From Genius Bar to Escalation Dept.

A couple of months ago I purchased a new Macbook Pro laptop for my wife as a birthday gift. Her old one had seen its better day many days prior.

Without going into great detail, I have not always had the greatest experiences with Apple and their products. I understand items used as often as their Iphones, and in the old days Ipods, as well as laptops, will need replacing periodically.

I do have gripes about changing the connections and chargers every new iteration of a phone or laptop. In addition to the cost, it's just inconvenient and seemingly unnecessary.

Before I get to the intent of this post, I do want to recall one story from my past dealings with an Apple product. It was many years ago, probably about 16 or 17 years past.

I was using an Ipod at the time to store and play my music, as were many others. It was a great invention to not have to carry around a Walkman or CD disc player, or bulky boom box with 8 track tapes.

As happens, eventually my Ipod ceased to function. It was dead in the water. I don't remember the cost, but I'm sure I could've afforded a replacement, but at the time, replacing the music on the player would not have been so easy. Then I saw an Apple store advertising "The Genius Bar" for all repairs and assessments. So while in a large New Jersey mall I made a pit stop into the Apple Store and made a reservation with a "Genius" to resolve my issue. I was with my son, who was 18 or so at the time, but quite savvy with technology. He guided me through the steps of making the appointment, as there was no human intervention in that process.

Honestly, putting the word genius next to the word bar seemed like a severe misnomer. I've known many people who were at a bar for awhile and thought they were a genius, but I never actually met a genius wasting time in a bar. That's just me I suppose.

So after walking around the mall to kill time for our scheduled appointment, I was pretty impressed as they displayed your name on a big screen in the store with your slated appointment time. I'm impressed by meaningless things far too often.

The big moment had finally come. I was about to meet my Apple Genius and have my IPod problem resolved.

I approached the Genius upon my name being called and handed him the IPod, explaining what was the issue. The Genius, who appeared to be maybe all of 20 years old, took the Ipod and told me he would bring it into the backroom and check it out. It might be a few minutes. It was probably about three minutes when he returned with the IPod and handed it to me and said "it's dead, there's nothing we can do."

That's it. This is a Genius? I asked him what I could do about the music already downloaded on it, and how could I get that back? He asked me if I had done a back-up, maybe on a cloud, I don't truly remember. I do remember being frustrated and angry however. I stormed out of the store pointing back to it saying I would never buy an Apple product again(yeah....right).

As I cooled off on the ride home, my son asked me where did I put the IPod. I reached into my pocket and tossed it to him saying something about it being a worthless piece of something.

I noticed peripherally as I was driving he was pressing on different things and moving his fingers all over the dead IPod. After about five minutes of what I viewed as a useless gesture on my son's part, he handed the IPod back to me while I was stopped at a light and said, "here Dad, it works", very matter of factly.

So much for the Genius Bar. Little did I know my own son was the "real" genius. That Ipod is still alive today, obviously I no longer have it in use, but it was an interesting lesson. Thank you Jeremy.

This brings me to my latest Apple experience. I had mentioned purchasing a new MacBook for my wife, Edmi, as a birthday gift. With my past experiences, beyond the one I just mentioned, I decided to purchase the extended coverage called Apple Care for the new laptop. It was a three year extended insurance coverage for $250. I purchased both the laptop and AppleCare through Amazon which actually offered a better price.

The laptop came on time and Edmi smoothly transferred everything from her old laptop to the new one. I received an email about the purchase of my AppleCare being activated immediately and would even cover the process of any damage incurred during delivery.

Recently my Macbook died. A battery issue which I was told would cost $800 to replace plus $180 in labor.I don't even want to get into that here. However, in the process of that, and upgrading my IPhone, I saw all my past and present Apple products and it listed their warranty and coverage if still active. With that, I asked my wife if she actually ever checked to see if the AppleCare coverage was activated on her laptop.

Upon looking, it was not! While annoyed, I was not surprised. After attempting to rectify it unsuccessfully online, it was time to do my favorite thing in life. Call customer support. Honestly, if I had the choice between root canal and dealing with customer support, if the root canal came with enough anesthesia, I might just choose it.

As expected, the first phone call yielded many questions. Can you take a screenshot of the receipts. Can you send the picture to the link in the email I just sent you. The answer of course was that the Macbook was not covered yet. This led to a hand-off to someone else higher up the ladder. This was followed by..... you guessed it, the same questions and screenshots and forwarding to a link. Of course in the interim several times being put on hold. When person number two could not rectify the issue, I was told I was being transferred to the department supervisor. At this point I was already prepared with all the info and screenshots as I figured I would have to once again have to regurgitate one more time to them. By now I really did want to regurgitate. This time a new twist was put on the ask. It wasn't enough to provide the serial number of the laptop or various numbers of confirmation on the receipts to the Apple authorities, but now we needed to hand write the serial number on the receipt and send them a shot of that. Never really got an answer on that when I asked why.

In any case, after all of this, I was told this needed to go to the Escalation Dept. I almost fell off my chair! Escalation Department!!???? WTF??? It's a $250 extended warranty plan. We are not talking thousands of dollars of hardware here. After I recovered from laughing and fuming to the point of wanting to hangup, I was told I needed to make an appointment with speaking to someone from the Escalation Dept. I was thinking it would be later that day, or maybe the next day. I was told my appointment would be the following Friday, six days later.

In summary just a few last points. In all fairness, all of the people I spoke with on the phone from Apple support were courteous and respectful. I'm sure they were just following protocol. Again, my issue is more with the system than the people mixed up in the system.

I had also refused to set up a phone appointment as they suggested for the following Friday. They told me I should receive an email after the ESCALATION Dept. had their review. Sorry for the full bold letters but I just find it very amusing. Escalation Dept? I guess it's because at that point, you have escalated blood pressure.

Lastly, on that Friday the issue was resolved and I was told the coverage is now in place. Thank you and good night. Maybe my bigger issue is the naming of some of these services that are supposed to be of help to Apple customers. Perhaps renaming the Genius Bar to "We'll Give it a Try Desk". Maybe call the Escalation Dept the Desperation Dept. Just a thought. Would love to know if any of you reading this have had similar experiences. Doesn't have to be with Apple. Thank you for letting me vent.

If you got this far, I truly appreciate it. Remember......Sunshine Always!!!