Dear Mr. Jobs,I figure that was nice and fair. As it turns out, I got a call from Apple Customer Relations first thing this morning. In fact, I was woken to their call. Of course, since it was barely past 9am, I let the voice mail get it - I could barely think, let alone talk to anyone thanks to being up until 3am the night before.
Once again, I am writing you to express my frustration and dissatisfaction with the way I've been treated by your company and my experience with an iBook. I sent my last email to you on May 5 and while I appreciate the action taken, things have actually gotten worse. After having all of my trouble with one of your iBooks, I have run into more trouble with your customer relations department. What follows is a timeline of events. It's very long and for that I apologize. However, I would really appreciate it if you would read the whole thing, since it took me much, much longer to live through it.
1) September 26, 2003 - I buy a 900mhz, dual USB, 12 inch iBook.
2) December 24, 2003 (Christmas Eve) - the logic board fails. It takes 2 weeks for Apple to get my iBook back to me.
3) March 18, 2004 (less than three months later) - I drop my iBook off at my local Apple store because my repaired logic board has failed again. I asked for a replacement machine, which I was told could not happen. One Apple Care person told me that it would need to break three times before a replacement could be provided. It's a week before I get my iBook back.
4) April 27, 2004 - My iBook's hard drive refuses to let me write to it. I took it in, the Geniuses at the Apple store's Genius Bar can't work out what's wrong with it. I wipe the drive and install OS 10.3 fresh. Same problem. I take out the extra RAM I installed and get the same problem. I ask for a replacement, Apple Care still says no. At this point my iBook has been non-functional for a total of just under 4 weeks out of 7 months of ownership. I speak to everyone I can at Apple over the following days. Finally, someone mentions Apple Customer Relations. I got in touch with them and the woman insisted that my iBook be repaired again. She was actually quite pushy about it.
5) May 5,2004 - Fed up, I take a friend's advice and email you directly. The next day, I get a call from Robin Roberts at Apple Customer Relations in response to the email I sent. I call and leave a message, but it's the following Monday before I hear from her again.
6) May 10, 2004 - I finally get in touch with Robin. She's very nice but still insists that a replacement is out of the question. (Honestly, she's the nicest person I've spoken with on the phone from Apple. The other 8 or so people were not bastards, but they were a little on the rude side.) She promised me that if my iBook broke down a fourth time, she would make sure that it got replaced. I then told her that I had no time in my schedule to get it to my local Apple store and that if it wasn't replaced, it would just sit in a corner and collect dust. She then told me she'd same-day-ship an empty laptop shipping box to me the next day. The Airborne guy would wait there for me while I packed it up. Then, because it was just the hard drive that needed to be replaced, she said that they could have it fixed the same day and overnight-shipped to me for a Thursday (May 13) delivery. I told her if she could take care of all of that, I would do it. She assured me she would oversee everything.
7) May 11, 2004 - A guy from Airborne shows up, but he has no box for me, telling me I can just give him my laptop and that "it'll be fine." I told him there was no way I was going to give him my laptop without a box. He told me he'd be back with a box and 30 minutes later, he was. I packed it up, on the outside I wrote the tracking number I got from an Apple Care guy Robin put me in touch with. I handed the box to the Airborne guy.
8) May 12, 2004 - The *same* Airborne guy shows up again. This time with an empty laptop box. It's not the same one he gave me - it's a different color and the packing foam inside is different, plus, this box actually had my name and address on it. I take the box and sign for it. I call Robin and leave her a voice mail. She calls me back and is concerned. She hangs up with me to call Airborne. A couple hours later, she calls me back and says everything's okay that the tech guys have my laptop but that they won't be able to fix it until Thursday (May 13) and that it would be overnight-shipped back to me for a Friday delivery. She apologized for pushing it back a day. I said that it was okay.
9) May 13, 2004 - Robin calls me and tells me that when the tech guys opened up the laptop box, inside was a Dell laptop. She then explained that there was a Dell repair center up the road from the Apple repair center and that they'd track it down. She apologized, obviously embarrassed about being so sure everything would be fine. I told her, basically, that things go wrong and that's the way life is. I asked her to call me as soon as she knew anything. I don't hear from her for the rest of the day. I call her twice to find out if she's heard anything and leave voice mails both times. I tried calling Friday (the next day) to leave another message, but her voice mailbox was full. I call again on Monday and her outgoing voice mail message now says she won't be in her office until Tuesday (May 18).
10) May 18, 2004 - I get a call from a guy called Patrick (I couldn't make out his last name). He leaves a voice mail for me on my cell phone telling me that he's taking over my case because Robin has been unavoidably taken out of the office. I call him back less than 15 minutes later, and as always when calling Apple CR, I leave a message. I don't hear from him for 24 hours.
11) May 19, 2004 - I get a call from Patrick. The first thing he says is that he's trying to get a conference call together between the Apple shipping guys, Airborne and himself to work out where my iBook is. It's now been *a week* since my iBook disappeared and they still haven't found it. I explain that I don't really want to wait for Apple to repair my iBook. He then jumps the gun, assuming I want a replacement machine and says that while he thinks I have a good case for an exception to be made, he would need to "look into it" to know for sure. Then I tell him that I don't really feel like trusting another iBook. After all the trouble I've had, to me, it makes no sense to do so. I tell him I want a refund. He tells me that odds are, a refund will be out of the question "due to the age of the system." (I'm not sure the relevance of the age of the system since the system is nowhere to be found.)
It's been 24 hours and I've heard nothing from Patrick. How long does it take to find out if you can do a refund or not?
At this point, I feel like I have been incredibly patient. Even my friends who are intensely loyal to the Apple brand are telling me I should demand not a refund, but a PowerBook packed with extras. They insist that I should be compensated not just for the lost time with the iBook I paid $1400 for last fall, but for the amount of effort I've had to go through to get it repaired each time.
In a perfect world, I'd demand compensation above and beyond just having a laptop computer that works and expect to get it. But based on the way I've been treated by Apple so far, I don't expect much of anything. I'm beyond frustration and anger. If I could go back in time to September 25, 2003 and warn myself away from my iBook, I would. Which is a shame, since I really do prefer the Mac OS to Windows. But at this point, I've got such a bad taste in my mouth from my experiences with Apple, the company, I don't know what to do.
Honestly, if you were to offer me a PowerBook packed with extras, like my Mac-friends tell me I should demand, I don't think I'd turn it down, assuming it came with a full year's warranty. But, being just as honest, I just want all of this to go the hell away. In other words, a refund will do me just fine, thank you very much. So, if you want to make me happy, a new PowerBook would do it. If you want to just make me not utterly despise your company for the rest of my life a refund will do. But whatever happens, it's got to happen fast. I am very much fed up with waiting days for return phone calls from people in your Customer Relations department. It takes 5 seconds to tell me if my iBook has been found or not, or if a refund is possible, or whatever.
For various reasons, I have now been unable to use the iBook I bought last fall for over three weeks. That puts the total amount of downtime for this iBook in the 7 months and three weeks I've had it to 6 weeks.
I really wanted to have a positive experience with Apple.
Within 40 minutes (I had to shower just to wake up), I return the call I got from Jennifer at Apple CR and, once again got her voice mail. I left a message. It's approaching 2 hours later and no call back. I guess these people never learn. The voice mail Jennifer left me said that she wanted to me to return her call so everything could be resolved. She made it sound like it could all happen in one phone call. I hope it's that simple. I'm sure, eventually, I'll find out if it is... and so will you.
what is steves e-Mail address? Please
ReplyDeleteSincerely Duane