I work part-time for an Apple reseller and your experience is why
I'll continue to strongly suggest people buy their products from an
independent reseller rather than directly from Apple. What you
require is a service my boss offers. When a customer's drive is
damaged/dead, if desired, we'll attempt to transfer data or send the
drive to a data-recovery service if we can't access it.
Find yourself a certified Apple repair service other than Apple. And
the next time you are in the market for a computer think twice before
buying directly from Apple.
BTW, am I the only one who thinks that the whole Apple Store thing is
turning into a disaster in the making? When my local Apple store
opened the 'genius' truly was incredibly knowledgeable. The last time
I went I overheard the 'genius' say things I'd expect to hear from a
BestBuy sales-idiot. He was completely clueless about the G3 iBook
repair extension and didn't know the G4 tower could accommodate an
internal zip drive.
david
On Oct 9, 2005, at 1:18 PM, Tobias Strohe wrote:
Dear Listas/essas,
I have been lurking mostly, but recent events warrant some verbage. I
apologize right away, if (when) this gets lengthy.
On my annual vacation this year my Powerbook G4 died (with some 500
not-yet-backed-up photos on it). Here is my story to this point and my
request for help:
1. Powerbook died and won't go beyond a grey backlit screen on startup
2. took it to "Gravis" in Cologne, Germany (great place!, competent,
helpful 'Apple Service Provider' like we used to have here). They
put in
a system disk and confirmed my suspicion that the Hard Drive has died
(it had been getting progressively slower on startup).
3. After return home this week I went to the local Apple Store and
they
informed me I needed to get an appointment to speak to a "genius" and
that the genius bar was closed for the day (this was Friday night).
4. I called 1-800-APL-CARE on Saturday morning (one: it hung up on me
after about 5 mins of the 8 mins announced (max) wait time; two: after
15 minutes waittime of 10 mins announced (max) I got Eric, who
requested
I insert a system disk and wouldn't believe the description of
above No.
2.) - I could not find my system disk other than an old X.1 which he
deemed not an option since I was last running X.3.9 ... After my
request
was denied to connect me to a repair dispatch to determine whether
there
is a way to obtain the damaged Hard Drive for Data recovery, I gave up
and decided to go back to the Apple Store.
5. Went to the Apple Store on Saturday AM, signed up for an
appointment
with a genius, got a pager (this alone took 10 to 15 minutes, although
the genius bar was not apparently busy) - the appointment was showing
11:30 (about 1 hour after my arrival), but I got buzzed at 11:10 (most
people are probably not patient enough to wait too long and I was to
find out immediately why:
6. The genius I spoke with mentioned that my only option for data
recovery would be to pay them 150 USD to remove and replace the
damaged
drive after a week where I could have it for data recovery and then
send
it in to Apple for replacement. Asked whether they could not put a new
drive in at that point he informed me that it needed to be an Apple
certified part and they could not obtain that. This is where the story
ends (for now).
Some additional information:
12" PB G4 (bought from Apple refurb), 1 Ghz, 768 MB RAM, Superdrive,
Airport Extreme, unit has been in my possession for about 1.5 years, I
do have Applecare 3 year extension
Some general venting: If Apple wants to get out of their low market
share they need to improve their service to what it used to be. Don't
hire arrogant, half-wits as geniusses, and phone line support (the
'genius' actually told me he had gotten yelled at over his comments
before - not that it helped, and I couldn't waste more time or energy
with him ;-). Don't design otherwise beautiful hardware with
components
that fail within 2 years (while I was at the 'genius' bar there were 2
other people with powerbook hard drive failure experience (and there
were not very many people to begin with). If I want this kind of
lack of
performance I can buy a Dell or another Sony (office experience with
Sony support on Vaio laptops is about on-par with current Apple). Will
we ever get another Powerbook G3 Kanga quality from Apple again? (my
1998 one is still going strong - now has a self-installed 20 Gig HD,
although I may need to solder the power connector for a short soon).
Any help, comments, different opinions/experiences, etc. are very
welcome,
tobias
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