Apple Customer Service?

A more thorough article on Apple's customer service and repair policies is forthcoming. For now, I'll share that I had a disappointingly unpleasant experience with the repair of my failed hard drive this week and seem to have uncovered a policy of Apple's that no Mac expert I've contacted so far was familiar with. The supervisor of the Michigan Avenue store has confirmed that therepair policy is standard, and calls to Apple's PR department are forthcoming.

In short, the genius (for you who are uninitiated into the Apple world, that is what the repair technicians are called--"geniuses" at the "Genius Bar"--you gotta love Apple for that!) who returned my iBook G4 to me, complete with a shiny new (albeit empty) hard drive let me know that they were not able to recover any data from my original hard drive.

No problem. I was expecting as much and had already made arrangements to send the old drive to a specialist for extreme data recovery. However, the genius insisted on taking an imprint of my credit card on a slip with the charge of $300 indicated in order to allow me to take my old drive with me, citing that the drive was "ours" (as in, belonging to Apple) now, and Apple would have to charge me $300 if I didn't return my old drive to them within 30 days.

Imagine my surprise in hearing that the old drive that I'd bought,  paid for and entrusted a repair to now belonged to Apple. And this after I'd bought and paid for a new, $300 replacement drive. It seems that now, somehow, the old drive belongs to Apple and not to me.

I can't imagine that it is standard practice to keep a drive that belongs to the customer, but a phone conversation with the supervisor of the store confirmed that yes, this is standard practice among all Apple stores throughout the country. That is, if my hard drive is damaged or lost in transit to data recovery, I will owe Apple $300 for my own hard drive that they have already charged me to replace and that they neglected to repair.

As I said, this doesn't sit right with me, and I'll follow up with answers from Apple's PR folks ASAP.

Comments

[Sallie Goetsch]

That's simply mind-boggling. Charging you $300 for the *new* drive I can just about see (though unless it's an unusually large drive, that's a pretty high price for an internal drive). Charging you for any attempt they made at data recovery, sure. But charging you $300 for a dead drive? There's something wrong with this picture.

[Lee Hopkins]

Sallie said it: there is something *seriously* wrong with this! Want me to raise it in my next FIR report?

[Heidi Miller]

Lee--

Absolutely! But to make sure Apple has a voice, I'd like to see what their PR department makes of this. I have emailed them questions about this policy for clarification.

[Jan Karlsbjerg]

Preposterous conditions for support. Only a monopoly could make up such a business rule.

Spreading the word about your experience through my own blog in this post: www.jankarlsbjerg.com/blog/archives/2006/02/22/only-a-monopoly-would-think-of-this/

[AndyG]

You don't say whether the part was "replaced" under warranty or not. I presume that it was. If you'd paid for a new drive to be fitted to the laptop you would be legally entitled to keep the old one.

If you want something exchanged under warranty, in this case a faulty HD for a working one you need to remember that exchange involves you giving something back......you are not entitled to to keep any parts faulty or otherwise under a warranty agreement in either the USA or EU, you're analogy with the brakes is completely bogus as when you have new brake pads fitted you are paying for "new" item not a replacement under warranty. All replaced items exchanged under warranty remain the propery of the company offering the exchange. Often a circuit board worth thousands of dollars can be repaired for the price of a few cents, although this would need to take place in a specialised workshop. The board would be exchanged to facilitate a quick repair without breaking any safety regulations, most people would be unwilling to wait with their equipment unusable while parts were sent to specialised repair facilities, likewise the companies offering warranty would have to increase their prices if all jobs had to be revisited to be replace a "loan" item with the repaired original. Faulty items are usually repaired where economically viable and recycled as replacement parts for repair jobs, reducing the cost of providing warranty and thereby the cost of the original item.

Whether or not an item contains any of your data is completely irrelevant, it's there in black and white in the terms of your warranty that you are responsible for it and the company has no obligation to even attempt to recover the data off a faulty item (although many will attempt to do so if it won't cost them anything to do so).

I've worked for companies providing warrany repairs all my life and I've never come across one who doesn't operate in exactly this way.......it's about as standard a practise as you can get.

If you know of any company that offers a replacement item and your original back even though it may only cost a couple of dollars to get it working again please let me know! Then again I could always abuse the system and put a deliberately render an item faulty, get a warranty replacement and the original back, fix the original and I've got a brand new part to sell!

I've worked in as a senior manager in electronic logistics now for almost 20 years, rendering faulty electronic items into servicable ones for less than the cost of new ones, what I find bemusing with your story is that Apple's PR department don't seem to be ready to give you a simple, straight answer even if it's one that you don't really want to hear!

[Heidi Miller]

AndyG--

Perhaps I wasn't clear. The item was NOT a warranty repair. You say, "If you'd paid for a new drive to be fitted to the laptop you would be legally entitled to keep the old one."

I did indeed pay about $400, full cost, for a new drive to be fitted into the laptop. But Apple is still claiming that I am not legally entitled to keep the old one.

Also, you say "Whether or not an item contains any of your data is completely irrelevant, it's there in black and white in the terms of your warranty that you are responsible for it and the company has no obligation to even attempt to recover the data off a faulty item."

Perhaps I didn't make it clear that I did pay the $99 ProCare cost specifically because the Genius said that the charge would cover their attempt at data recovery. So I did also pay for a data recovery attempt as well. My apologies if that wasn't clear.

[Trooper]

I can't give you any advice for this situation, but try to avid using data recovery services by making regular back-ups. You will see that you can save a fortune in that way.