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Costco - Best return policy on the planet. But anything confidently, return anything no questions asked. Solid support line too. Fry's - Knowledgeable servic

Costco - Best return policy on the planet. But anything confidently, return anything no questions asked. Solid support line too. Fry's - Knowledgeable service for consumer goods and online price matching. Apple Stores are full of pretty idiots who love to make you wait. Dell - Enterprise hardware, and support is great. Apple phone support is painful, if turning it on and off again doesn't help you are out of luck unless you have Apple Care and can wait a week for a replacement. EDIT: Buffalo - Great call line. People on the other end know their stuff.

dbg31415 10y ago
I really hate Apple Stores... wanted to go on a bit of a longer rant here... I hate the physical stores, I hate the App Store. 1) Lost my power cord while traveling, so I thought I'd jump into the Apple Store and pick up a new one. Should be an in and out thing... took 1.5 hours of me just waiting around the store for them to sell me a power cord. This was in Sydney. Once I actually got to talk to someone, it still took 20 minutes. So painful. "Genius" is Apple for happy little idiot. 2) Tried to buy 8 laptops for a dev team. Bought them all online, went to pick them up... credit card cleared, no errors or messages on the website. Get to the store, "We're sorry, Sir. We can't give you more than 3 laptops per day." Uh? So you want me to come back once a day for 2 more days to pick up these laptops? "Yes Sir, that's our policy." It took a call to some regional corporate sales clown to get them to hand me 8 laptops the same day I paid for them. 3) Every try and roll out software to a team using the App Store as a source for any of that software? Is it the company Apple Account? Is it their Apple Account? Which account has the stupid software licenses bound to it, and how do I set it so I can use the company Apple Account to install the software, but not leave my master password for the company saved on their computer... I don't want to have to give them that password just so they can keep their system up-to-date... rather they just log in and expense software... nope, it's a cluster trying to keep it all updated once you have more than one account providing software. Apple does not care in the slightest about corporate users. I should have some sort of provisioning interface that lets me grant rights to use software licenses I own to their personal accounts... that's probably not pretty enough for Apple though.
- givinguflac 10y ago
  1.) Maybe that's a Sydney Store issue? Never experienced anything close to that myself. 2.) Yeah that's dumb. Maybe it's a stocking thing since it's Australia? Never heard of anything like that in the US. 3.) Almost everything on the mac store exists outside of it as well, but I agree it is somewhat designed more for consumers. You could use deployment tools if the source isn't App Store, or a 'family' account that shares purchases among users. Though I agree that's not ideal. Supposedly they're improving management with some new tools similar to how apps can be managed on iOS.
  - dbg31415 10y ago
    Was only in the Sydney store that one time, it took 1.5 hours to get a power cord. The line to get service was running out of the store. This was a few years ago, they had tremendous demand since -- if I recall -- they were the only Apple Store on the continent at the time. The max number of laptops was in Austin, the store in The Domain. Just looked into the Volume Purchase Program as suggested in another post... interesting but doesn't help me 3 years ago when I had the problem. Glad they've made moves to fix it.
    - jsjohnst 10y ago
      Apple VPP came out summer of 2011, so it existed 3 years ago.
      - dbg31415 10y ago
        Ok, well then I just didn't know about it then. And for that matter, Apple Support didn't tell me about it when I called them asking for solutions to the issue years ago. What I liked about HN was that it wasn't Reddit. You feel good because you can downvote me? Hooray, downvotes really add to the conversation. Not much point in talking with someone who thinks I'm lying. And I don't give a shit about internet points, so keep downvoting me.
        10y ago
late2part 10y ago
You have been to much different Fry's Electronics stores than I have (and I've been to at least 8). Fry's Electronics sales people rarely know the product, inventory, or compatibility, and quite often make things up. I love the store, the access, the inventory - but it's not a place I'd put on the list for knowledgeable service.
- dbg31415 10y ago
  I've only been to the Fry's in Austin. I've had nothing but great luck with those guys though. Sucks to hear it's not the same everywhere.
tunap 10y ago
Cannot recommend Costco enough for electronics. Back during the Nvidia solder fails they replaced a high-end, 2+yo HP laptop(Out of warranty) when even HP denied there was a problem. I was stunned, in a good way. And as stated below, Fry's is a good place for fictitious advice. According to them, XP was discontinued long before MS extended sales of XP for netbooks.
kabdib 10y ago
Frys, hoo boy. When I return things I can usually count on one of: - Bored, doesn't-give-a-damn drone takes the broken thing and tosses it in a cart. Done. - Mid-level manager gives me a hard time, and I wind up having an argument and threatening to reverse charges on my credit card. My favorite episode: I buy a computer, get it home, and it won't even POST. Try to return it. They say, "We can't take this back, it's broken and we can't put it back on the shelf." WTF? Yeah, you've been to a different Fry's . . .

dbg31415 10y ago

I really hate Apple Stores... wanted to go on a bit of a longer rant here... I hate the physical stores, I hate the App Store. 1) Lost my power cord while traveling, so I thought I'd jump into the Apple Store and pick up a new one. Should be an in and out thing... took 1.5 hours of me just waiting around the store for them to sell me a power cord. This was in Sydney. Once I actually got to talk to someone, it still took 20 minutes. So painful. "Genius" is Apple for happy little idiot. 2) Tried to buy 8 laptops for a dev team. Bought them all online, went to pick them up... credit card cleared, no errors or messages on the website. Get to the store, "We're sorry, Sir. We can't give you more than 3 laptops per day." Uh? So you want me to come back once a day for 2 more days to pick up these laptops? "Yes Sir, that's our policy." It took a call to some regional corporate sales clown to get them to hand me 8 laptops the same day I paid for them. 3) Every try and roll out software to a team using the App Store as a source for any of that software? Is it the company Apple Account? Is it their Apple Account? Which account has the stupid software licenses bound to it, and how do I set it so I can use the company Apple Account to install the software, but not leave my master password for the company saved on their computer... I don't want to have to give them that password just so they can keep their system up-to-date... rather they just log in and expense software... nope, it's a cluster trying to keep it all updated once you have more than one account providing software. Apple does not care in the slightest about corporate users. I should have some sort of provisioning interface that lets me grant rights to use software licenses I own to their personal accounts... that's probably not pretty enough for Apple though.

givinguflac 10y ago
1.) Maybe that's a Sydney Store issue? Never experienced anything close to that myself. 2.) Yeah that's dumb. Maybe it's a stocking thing since it's Australia? Never heard of anything like that in the US. 3.) Almost everything on the mac store exists outside of it as well, but I agree it is somewhat designed more for consumers. You could use deployment tools if the source isn't App Store, or a 'family' account that shares purchases among users. Though I agree that's not ideal. Supposedly they're improving management with some new tools similar to how apps can be managed on iOS.
- dbg31415 10y ago
  Was only in the Sydney store that one time, it took 1.5 hours to get a power cord. The line to get service was running out of the store. This was a few years ago, they had tremendous demand since -- if I recall -- they were the only Apple Store on the continent at the time. The max number of laptops was in Austin, the store in The Domain. Just looked into the Volume Purchase Program as suggested in another post... interesting but doesn't help me 3 years ago when I had the problem. Glad they've made moves to fix it.
  - jsjohnst 10y ago
    Apple VPP came out summer of 2011, so it existed 3 years ago.
    - dbg31415 10y ago
      Ok, well then I just didn't know about it then. And for that matter, Apple Support didn't tell me about it when I called them asking for solutions to the issue years ago. What I liked about HN was that it wasn't Reddit. You feel good because you can downvote me? Hooray, downvotes really add to the conversation. Not much point in talking with someone who thinks I'm lying. And I don't give a shit about internet points, so keep downvoting me.
      - 10y ago

late2part 10y ago

You have been to much different Fry's Electronics stores than I have (and I've been to at least 8). Fry's Electronics sales people rarely know the product, inventory, or compatibility, and quite often make things up. I love the store, the access, the inventory - but it's not a place I'd put on the list for knowledgeable service.

dbg31415 10y ago
I've only been to the Fry's in Austin. I've had nothing but great luck with those guys though. Sucks to hear it's not the same everywhere.

tunap 10y ago

Cannot recommend Costco enough for electronics. Back during the Nvidia solder fails they replaced a high-end, 2+yo HP laptop(Out of warranty) when even HP denied there was a problem. I was stunned, in a good way. And as stated below, Fry's is a good place for fictitious advice. According to them, XP was discontinued long before MS extended sales of XP for netbooks.

kabdib 10y ago

Frys, hoo boy. When I return things I can usually count on one of: - Bored, doesn't-give-a-damn drone takes the broken thing and tosses it in a cart. Done. - Mid-level manager gives me a hard time, and I wind up having an argument and threatening to reverse charges on my credit card. My favorite episode: I buy a computer, get it home, and it won't even POST. Try to return it. They say, "We can't take this back, it's broken and we can't put it back on the shelf." WTF? Yeah, you've been to a different Fry's . . .