I took it into the Apple Store on Twenty-Ninth Street and was greeted by a guy dressed more for playing ultimate frisbee than for working pretty much any kind of retail. I told him about the problems I was having and he snorted -- this was a familiar problem, apparently.
He walks me up to a computer "to make an appointment." Apparently nowadays you cannot have a problem with your Mac unless you have an appointment. Those of us with unscheduled failures can just twist in the wind.
After having to type in my contact information, he navigates to a screen and says, "You can have an appointment tomorrow."
"I need an appointment to have a problem taken care of?" I asked.
"You have to wait just like everyone else you see here," he said with a sneer, waving his hand at some 10 or 15 people all having problems looked at by "geniuses."
"Why can't I just drop the thing off and the tech department can deal with it when they can?"
"You have to be here."
"Why?"
"So they can know what the problem is."
Whatever.
I have never had to have an appointment to drop something off to a repair shop. I may have had to wait to get it fixed, but I've never had anyone tell me, in effect, "Take your problem away from here! Begone!"
Some years ago, home insurance companies were found to be deliberately shuffling adjusters so that people making claims would have to see several adjusters -- starting over each time -- before even getting a settlement offer. Presumably this was done because the companies wanted to delay as long as possible having to pay out money they owed to their clients.
Is this Apple's approach? Spread out how many people can actually have computer problems addressed in a given day, so that they don't have to deal with the crappy hardware they're using in their devices?
We have three other MacBook Pros in the office, and two of them are experiencing the same gray screen of death and wi-fi connection problems. (The guy with the functional MacBook Pro had at his previous job another one with the same gray screen of death problem.) Obviously this is something of a pandemic that should require a recall, not sending people with problems out into the street with no acknowledgment of anything.
Do you need an appointment to buy a computer? Don't be silly!
Oh, and I was going to buy a screen while I was there. Funny how treating the customer with contempt has an effect on sales.
]]>I took it into the Apple Store on Twenty-Ninth Street and was greeted by a guy dressed more for playing ultimate frisbee than for working pretty much any kind of retail. I told him about the problems I was having and he snorted -- this was a familiar problem, apparently.
He walks me up to a computer "to make an appointment." Apparently nowadays you cannot have a problem with your Mac unless you have an appointment. Those of us with unscheduled failures can just twist in the wind.
After having to type in my contact information, he navigates to a screen and says, "You can have an appointment tomorrow."
"I need an appointment to have a problem taken care of?" I asked.
"You have to wait just like everyone else you see here," he said with a sneer, waving his hand at some 10 or 15 people all having problems looked at by "geniuses."
"Why can't I just drop the thing off and the tech department can deal with it when they can?"
"You have to be here."
"Why?"
"So they can know what the problem is."
Whatever.
I have never had to have an appointment to drop something off to a repair shop. I may have had to wait to get it fixed, but I've never had anyone tell me, in effect, "Take your problem away from here! Begone!"
Some years ago, home insurance companies were found to be deliberately shuffling adjusters so that people making claims would have to see several adjusters -- starting over each time -- before even getting a settlement offer. Presumably this was done because the companies wanted to delay as long as possible having to pay out money they owed to their clients.
Is this Apple's approach? Spread out how many people can actually have computer problems addressed in a given day, so that they don't have to deal with the crappy hardware they're using in their devices?
We have three other MacBook Pros in the office, and two of them are experiencing the same gray screen of death and wi-fi connection problems. (The guy with the functional MacBook Pro had at his previous job another one with the same gray screen of death problem.) Obviously this is something of a pandemic that should require a recall, not sending people with problems out into the street with no acknowledgment of anything.
Do you need an appointment to buy a computer? Don't be silly!
Oh, and I was going to buy a screen while I was there. Funny how treating the customer with contempt has an effect on sales.
]]>