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> Maybe it's because I live in Silicon Valley That may be the reason. I live in the Netherlands and I have had consistent terrible experience with Apple store

by LeonM 7y ago

> Maybe it's because I live in Silicon Valley That may be the reason. I live in the Netherlands and I have had consistent terrible experience with Apple store repair service. > It took three weeks, but in the end I basically had a new laptop, except the screen. For professional use, that is just unacceptable. If you rely on your computer for income, you can't wait that long. That is the reason why any Apple product will never be 'pro'. Regardless of how nice the hardware is, if it breaks I need a repair or replacement device immediately. IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices). Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If only Apple would offer that.

atomi 7y ago
The on-site same day repair I've gotten from Dell has been a godsend. I can't even imagine being out for 3 weeks.
n_u_l_l 7y ago
Which store? I had multiple bad experiences with the Apple Store in The Hague but the experience with the Apple Store in Amsterdam was great.
- LeonM 7y ago
  The Hague. Asked them to replace the battery on my MBP (out of warranty), got it back with non-functioning USB ports. Had to return it 3 times, every time I got it back I tested the USB ports inside the store only to demonstrate that the problem still wasn't fixed. Eventually they even tried to convince me that this was a software bug. After 6 weeks without working USB ports I got really angry and they finally agreed to replace the broken motherboard. When I got it back my laptop worked but it had a different keyboard installed (Dutch, instead of US intl). I complained about that and they told me that I was lying (even though a had the purchase receipt with the US keyboard option). After that I gave up and bought a Lenovo, haven't looked back since. The service in Amsterdam may be better, but traveling to the city center of Amsterdam twice just to get my laptop repaired is not acceptable.
RankingMember 7y ago
> imitatively Do you mean "immediately"? I'm having trouble understanding that word in this context.
- LeonM 7y ago
  Yes, that was a typo. It's fixed now, thanks.
zenexer 7y ago
> For professional use, that is just unacceptable. If you rely on your computer for income, you can't wait that long. This may be an unpopular opinion, and I don't mean to sound dismissive or suggest that waiting 3 weeks is normal, but I do think it is incredibly unprofessional to rely on a single device like that for work. If it's truly an indispensable part of your job, you should have a backup--that goes for anything, not just computers. It could be a 10-year-old hand-me-down or a cheapo Chromebook, but you should have a backup plan. > Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If only Apple would offer that. When I was first getting started as a programmer, I made most of my income by doing tech support, rather than actual programming. A large percentage of the cases were people hiring me to deal with the likes of HP, Dell, and Lenovo because their "on-site same day repair services" were absolute garbage about 50% of the time. You could get a laptop with a DoA hard drive, but they'd refuse to replace it unless it failed their specific check, which was always inadequate. It was normal to argue with them for 6+ hours about it. You could put a fresh drive in to demonstrate that the issue was gone, but they'd still refuse to do anything. It wouldn't matter if it BSODed consistently with a fresh installation on their drive but not on the drive I was using for testing, or if the SMART results were the worst I'd ever seen--no test fail, no replacement. > IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices). It varies widely depending on location. If you go to a large, busy Apple store, they tend to have a lot more parts on-hand; it doesn't need to be in Silicon Valley as long as it's big. If they need to order parts, they'll give you the option to hold onto your device until the parts arrive. I've gotten apologies when a repair took longer than 24 hours. I tend to prefer the Microsoft store method, though: when I've had issues with Surface-series devices, they've never attempted to repair it there; they just hand me a new one. It's hard to beat that. (I guess Apple's approach is better if you need to recover your data, but I never save anything valuable on a single device.)
- AlphaSite 7y ago
  That how apple handle sit for iPhones and iPads, macs are just different.
- 7y ago
ceejayoz 7y ago
> That is the reason why any Apple product will never be 'pro'. Regardless of how nice the hardware is, if it breaks I need a repair or replacement device immediately. IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices). They do offer this in the US. Not sure about globally. Can use it for one device, and they have loaners if a repair will take more than 24h. https://www.apple.com/retail/business/jointventure/terms.html https://www.apple.com/retail/business/jointventure/terms.htm...
want2know 7y ago
With Dell I got the same experience. My power supply stopped working. Next day they came to my office and replaced the power supply and main board as well, just to be in case.
- sailfast 7y ago
  What do you (or your company) pay for that level of support annually? How much per user? How many users?
  - chronogram 7y ago
    You can be a freelancer and get it too. Let’s check the website! New Dell 3541 is €1183, which includes 3 year next business day warranty. Upgrading to 4 years onsite is €77 extra.
    - mrguyorama 7y ago
      That's way cheaper than it used to be. I wonder if that means their computers are just less likely to fall apart. I have a 2012 Dell Inspiron sitting next to me as a server. It was a pretty good machine, though never my daily driver. Main complaint is that replacing anything (in my case the hard drive) requires removing everything out of the plastic shell, there is no drive bay door like on my similar vintage HP. Meanwhile the next year's group got about 10 Dell inspiron laptops of the new 2013ish redesign, and I've never seen a lower quality laptop. Each and every one needed to be completely replaced at least once. Screws were just falling out of the case because the build quality was so bad. For reference, the warranty on these laptops was so good (at about a 200-300 dollar price tag) that the Dell representatives told us the day before it expired we should throw our computers down a flight of stairs to get new ones
      - chronogram 7y ago
        I’m not familiar with Inspiron devices. I am however surprised that you could get such a level of warranty for those. I thought they were the cheaper ones. I haven’t had to use my Latitude’s warranty yet just like I never had to use my ThinkPad’s warranty throughout its 8 year life, so that should definitely help reduce warranty costs.
sxcurry 7y ago
As a 'pro' I have a backup iMac, backup MacBook Air, and backup MacBook Pro. I couldn't imagine working without this kind of safety net, regardless of the brand of equipment I'm using.
sailfast 7y ago
In order to support such a high level of service, one would basically need their own IT support shop, ready to (in one day?) re-image a hard drive, swap out laptops (and have spare supply), deliver them in that time, etc. The typical cost for this to corporations (maintaining their own service desks or going via contractors dedicated to their company) is extremely high. Are you saying that HP and Dell offer this level of support to individual consumers through vendors for a nominal fee? $300 wouldn't even cover a keyboard replacement in terms of the hourly rate, so I'm not sure how you could expect to have that level of service by paying for Apple Care. A full replacement laptop would likely cost LESS than subscribing to that level of service, but might be an opportunity for a third party company if there's enough volume in it I suppose.
- jasonlotito 7y ago
  > Are you saying that HP and Dell offer this level of support to individual consumers through vendors for a nominal fee? I can answer this for Dell (Alienware). Yes. At a price comparable to Apple Care (Around $300 at the time, it was 5 years ago). This was for my Alienware device. The power supply died because I was dumb and had plugged the computer directly into the wall, and there was a power surge. Replacement wasn't literally the next day as I'd called in the evening after the cutoff time. But still, it was one day after that. When I got home, it was fixed. No fuss, no muss. Online support had me go through a few things before they'd send out a repair guy, but it wasn't anything unreasonable. It was the only time I needed a repair. The price I paid covered 3 years of that level of service, the same as Apple Care. Edit: Because I saw you ask in other locations: this was just me personally buying through Dell's website.
  - sailfast 7y ago
    That’s amazing. Certainly my expectations have just been too low for too long!
- darkpuma 7y ago
  By making computers more reliable, a company like Dell could dramatically reduce the amount of computers that require on-site servicing in the first place. For instance, what percentage of Dell XPS's have their keyboards fail within a year? What percentage of MBPs do? Right now a base warranty for an XPS includes on site repair during business hours after a remote diagnosis for one year. Getting three years of that is $160. One year of the more advanced "ProSupport" is $50 more than the base price, and three years of that is $280 more. The non-linearity between those two figures is perhaps indicative of the failure rates Dell is expecting. I couldn't say if Dell is losing their ass with these service contracts or not, but from what I've seen it works pretty well for the consumers. Edit: And beyond baseline reliability, the particular design of a computer can determine whether a particular failure is cheap or expensive to fix. If the Foo widget requires replacing the Bar board, that's going to be a more expensive design to fix than a computer in which the Foo widget and the Bar board aren't soldered together. This matter crops up in things like "flexgate" for Apple, where faulty cables necessitate replacing the entire screen. What could have been a very cheap repair suddenly becomes a very expensive repair. I can't claim to be familiar with the insides of a modern XPS, but I wager they tend to be cheaper to repair than modern MBPs.
statictype 7y ago
Ditto. Three weeks ago my Macbook Pro's keyboard (with the butterfly design) became completely unusable after 6 months of being mostly unusable. Not only did the authorized service provider (Apple doesn't have its own presence where I live) take more than a week to get it replaced, they refused to do it under warranty because there were some scratch marks on the side of the laptop. They told me to contact Apple Support if I wanted to dispute that. After spending 6 days haggling with Apple Support and being bounced from agent to agent, I was finally told that they cannot replace under the existing Apple Care warranty because of the scratches on the side. I then asked them to give me, in writing, a note explaining that they were denying me service under warranty for the keyboard issue. That seems to have done the trick. Two days later she called back and said they re-reviewed my case and were going to fix it under warranty. I spent almost 2 weeks without the laptop while fighting with Apple over a pre-existing design flaw in a laptop that had extended Apple Care.
m000 7y ago
Not sure if where you were serviced, but Apple Store Amsterdam is terrible. It has devolved to another Leidseplein tourist trap: if you don't plan to spend money, you're wasting their time. For any serious issues, I take the bus to Apple Store Haarlem, which I've found to have friendlier service.
olyjohn 7y ago
As someone who worked in a computer store... I got really tired of hearing people come in demanding service because "they need their computer to make money." If you can't live without your computer, you should have a backup waiting and ready to go in case your primary fails. If you're going to lose $500/day from not doing your work, doesn't it make sense to spend $500-1000 on a backup system? I had some lady tell me she was losing $3000/day and needed her computer fixed urgently. Her work didn't involve any intense computational work, so I pointed her to a $500 machine that would do the same work. She got so offended that she could have saved $8500 by having a backup machine, but she opted to go without her computer instead for 3 days. I put her right at the back of the queue like everybody else.

by LeonM 7y ago

atomi 7y ago

The on-site same day repair I've gotten from Dell has been a godsend. I can't even imagine being out for 3 weeks.

n_u_l_l 7y ago

Which store? I had multiple bad experiences with the Apple Store in The Hague but the experience with the Apple Store in Amsterdam was great.

LeonM 7y ago
The Hague. Asked them to replace the battery on my MBP (out of warranty), got it back with non-functioning USB ports. Had to return it 3 times, every time I got it back I tested the USB ports inside the store only to demonstrate that the problem still wasn't fixed. Eventually they even tried to convince me that this was a software bug. After 6 weeks without working USB ports I got really angry and they finally agreed to replace the broken motherboard. When I got it back my laptop worked but it had a different keyboard installed (Dutch, instead of US intl). I complained about that and they told me that I was lying (even though a had the purchase receipt with the US keyboard option). After that I gave up and bought a Lenovo, haven't looked back since. The service in Amsterdam may be better, but traveling to the city center of Amsterdam twice just to get my laptop repaired is not acceptable.

RankingMember 7y ago

> imitatively Do you mean "immediately"? I'm having trouble understanding that word in this context.

LeonM 7y ago
Yes, that was a typo. It's fixed now, thanks.

zenexer 7y ago

> For professional use, that is just unacceptable. If you rely on your computer for income, you can't wait that long. This may be an unpopular opinion, and I don't mean to sound dismissive or suggest that waiting 3 weeks is normal, but I do think it is incredibly unprofessional to rely on a single device like that for work. If it's truly an indispensable part of your job, you should have a backup--that goes for anything, not just computers. It could be a 10-year-old hand-me-down or a cheapo Chromebook, but you should have a backup plan. > Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If only Apple would offer that. When I was first getting started as a programmer, I made most of my income by doing tech support, rather than actual programming. A large percentage of the cases were people hiring me to deal with the likes of HP, Dell, and Lenovo because their "on-site same day repair services" were absolute garbage about 50% of the time. You could get a laptop with a DoA hard drive, but they'd refuse to replace it unless it failed their specific check, which was always inadequate. It was normal to argue with them for 6+ hours about it. You could put a fresh drive in to demonstrate that the issue was gone, but they'd still refuse to do anything. It wouldn't matter if it BSODed consistently with a fresh installation on their drive but not on the drive I was using for testing, or if the SMART results were the worst I'd ever seen--no test fail, no replacement. > IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices). It varies widely depending on location. If you go to a large, busy Apple store, they tend to have a lot more parts on-hand; it doesn't need to be in Silicon Valley as long as it's big. If they need to order parts, they'll give you the option to hold onto your device until the parts arrive. I've gotten apologies when a repair took longer than 24 hours. I tend to prefer the Microsoft store method, though: when I've had issues with Surface-series devices, they've never attempted to repair it there; they just hand me a new one. It's hard to beat that. (I guess Apple's approach is better if you need to recover your data, but I never save anything valuable on a single device.)

AlphaSite 7y ago
That how apple handle sit for iPhones and iPads, macs are just different.
7y ago

ceejayoz 7y ago

> That is the reason why any Apple product will never be 'pro'. Regardless of how nice the hardware is, if it breaks I need a repair or replacement device immediately. IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices). They do offer this in the US. Not sure about globally. Can use it for one device, and they have loaners if a repair will take more than 24h. https://www.apple.com/retail/business/jointventure/terms.html https://www.apple.com/retail/business/jointventure/terms.htm...

want2know 7y ago

With Dell I got the same experience. My power supply stopped working. Next day they came to my office and replaced the power supply and main board as well, just to be in case.

sailfast 7y ago
What do you (or your company) pay for that level of support annually? How much per user? How many users?
- chronogram 7y ago
  You can be a freelancer and get it too. Let’s check the website! New Dell 3541 is €1183, which includes 3 year next business day warranty. Upgrading to 4 years onsite is €77 extra.
  - mrguyorama 7y ago
    That's way cheaper than it used to be. I wonder if that means their computers are just less likely to fall apart. I have a 2012 Dell Inspiron sitting next to me as a server. It was a pretty good machine, though never my daily driver. Main complaint is that replacing anything (in my case the hard drive) requires removing everything out of the plastic shell, there is no drive bay door like on my similar vintage HP. Meanwhile the next year's group got about 10 Dell inspiron laptops of the new 2013ish redesign, and I've never seen a lower quality laptop. Each and every one needed to be completely replaced at least once. Screws were just falling out of the case because the build quality was so bad. For reference, the warranty on these laptops was so good (at about a 200-300 dollar price tag) that the Dell representatives told us the day before it expired we should throw our computers down a flight of stairs to get new ones
    - chronogram 7y ago
      I’m not familiar with Inspiron devices. I am however surprised that you could get such a level of warranty for those. I thought they were the cheaper ones. I haven’t had to use my Latitude’s warranty yet just like I never had to use my ThinkPad’s warranty throughout its 8 year life, so that should definitely help reduce warranty costs.

sxcurry 7y ago

As a 'pro' I have a backup iMac, backup MacBook Air, and backup MacBook Pro. I couldn't imagine working without this kind of safety net, regardless of the brand of equipment I'm using.

sailfast 7y ago

In order to support such a high level of service, one would basically need their own IT support shop, ready to (in one day?) re-image a hard drive, swap out laptops (and have spare supply), deliver them in that time, etc. The typical cost for this to corporations (maintaining their own service desks or going via contractors dedicated to their company) is extremely high. Are you saying that HP and Dell offer this level of support to individual consumers through vendors for a nominal fee? $300 wouldn't even cover a keyboard replacement in terms of the hourly rate, so I'm not sure how you could expect to have that level of service by paying for Apple Care. A full replacement laptop would likely cost LESS than subscribing to that level of service, but might be an opportunity for a third party company if there's enough volume in it I suppose.

jasonlotito 7y ago
> Are you saying that HP and Dell offer this level of support to individual consumers through vendors for a nominal fee? I can answer this for Dell (Alienware). Yes. At a price comparable to Apple Care (Around $300 at the time, it was 5 years ago). This was for my Alienware device. The power supply died because I was dumb and had plugged the computer directly into the wall, and there was a power surge. Replacement wasn't literally the next day as I'd called in the evening after the cutoff time. But still, it was one day after that. When I got home, it was fixed. No fuss, no muss. Online support had me go through a few things before they'd send out a repair guy, but it wasn't anything unreasonable. It was the only time I needed a repair. The price I paid covered 3 years of that level of service, the same as Apple Care. Edit: Because I saw you ask in other locations: this was just me personally buying through Dell's website.
- sailfast 7y ago
  That’s amazing. Certainly my expectations have just been too low for too long!
darkpuma 7y ago
By making computers more reliable, a company like Dell could dramatically reduce the amount of computers that require on-site servicing in the first place. For instance, what percentage of Dell XPS's have their keyboards fail within a year? What percentage of MBPs do? Right now a base warranty for an XPS includes on site repair during business hours after a remote diagnosis for one year. Getting three years of that is $160. One year of the more advanced "ProSupport" is $50 more than the base price, and three years of that is $280 more. The non-linearity between those two figures is perhaps indicative of the failure rates Dell is expecting. I couldn't say if Dell is losing their ass with these service contracts or not, but from what I've seen it works pretty well for the consumers. Edit: And beyond baseline reliability, the particular design of a computer can determine whether a particular failure is cheap or expensive to fix. If the Foo widget requires replacing the Bar board, that's going to be a more expensive design to fix than a computer in which the Foo widget and the Bar board aren't soldered together. This matter crops up in things like "flexgate" for Apple, where faulty cables necessitate replacing the entire screen. What could have been a very cheap repair suddenly becomes a very expensive repair. I can't claim to be familiar with the insides of a modern XPS, but I wager they tend to be cheaper to repair than modern MBPs.

statictype 7y ago

Ditto. Three weeks ago my Macbook Pro's keyboard (with the butterfly design) became completely unusable after 6 months of being mostly unusable. Not only did the authorized service provider (Apple doesn't have its own presence where I live) take more than a week to get it replaced, they refused to do it under warranty because there were some scratch marks on the side of the laptop. They told me to contact Apple Support if I wanted to dispute that. After spending 6 days haggling with Apple Support and being bounced from agent to agent, I was finally told that they cannot replace under the existing Apple Care warranty because of the scratches on the side. I then asked them to give me, in writing, a note explaining that they were denying me service under warranty for the keyboard issue. That seems to have done the trick. Two days later she called back and said they re-reviewed my case and were going to fix it under warranty. I spent almost 2 weeks without the laptop while fighting with Apple over a pre-existing design flaw in a laptop that had extended Apple Care.

m000 7y ago

Not sure if where you were serviced, but Apple Store Amsterdam is terrible. It has devolved to another Leidseplein tourist trap: if you don't plan to spend money, you're wasting their time. For any serious issues, I take the bus to Apple Store Haarlem, which I've found to have friendlier service.

olyjohn 7y ago

As someone who worked in a computer store... I got really tired of hearing people come in demanding service because "they need their computer to make money." If you can't live without your computer, you should have a backup waiting and ready to go in case your primary fails. If you're going to lose $500/day from not doing your work, doesn't it make sense to spend $500-1000 on a backup system? I had some lady tell me she was losing $3000/day and needed her computer fixed urgently. Her work didn't involve any intense computational work, so I pointed her to a $500 machine that would do the same work. She got so offended that she could have saved $8500 by having a backup machine, but she opted to go without her computer instead for 3 days. I put her right at the back of the queue like everybody else.