My home and office have become an inadvertent Apple shrine.
But I'm a little concerned that their level of success has made them a little less customer focused in the area of customer care.
Let me explain.
I have a 5 year old Macbook Pro which still works well.
The other day when using it I noticed it did not sit flat on the table anymore.
Upon closer inspection I saw the battery has 'puffed up' like a balloon.
With a fair bit of prizing I managed to remove the battery.
I popped into the Apple rent street store and I went to see an Apple representative.
I showed him the battery and he said 'its what they are designed to do if there is a fault'
I told him that I thought the battery was probably out of warranty and he said they would not replace it.
He was unmoved when I said I accepted the failure but not the distorted and cracked open casing.
Surely it should not do this?
'You can buy one if you like but I'm not replacing it' was his response.
Perfectly within Apple's rights but I have come to expect better than this.
In fact this HAS happened before and they were kind enough to give me a replacement.
I can't help but think that Apple has a new mentality which is most unfortunate, in my opinion.
But let's just think, if you buy a Macbook Pro, one of the new super slim Retina screen models,
what would happen to your beautiful new purchase if this happened? bearing in mind you cannot remove the battery?
I put this to the Apple rep in store and he said 'it would be OK'
Now I don't know much about the internal design of laptops but surely this level of expansion would have some kind of impact on such a wafer thin design.
The new Macbook Pro IS brilliant but bear in mind if this happened to you on a big shoot you would be able to do little about it.
9 comments:
Well, regardless of the behavior / viewpoint of Apple rep. I have to say you were lucky to have the battery live for 5 years! (Considering normal use of any Li-ion batteries live usually not longer than 3 years.)
Yes - the sleaker and thinner the design with less 'unused' space in it, the bigger the risk is to easily harm something.
There is a new wave of Rude in the service industries and it's not pretty. Sure you can accept component failure, but you don't need to accept a pissy attitude and bad manners.
my experience of apple is a little different, my computer crashed and all my downloaded files were lost. Apple looked at my purchase history and reloaded over 40gbs of lost data.
I would send a email to head office where ever that may be. Also the assistant should have warned you about health and safety with regards to the damaged battery. Also under the EEE regulations they as the supplier have to take the battery of you and dispose of it.
ohnostudios is right pissy attitude and bad manners are wrong. Just spent three months in the states working and the service industry is light years ahead of the UK.
Considering Apple's long history of abusing existing customers to force them into buying the newest shiny toy they are selling I'm not surprise.
What does surprise me is all the existing Apple customers who keep going back to the Apple altar.
try taking it to a different Apple representattive, or emailing, that one sounded like a dick.
Ive had nothing but great responses in the uk
I had exactly the same thing happen to me, on a 4 year old Macbook Pro. Before it happened, the battery was already at less than 30 mins fully loaded, so not very useful.
The Apple rep was very apologetic and polite about it but the battery was out of warranty. No damage was made on the case itself. To be honest, I have no problem with this policy form Apple, it's completely reasonable that I need to buy a new battery. But it is an interesting question what they would do if this happened to a recent, built-in battery.
There are many other reasons to complain about Apple, but not because they don't replace 5 year old batteries!
What's happened to Drew? Have Apple had him liquidated?
I have got a 13 year old powermac (titanium) and havent had to replace the battery once......It can still charge up to 3 hours
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