Audio, I have good news!". Thinking they had it figured out, I was relieved.

Then he proceeded to tell me how Apple had decided to replace my iMac with a brand new replacement. Not a refurbished one, but a brand new one. And because my iMac wasn't an 'off the shelf' model, but had been custom ordered with more RAM from the factory, they would increase the RAM in the new machine by the same percentage.

Now keep in mind my Mac was not only out of warranty, but Apple had already dismissed close to $1400 in repairs on my old machine before deciding to just give me a new one!

I picked up the new iMac yesterday - they gave me the new one in the box - new keyboard, mouse, everything! Unreal.

No company is perfect, but this sort of action is how a company insures is has a customer for life. Kudos to Apple!

[Guest clownsdd]

You need to post this as a compliment on the My 3 cents consumer web site

My3cents.com - Let your voice be heard! Consumer Reviews, Complaints and more...

[G27]

Will do, thanks for the link!

[BrasilNuts]

Wow, I may be buying a Mac next time.

[Metalhead]

Wait, I thought macs never broke down?