Apple Store Debacle

It’s been a while since I did an entry. Almost a week in fact. What happened? Well, my laptop stopped booting. On the morning of the 26th of August, I tried to wake my laptop from sleep, only to find that the machine would not start. I did a hard power reset to the machine, and tried to do a reboot. To my horror, the machine would not boot. Something was seriously wrong.

Anyway, I took it to the Apple Store, I’ll leave the exact location out for reasons that you’ll learn shortly. While my machine was being fixed, I spent the week using computers at College to try and keep up to date on everything.

Anyway, I never got a call from the Apple store about my laptop. By Labor Day I was really starting to get anxious, because I really needed a laptop to do all my school work.

So I called the Apple Care support line, punched in my case number ID and was relieved to see that it was ready for pickup from the store. Just to be sure, I called the Apple Store and asked the manager (who happened to pick up the phone) to confirm that the laptop was indeed ready to go. After a quick hold, he came back on and stated that the machine was indeed ready for pick up. Keep this in mind, as I continue. The manager of the store verbally confirmed that the laptop was fixed and ready for pick up.

Anyway, I drive an hour up to the store and go in at about 4PM. I show them my receipt and they get the machine from the back. That’s when the trouble begins. I tried to open the machine, by pushing the latch on the front. The latch didn’t work. I couldn’t actually open the lid to power on the machine.

I tell them to go back and fix that. It’s about quarter after four when this happened. They come back after about ten minutes, and one of the techs shows me that he’s able to open the lid by turning the machine on it’s side and jiggling it a bit. I really didn’t understand why he showed me this, let alone actually caring. The gist of what he said to me was that he was able to open the machine a bit, and that I could take the machine home now. I told him that is absolutely not going to happen, and tell him to go back there and fix it, again.

After this whole exchange, it has to be around 4:30pm. While they’re fixing the latch and lid assembly in the back I decided to go over my paperwork. One of the Apple Geniuses apologized to me about the problem with the lid, and said that when he had put it together it was working fine. I asked him when that was. He told me that the machine had been fixed for at least three days. I stated that this is an unexpected bit of news, because nobody had ever called me and the only reason I was there was because I had to call Apple Care and check myself.

Starting to get a little more irritated.

It’s about ten to five now, and we still haven’t wrapped this up. I wanted to just boot the machine in front of them to make sure that everything is okay, but almost an hour has passed and I can’t even get to the point where I can press the power button.

Anyway, they finally come back, around 5pm. The latch works great, smooth as butter. Apparently they had over-torqued the screws. Regardless, I was just ready to get the heck out of there, and go back to enjoying my Labor Day. I opened the lid, and pressed the power button.

Nothing.

Now I’m starting to get upset. I tell the Genius that the machine isn’t booting. He takes it, checks the power-source and confirms. I can’t believe this is happening! They’ve had this machine since the 26th of August, fixed it on the 31st (Night of the 31st, claimed the manager), never called me, and it sat for three days. Between that, nobody ever checked to make sure I could

A) Open the lid B) Turn the machine on

The manager is now over, and I tell him that this is absolutely unbelievable, the fact that the machine has obviously not been fixed. After I had talked to him on the phone and made sure it had been fixed, since I was never called by the store and had to get the news from the automated Apple Care line.

I realized that this wasn’t going to get anywhere, so I put my foot down. I told them where I work, and who I work for. I told them that I was not leaving the store without a laptop, because I had work the next day as well as my classes.

So, I waited. They brought out a new machine and I had them image the old hard drive because I didn’t trust them to do anything more than that.

The whole process lasted until 7PM. I spent my entire late-afternoon / early-evening in the absolute last place i’d want to be. In an Apple Store. Not with my family. Not on the beach. Nope. Apple Store.

I just can’t believe that nobody ever took the time in the space of three days to double check the work that they did, let alone call the customer and notify them that the machine is ready for pickup.

So, I got home. Ate my dinner, and then started moving my data from the old system image to the new one. Just what I was dying to do.

Apple Care was very understanding of my situation, and was very helpful.