This morning, while eating a spot of breakfast, I noticed a crack in my Macbook. I was not completely surprised by this. I had noticed some weakness a few weeks ago during one of my laptop cleanings and I recall some mention of this issue on the Apple support forum shortly after the Macbook’s release.
(As an aside, I do not recommend you browse those forums for any reason. They are filled with 90% Whiners and haters. Nothing good will come of it. It’s like looking for political information on a conspiracy theory site, everyone is skewing something to further their motives.)
So, after finding the crack, I did what any Apple customer ought to do: I made an appointment with my local Apple store and let them take a look. The Apple Genius took a look at my Macbook and immediatly offered to replace the part. I take very good care of my laptop, which he noted, so it’s clear that this was not something I had done to my laptop. He stepped away for a moment to see if they had the part in stock and returned with good news. I signed a form he did the ‘We aren’t responsible for your data’ schpeel and told me they would call when it was ready. I got there just after they opened and he mentioned that the person who would do the actual work comes in at noon and to expect that my laptop would be ready shortly there after. At 12:30pm, only about 90 minutes later, I received a call telling me it was ready. I went back down to the store, about 10 minutes from my office, and picked it up.
Didn’t cost me a dime. They replaced the whole top which means I got a new keyboard and touchpad to boot! Excellent windfall for me!
What puts the smile on my face is that from the time I discovered the issue to the time I had it back, repaired, it was less then 4 hours later. Pretty amazing by anyones standard, even more so for someone living so far away from any major cities. The Apple store, buried in the bowels of our local mall, is the only one in the state and is always busy.
I don’t care if you like Apples or not, that kind of support is fantastic. I didn’t sit an a hold queue, I didn’t have to try and decipher a foreign dialect and I didn’t have to ship out my machine. I walked in, talked to a person, and had my issue resolved. I mean, buy a mac and install windows on in. You can sort the software out, thats not a problem but try replacing a hunk of hardware. From a guy who has fixed dozens of Dell machines… Apple’s support is a huge step above anything else. People still whine about Apple’s being more expensive then a ‘normal PC’, a statement I find false, but when you are in a pinch and you need your hardware today, how much is that worth to you? I have better things to do then twiddle my thumbs while my machine is shipped all over the country…
Topslakr