Update: 2014/07/08
Four words: Palo Alto Apple Store.
Seriously. After Apple Corporate said Katie would again have to have the Pleasanton store look at it, Katie did some Yelp!ing and Googling. She discovered a litany of positive reviews for their Palo Alto location. Apparently they’re under a little more pressure to do more than symptom fixes on the machines – being 14 miles from Apple Corporate and in the heart of Facebook country. I guess Pleasanton doesn’t feel the same pressure all the way over in #EastBay (all 41 miles away).
She set an appointment and tried the Palo Alto store
It took the Palo Alto rep about fourteen seconds to do something the Pleasanton reps didn’t do: look at Katie’s Apple history. They noticed the trends, the replacements while under Apple Care, noted the whole machine was still under Apple Care because of the last replacement parts and enough was going on to warrant sending it off to the specialists to have every part tested.
She’d have to wait another 3-5 business days, but the machine was getting a full diagnostic – and she wouldn’t have to buy a new hard drive to do it.
We went back to Palo Alto – and made a date of it
Which, if you ever get a chance to I highly recommend it. Especially when the kids are let out of school.
We got there and they brought out the machine along with the paperwork documenting the long list of repairs and replacements they performed on the machine. Then they walked her through them and had her run it through a test run. When she discovered her machine was still running slow, one of the techs started working with her on how to optimize her settings.
Icing on the cake
We forgot the tail to her power supply to test it out. What did they do? They just gave her another one free of charge.
We’re going back when I get back from Duneland. She’s going in to learn more about optimizing her user settings to get more efficiency out of her machine.
We’ll make another date of it along University Ave.
They wrapped all the trees along the street with white lights that help make the night sparkle when eating at one of their numerous sidewalk dining establishments.
Long to short: if you’re within a day’s drive or are going to be in the Bay Area any time soon, have your machine serviced at the Palo Alto Apple Store
Original post started here…
It seems like forever, as if it’s still 2013, but we’re finally putting a second coat of paint on Project 03. The front end of the project is getting a nice, HTML 5 / Responsive layout. The backend should have the color choices up before too long.
But, of course, we have to deal with a customer service glitch before we can go back to enjoying our California lives.
Katie is having chronic issues with her 2011 MacBook Pro
If Katie has to go through another round with the Genius bar in Stoneridge Mall, Pleasanton, CA, it’ll get ugly. She’s been having trouble with her MacBook Pro 2011 overheating since I’ve known her. The hard drive blew up last fall, and it’s not running again. The thing heats to over 170 degrees F. It burned her when she was at the CallidusCloud C3 conference in Vegas in May 2014. She’s documented all the issues, dings, pings, knocks, overheating and video glitching. She’s has witnesses from the conference.
Here’s one of the videos she took
The calls to the corporate office ended up taking valuable time away from the conference floor – it was her first conference with her employer. The lack-of-geniuses then tennis-volleyed her back and forth. One idiot in corporate promised her a new laptop, then recanted and apologized as he magically transferred the call.
They did replaced her fan and she re-installed the OS (The Microsoft Fix?) like they told her to
The issues continues. We keep taking it to the store. We wait 40 minutes for them to look at it for 3 minutes and say,
Well, it’s not overheating now.
I’d tell Katie that we should just go watch Netflix for an hour till it heats up and then let them hold it, but her appointments have been after work and by then, the assholes across the bar break her spirit.
Since she started complaining, her AppleCare expired so now the lack-of-geniuses at the store try to charge her for the work.
She’s been playing phone tag with another girl from the Apple Corporate offices. Meanwhile, the latest tech thinks it’s a hard drive issue since the damned thing won’t boot up without special equipment. The tech, who seems to dismiss her documentation as bitching and moaning, tries to insist that at first glance.
After we pointed out that temperatures of 170 degrees might also have a little impact on the hard drive, logic board, and additional wiring, he pointed out, “well, I haven’t finished. I just started.”
I about threw the phone. If we would have went along with his analysis, he would have stopped there and she’d have a 10 lbs. paperweight and an Adobe Creative Suite license she can’t transfer over.
“Pleading to lesser crimes” philosophy of Customer Service is for assholes
I have no time for it. I’m tired of seeing her cry because she just wants to design and code and study Google.
The issues with the Macbook Pro 2011 have been chronic
Check out the popular Mac sites that have professed this issue ad nauseam with little to no recognition from the corporate office.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.