Apple Care

I’ve been off-line for a while but I hope to get back into the swing shortly.  My desktop died. Suddenly. In my sleep.  An iMac i5 27″.  I purchased the machine in November 2009.  In the prime of it’s life. Never defragged.  I thought it might have something to do with Lion.  That was the only change I had made.  In the end I took it to the local Apple store. They thought it was the power supply. Seemed reasonable to me as when I pressed the power button nothing happened.  No fan. No noise.  No light.  They asked about power failures. I said I have UPS.  They said they don’t have the power supply in stock so it would be a couple of days.  They called back a couple days later reporting it looked like the mother board. Then another couple days later it was the power supply.  I started monitoring the status via the Apple support site.  It regularly reported “in repair.” That changed this Sunday. The status changed to “repair cancelled” (may be just one ‘l’ … it is an American company).  This struck me as an unusual state.  Not “repair complete.” “Cancelled.” So I called up. While on hold the other line rang. It was Apple. They were able to explain the curious status report.  They were unable to fix my machine.  They were very apologetic. They offered a replacement. A new machine.  A new iMac i5 27″. No charge.  I have Apple Care.  If any one asks if they should get Apple Care I’ll say yes.  A new machine lists for 1699$. 

Being a great company is easy when everything goes well.  But you find out how great they are when they have to deal with adversity.  A lot of companies these days say they want to model the Apple experience for customer service. I wonder how many of them really understand what it means? Talk is cheap.