Pensieri di un lunatico minore

The continued saga

While some people lord their fancy new machine over the rest of us, I continue to battle to get my MacBook Pro back in shape. Over the weekend, the fans seized up … totally. Grinding noises and all. At that point, the notebook temperature skyrocketed and was literally too hot to touch. I shut it down, and took it back into an Apple Store.

There-in begins our tale of woe. I sit down with one of the “Geniuses,” who usually are great, but this one listened to my rather detailed explanation, root-cause analysis and other details, and distills it into: customer says machine gets too hot¹. Master of the obvious? So once again, my notebook goes into the care of the store. I’m told I’ll get a call the next day to let me know the status.

6pm rolls around, and I decide to call the store to find out. I find someone vaguely helpful, explain the situation, they tell me that yes, in fact, the fans are dead, and they’ll need to be replaced. “Great, when?” I’m told they’ll have to order a part, but they might have it in stock (which is it?), and that he’ll call me back within the hour to let me know which. As you can imagine, no call. I let it pass.

This afternoon, on my way home, I call and ask the status again, and am told that they’re waiting on parts, to which I reply that I wished they’d told me this before, but then he “corrects” himself and says that it’s done, but has to go through testing. I tell them that should be done before close, and I’ll be in to pick it up around 8:45pm, and they agree.

So, I go to dinner, and as I’m sitting at dinner, around 8pm, my phone rings, and they tell me that the machine is ready, but… (you know there’s always a but in these stories) the Bluetooth isn’t working. Excuse me? It was working perfectly when I brought it in, since that’s what my mouse is using all the time, and how I sync my phone. It doesn’t show up as hardware any more, I’m told, and they’ve tried to reseat it. They want to keep it longer, and I refuse. I told them they can order the part, if they want, but they can’t continue to hold my notebook hostage to their incompetence (I didn’t use that phrasing).

When I arrived at the store, and finally talked to “Chris” and got my notebook back, he explained it needed to have the Bluetooth board replaced. I explained the history that I’d gone through, and he apologized, and shared that he didn’t think they should have really undertaken any of the repairs I’d had done in the store, but instead should have sent it in to the main service group. Oy! Why couldn’t someone be this honest up front?

I have my notebook back, for now, but I need to call Apple, reference all the cases, and get it in for service; all before I fly off for Christmas, which means it has to happen soon, as I was told it’s a 5-7 day process. I love my Mac, and have generally been loyal to Apple, but this kind of behavior isn’t acceptable. Not to mention my MacBook Pro has had more problems than the last 3 notebooks combined—and they all were dropped at various points.

¹ Rule #1 of doing tech-support is to know when your client is smarter than you, or at least knowledgeable. You want those people because they make your job easier. Do not just tune out everyone because most people have no idea how things work.