DrunkenBlog

AppleCare and back again. And again. And again.

I originally started keeping notes about my last AppleCare experience in a log simply because whenever you have to deal with any form of bureaucracy, no matter how benign, there is one cardinal rule: document, document, document. Had a whole nice little flowchart.

But then it started getting somewhat comical, so I figured I'd write it out and kill a few birds with one stone again... And no, this isn't the larger Powerbook post I've been promising, things are severely backlogged around here at the moment with personal issues.

Who knows, someone might even be able to glean something from it, or at least find it amusing... I ended up logging a hair over 10 hours on the phone alone with Apple over this, and I know I've never, ever had an AppleCare experience like that before.

As I mentioned in a past post, my Powerbook had to go back to Apple, and I finally got it back in working order a short while ago. I gave myself a few weeks to make sure I was being fair, and not banging this out in the heat of the moment. You wouldn't have wanted to see the draft I had in my head, and if you were reading it from a school, there's no chance in hell any filter would have let you read it.

For a quick recap, these were the problems:

• Left hinge snapped while opening (pic to the right)
  
• Hard drive died while backing up
  
• Screen was dark-ish on the bottom left
  
• Fan stopped working
  
• One of the two small RAM clips holding in a RAM module arrived broken

Normally AppleCare is a pretty smooth deal... I'm fully aware this is probably some major aberration. If you're not a Mac user, AppleCare is basically the extended warranty service.

A normal Apple product has 90-day phone support and you're covered for one year on anything that might go bad. Within that year you can buy AppleCare, for an additional 2 years of protection. For portables you're looking at about $300. It's not the best coverage compared to the competition, but it's not the worst. And due to Apple's history with portables (not limited to them, but they're just as prone to problems), it's a must-buy.

Unfortunately my account with Apple has been... problematic... for about 10 months or so, when an iMac was purchased for someone going off to school. Basically it was errantly registered under my account, but really should have been under a new account for that person so I wouldn't have to be the one calling if there was a problem.

Not a big deal. Had the person who I wanted on record as actually owning the iMac make the call, and the changes were made... but since that time there's been majorly bad juju with my account.

I.E., every time they'd try to email me with a "fix" for my airport base station that hasn't worked since 10.3 I'd never hear a word until I called and they'd say their email kept getting bounced, and the number on the account was unreachable. As it turned out, they were using four year old info somehow. They did have the correct information, because they'd sent me documents to fax, or departments had called... but something, somewhere was unrolled.

I'm not exactly sure when or how, but even I called they'd say "Is this about this, this or this?" and the damn iMac would always be one of the things they'd mention. And they didn't show my Powerbook as having AppleCare registered, even though I know it was registered. There were other gaps that I know the tech said they entered as an issue... but it seemed all they had in the history was the Airport dealy.

Fair enough, first order of business is getting the AppleCare thing taken care of. First step, of course, was to call Apple.

This actually went reasonably well to start. It's pretty standard stuff calling Apple, I.E., phone system hell. Apple's, for the most part, is pretty smooth if you are a first time caller. Going beyond that can get difficult, especially if you're really, really having a problem, even though from every tech I've ever talked to they actually are in the states and not India (I got bored, and would ask where their call centre was, and if it was a place I'd been would chat them up about it). Part of their admired 27% margins go towards hipper hold music than you might be used to.

Like most larger companies, their tech support system is really more of a human firewall for the soft underbelly of the company. It really isn't meant to be understood by mere mortals, although given enough time, patience, and trial and error one can start to build a fuzzy picture.

My only real entry point for this was the standard help system, which after talking to a guy for 5 minutes, got me funneled to the AppleCare Agreement Administration guys. I was told that since there was a "discrepancy", I needed to basically prove that I'd bought my AppleCare for this particular machine within a year after I bought the Powerbook.

This is where things really started to break down.

This should have been relatively simple, I actually had it on a separate invoice, because while I ordered them on the same invoice at the time, the Powerbook became back-ordered for several weeks, so they went ahead and shipped a whole bunch of other stuff to me. Shouldn't have really mattered, as the dates and everything were on there.

So, I'd had a cover letter emailed to me from Apple. Printed it out, filled in the information, and after several days was able to get it faxed off. This was understandable, as I'm sure some people do try this sort of thing. I.E., they don't shell out the $300 for AppleCare, then 2 years in a hinge snaps and they realize they're facing a $600 repair charge, so they go out and buy AppleCare then... which is against the rules, ya gotta buy it within that 1st year.

Getting to an actual fax machine was... problematic at this point, as I had a ton of personal stuff going on. It took several days, but off it went, and the next Monday I heard back...

...and there were some problems. The guy was having problems reading the top of the invoice, and was really confused that it wasn't on the same invoice as the actual computer. This I guess was OK, as he'd called J&R and confirmed that yes, I had bought the Powerbook at such and such time, and yes, I had bought AppleCare with it, and no, they hadn't shipped at the same time. There were other small things like this that were resolved pretty quickly over the phone.

But the real problem was that my AppleCare number was "in use", as in, it had already been registered to someone else. This made sense to me, as, well, I'd already registered it when I got my computer. This became more problematic because no, they couldn't tell me who it was actually registered to, as the system didn't show that. Just showed that someone else was using it. He did say that sometimes there are duplicate AppleCare numbers, but the it just being a coincidence seem kinda low to me.

Either way, I was told I had to actually fax in the AppleCare card now, showing that it actually did have that number on it. I was getting pretty fucking frustrated at this point. All I wanted was my damn Powerbook fixed and was getting so very, very tired of the iBook I was having to put up with which, incidentally, has to go back in for service because of a logic board issue this week (again!).

Due to what was going on in my personal life at the time, getting to a damn fax machine was going to take days, if not a week, all so they could see the actual AppleCare card faxed in. I did however have a digital camera available to me, and asked if I could simply take a picture and send that off so they could see the actual card.

I was told no, it had to be a fax. While I realized this guy was just trying to "follow protocol"... the situation, which had started out as stupid but understandable, and had just crossed over into absurdity.

We're talking Falling Down territory here. I was really, really unamused.

I did my best not to take it out on this poor guy (well, two guys) but I'd pretty much had enough. I'm actually pretty reasonable, and while I may have used the words "that's not acceptable" a few times, I think if you actually talked to the techs (whose names I won't mention, although they're all in my notes file... besides, they'd only give me their 1st name and last initial) I'm generally a pretty cordial guy.

Especially when I'm bored as hell, having to explain the same story over and over to various techs every single damn time I call in order to get passed onto who I need to talk to. Hell, I wasted a good 5 minutes of Apple's 800# reminiscing with a tech about older models while they were waiting for someone to get back to them, and a really cool tech who passed on several jokes while we waited.

As I mentioned before, customer service at larger companies is now treated as more of a firewall for the real, live people at a company. But wait, you say, I had already talked to at least seven real, live people. Not really. While these people are able to walk and talk on their own once they've left the building, through no fault of their own they're essentially just walking talking scripts and protocols. They're bound by them. It doesn't really matter how absurd the situation is, or that it is falling outside of their protocol... It's not their fault, and it isn't something I hold against them.

But I'd really just had enough. I had way, way over $3k tied into just this one damn computer, and had paid for the damn insurance, and all the data points seemed to be there for a real, live person to take care of this in 5 damn minutes. Wasn't after special treatment whatsoever, with the exception that having to fax more stuff again just wasn't going to work for me at this point. Whatever was going on wasn't a problem on my end, it was a problem on their end, and as such it sure seemed as though I shouldn't be the only one spending hours and hours out of my day worrying about it.

All I needed was that one live person, but I'd already run my way up to the top of the AppleCare Agreement Administrative Centre. Their phone system didn't seem to have many other options, as everything, everything funneled back to the same damn places.

But, luckily enough, Apple has a nice buried page on their site which is about the only page on their site with numbers to actual, live people. At the bottom was a "Media Helpline" #, which yeah, meant some long distance, but hey. It was going to be a week until I could get to a fax machine, but I did have a phone and time, so what the hell.

I was able to get to an operator and get the # of Apple Legal, which got me funneled to the voice box of Jeanne Toulouse, who is apparently the senior director for Worldwide AppleCare. My situation had gotten a little too complex for a 15 second voice mail, so I just gave my name, contact information and case number, mentioned that I was having a horrific AppleCare experience and needed to know with whom I needed to talk to try to get this resolved, and if someone could please contact me that'd be great.

A day went by, and I didn't hear anything, so I went ahead and gave the page of press contacts another look and built up a little list of people with actual, real life numbers. I may have gone a little over the top on this one, but I tried to be reasonably selective about who I called in the first round. I.E., Christine Wilhelmys' office didn't get a call. But a lot of them did.

Now these again all just get funneled to voice boxes, these aren't live people actually answering their phones. And I didn't want to go dropping AppleCare ID's and such, so I just said "Hi, my name is xxx, and I'd like to know who I need to talk to about a customer who is having a horrific experience with AppleCare" along with my number and hoped it'd reach a live person somewhere.

The next day things started to actually shake loose. A really nice woman named Erica Marshall gave me a call, who was very helpful even though she wasn't really sure of what she could do outside of filing a complaint. When I mentioned I could take pictures of the AppleCare card, box, etc, she suggested I email them to her, and she'd get in contact with the AppleCare Admin guys and see if she could personally fax them, or email them, or something.

So I snapped the picture to the right and sent them on my way, which again got a little comical when I called and someone else (Felicia) wouldn't put me through to her, but did go and talk to her, and explained that she did receive them, but couldn't view the numbers as they were too small.

I mentioned that they were .PNG's, and quite large, and if she clicked the magnifying glass you should be able to blow them up as big and see everything... After being put on hold for awhile, the woman came back and yep, they got it to work and were able to view them and that Erica would see what she could do and would get back in touch with me. She's worth emailing some kudos to.

Prolly the most amusing call I got was Todd Wilder, who got my message passed to him from his boss, and who seemed to have been tasked with figuring out what the hell my call could possibly be about. The conversation went something like:

Todd: So... you're a journalist?
Drunk: Uh, well... I have a blog.
Todd: A blog?
Drunk: Yes, drunkenblog. drunkenbatman.com, drunkenblog.com...
Todd: Oh, I think I'm familiar with it... are you writing about this now?
Drunk: No, that's not really what this is about... I'm not looking for treatment or anything. I really just want to get this resolved, and am trying to find someone to help me do that. So I just started hitting up numbers on the PR page.

I'm 99% sure he was just being polite about the having heard of it thing, but it was amusing all the same, and he was a really cool guy and seemed genuinely surprised at the situation (actually, everyone at Apple did) and amused at the lengths I was going to. Heard me out, said he'd get in touch with someone he thought could help me and that was that. Plus, I actually had a number for him that he answered. This was a small yet major victory at the time.

I ended up getting a call from a Walt Thomas (916.399.7102, perhaps leave the guy some positive reinforcement, I already left him a message saying thanks) who seemed to agree that the situation had reached a ridiculous point and issued me a new AppleCare number on the spot bound to my account and setup a new case file or something, as the former was justifiably fubar. He didn't seem inclined to fill me in on exactly how he'd been made aware of my case, so I didn't press, although it might have been nice to know exactly what worked.

My day had just gotten much, much brighter and Walt had made my Christmas card list. Called up tech support again, they saw my new number properly bound to my account, went through what was wrong, and I got a box the next day to ship my computer off in. Even cooler, I was getting emails saying they'd received it, which meant they were using the correct email address. So my account seemed to be in good working order, and I was very pleased.

Several days later the Powerbook arrived in the mail, and I noticed that it popped open when I pulled it out of the box, but didn't really think too much of it. The screen was still a little darker in the bottom left, but everything else had been fixed. I dunno, Apple says it's within spec, so I guess it's supposed to be, although it wasn't when it was new... but the hard drive, hinge, ram clip, all were fixed. There was a crack near the fixed hinge that wasn't there, but I couldn't tell whether it was the paint or structural, and really was just glad to have the thing back... I was sick to death of the iBook.

Then I went to close it and realized that it didn't really want to latch. It would close, but not if you just closed it holding the corners. You had to pretty down right on top of the latch with way more force than should have been necessary to actually get the thing to latch. And then when you would pick it up, moving it vertical would cause it to unlatch. This basically meant the thing couldn't be be put to sleep and put in a bag, and while I really, really wasn't looking forward to sending it off having a portable computer that has to be shut down to be taken anywhere would be too big of a drag to get by on.

After looking closely, I could see there was actually a pretty big bow to the screen housing itself, which you can see in the picture to the right. Since the screen was so curved, the magnets in the latch were having problems making contact. Not a good thing, and it certainly wasn't like that when it went in.

So, called Apple again.

After talking to a tech for awhile (this took way longer than it should have, the tech was really confused by my account and all the different notes in it and needed to read through to see what was going on) I was passed onto a Powerbook specialist, a William H. I explained the situation, let him hear the clicking sounds of how it wouldn't latch, and then mentioned that I had taken some pictures of the Powerbook before it was sent off (really don't know what possessed me to do this, I was paranoid by then) which he asked that I email to him.

While waiting for these to export and send we got to chat about PowerMac 8500s' and how solid they were yet so horrible to service, the old 5xx series Powerbooks, etc. Really nice guy, and after seeing the before and after pictures, agreed that yes, this needed to be fixed. Was given a dispatch number and his email address, and was told if there were any future problems to hit (or even if it just went well) to hit him up.

Sure enough a box showed up off the Powerbook went again. Super-fast turnaround this time, as in the next night I got an email saying the repair had been completed and the Powerbook was on its way.

When I opened it I was very surprised to find a slip of paper saying:

Of the issue reported concerning your Apple product, one or more were found to be within Apple's specifications or acceptable performance, usability and/or functionality. As a result, repairs were not performed for those symptoms.

Yeah, so that was annoying and confusing and kind of put the super fast turnaround time into perspective. Since I was supposed to send William an email if things didn't go well, I did so, saying that the repairs weren't performed and hey, if he could give me a ring that'd be great. I didn't hear back, so late in the afternoon I gave his department a call (as I said, you can start to build a fuzzy picture of how they're tied together) but apparently there is some odd policy at Apple to where they aren't allowed to actually transfer you to the person you want to talk to.

Wouldn't do it, and the guy offered to see if he could help me out with the problem, so I laid into what was going on, and mentioned that William had the pictures... and the tech says that since it went through William, and he already has pictures, better to let him leave a message for William to give me a call back to take care of it and that William should be giving me a call that day or early morning tomorrow.

So I never hear from William again, that day or the next, via phone or via email. Really wasn't sure where to go from here... I try to call back to support, but that basically ends in nothing as yes, while I may think there was a problem, it had been evaluated as "being within spec" by an actual technician. Screw that.

Unfortunately for the cool-as-hell Walt Thomas, I had another ridiculous problem, I knew his number, and he'd helped me solve the first ridiculous problem even though I wasn't an executive, which, through conversation, seemed to be where his efforts are usually focused.

I'm sure the poor bastard thought I was trying to use him as my personal tech support line, but he was a good sport, even though he wanted to verify that you do have to put a few pounds of pressure on most Powerbooks to get them to close. I don't really blame him, but I was able to convince him enough that he didn't hang up on me.

Walt put me on hold for a few minutes to try to figure out what to do about this, then came back with a Powerbook specialist on the line, Shawn (another good guy). Walt explained that since there was a "discrepancy" between what I was saying and what their repair depot was saying, that the best solution would be to have a third party examine it... such as an Apple Store, or independent VAR that was accredited to work on Powerbooks.

The nearest Apple Store to where I was at the time was several hours away, but Shawn was going to look into it and would give me a call back. Shawn actually did give me a call back (On two separate occasions!), which, due to my recent history of not getting called back, made him tops in my book. Shawn had found one that was around 20 minutes away from where I was at the time, and already called them and explained the situation, and that once I took it in and it was examined the tech would call him and tell him the findings.

Score.

It was a bit before I could get it in, but after that it was short work. Tech at the reseller picked it up, turned it over and the latched popped open. Did it again and the same thing happened. Called someone else over, who also replicated it.

Things got a little interesting when he asked if this was a repair I paid for, or if Apple covered it, which confused me some... so I explained that Apple had covered it under warranty, which sparked a conversation that went something like this:

Tech: Well, Apple has not been covering all of these under warranty.
Drunk: Seriously? There was no stress put on this thing at all, look, it still has the little feet on the bottom and on the arm rest...
Tech: Oh, I know. We've seen it a lot, just lately Apple has been considering anything to do with the hinge a wear and tear or abuse issue...
Drunk: WTF? Man, well they didn't do that with me. I would have been pissed as hell if they'd tried that... the thing just snapped while opening the lid...
Tech: I know! That was why I asked if they covered yours. Imagine having to be the one to tell the customer that Apple won't cover it and it will cost $x...

I left them to do their thing, and got a call from Shawn who said the reseller had gotten ahold of him and informed him that yes, it wasn't working correctly, and that Shawn had gone ahead and given them the OK to fix it onsite. So that was validating.

This got a little more interesting when I heard back from the reseller as, well, they didn't want to fix it and wanted to let me know what was going on. Oh, they wanted to get it fixed, they just really didn't want to do it themselves. Shawn's opinion was that he'd prefer they do it, since Apple's repair depot had already botched it once, whereas the resellers figured since Apple were the ones who messed it up, they really didn't want to mess with it.

Their main problem seemed to be that servicing Powerbooks is turning into a really, really not so fun task, even for a tech, and when you are dealing with those displays things can get very hairy and complex and if something just happened to go wrong they'd have all kinds of problems getting Apple to pay for it, and even if they did it's very hard for them to get certain kinds of parts.

They ended up calling my man Shawn and letting him know that they were going to actually just expedite it back to Apple for repair since they already had it, and everything seemed good. In it went (on a friday again, all these things seemed to be happening near the weekend, which really kinda sucks) and I got it back the next wednesday, with what looked to be the screen housing replaced again.

So, that's my AppleCare story. The Powerbook is working fine now... with little bits of things that are a little odd, like the trackpad "clicking" slightly when I tap it, as though it is uneven, or that crack I mentioned, or the fact that the ethernet port doesn't seem to hold cables as securely as it once did (shifting positions can sometimes cause it to lose its connection).

Next up? This week I'm going to call and try to finally resolve the issue of my Snow Airport only working for wired connections (can't connect to it wirelessly) since the last firmware update about a year ago. Yeah, it hasn't worked right in a year, and no, I'm not alone in it.

Wish me luck, let's hope I don't have to call Walt.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    June 21, 2004, at 07:10 AM