Andrea's Adventures in Binkyland

Apple Service Tale of Woe

On Friday Jan. 20, I took my iBook in for repair for a couple of pesky but non-critical problems. I timed my drop-off at the beginning of a week-long window in which I estimated I'd be OK without my laptop.

Late in the morning on Wednesday, I checked the repair status on my laptop and see if it were, perhaps, already on its way back to me. Much to my surprise, the Apple repair status said: "Shipment to repair center pending." I called Apple technical support and expressed my concern that the machine had, perhaps, been lost. The customer representative gave me a DHL tracking number, though she was surprised to see that it had no associated tracking information. She assured me that this probably meant that the package had been prepared but not yet picked up, and that it would certainly be picked up later in the day.

At 8:30 that evening, I checked DHL -- still no info. The Apple repair status had also not changed. Worried, I called the Roosevelt Field Apple store and asked to speak to the manager on duty. I explained that I was upset that my laptop had not yet shipped. He assured me that the machine HAD left the Apple store already -- and on Tuesday! When I pressed him and asked why the DHL tracking number and Apple repair status indicated otherwise, he insisted that the laptop had shipped on Tuesday, and that he could not explain to me any inconsistency with this statement that DHL might show. This is when my personal alarm bells started going off.

I spent the next morning checking both DHL and Apple for any update to my repair. Nothing, of course. At 3:30pm I finally called Apple technical support again and explained my situation. The customer representative checked into the matter and ultimately discovered that there were a number of laptops (including, apparently, mine) hanging around at the Roosevelt Field Apple store awaiting shipment, but that DHL had been unable to pick up because there were too many waiting to be shipped! Oh, yeah, and by the way, it was going to be an additional 7 to 10 days before I could expect to see my machine again.

So what happened here? Does the manager not have any clue what's going on in his own store, or did he intentionally lie to me? And if there's such a large volume of repairs waiting, how hard is it to call DHL for an extra pickup?!

Apple's tech support has informed me that there is nothing to be done to speed my repair and get my machine back sooner. Apple has also not offered any other action, large or small, to make up for my lost week. I don't know what can be done to make this right, but it sure would be nice to see them trying.

Posted by andrea at January 26, 2006 05:09 PM