Apple Customer Service Win

[James Bond]

Really strange situation. I entered a $50 iTunes gift card the other day from Christmas, and noticed a day or two later that it had been completely depleted.

I went in iTunes and checked my purchase history and found about $100 worth of apps that I did NOT buy. I hadn't even heard of some of them. There was one charge to iMobsters for $49.50!

I contacted Apple and gave them a list of each purchase that was not made by me. I found the whole thing very odd because in order to do this, someone must know my iTunes account password. They obviously don't mind using my account all the time?

Apple escalated my case a couple times until I got to a senior iTunes rep. Two days later I received an email notifying me that over $300 had been refunded to my Credit Card, and my iTunes account would be reenabled once I verified a couple questions.

I'm assuming that they refunded me for every purchase I have ever made. Very generous!

Update:
Bummer, it looks like they are only refunding me around $100 now. Which is what I deserve, because that is all that was downloaded fraudulently, but still a bummer! To quote the Apple rep, "There was a mistake in your refund email.".

 

[slugg]

Great!

I seem to be the only person in the world that has consistently suffered bad service from Apple.

 

[Ka0t1x]

I'm assuming that they refunded me for every purchase I have ever made. Very generous!

Its much easier at the database level to just wipe everything based on your user.

 

[TheStu]

Great!

I seem to be the only person in the world that has consistently suffered bad service from Apple.

Maybe you aren't tearing up enough? If you bat your eyes and let a little cry come out, you can usually get your way with the Geniuses. Maybe shake your ass a little bit after you 'accidentally' drop your pen.

 

[James Bond]

Great!

I seem to be the only person in the world that has consistently suffered bad service from Apple.

That is odd. I've always had good experiences.

What happened with you?

 

[James Bond]

Its much easier at the database level to just wipe everything based on your user.

That is what I assumed. Are you an Apple employee?

I am curious if I will need to re-purchase apps I already owned?

 

[TheStu]

That is what I assumed. Are you an Apple employee?

I am curious if I will need to re-purchase apps I already owned?

Should be easy to test, delete an app off of your phone and see if you can redownload it.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Great!

I seem to be the only person in the world that has consistently suffered bad service from Apple.

What happened?

 

[ubercaffeinated]

I've only had good experiences. My new macbook air developed a cluster of brighter than average white pixels on the right side of the screen after a month of ownership. I brought it into the genius bar, just to see if I had a chance a panel replacement - they once replaced a panel for one of my mbps under similar circumstances.

They did better. They confirmed it was a cluster of about 8 defective pixels, and swapped my month old mba with a brand new one. Pretty damn happy with the way they treat me, so I picked up apple care for this mba on the spot.

 

[James Bond]

Should be easy to test, delete an app off of your phone and see if you can redownload it.

I got the "already downloaded" pop-up, so it looks like I don't have to re-buy anything.

It did make me enter a different credit card. It refused to accept the one I had on my account previously.

 

[Kadarin]

I have AppleCare on a 2007-era MBP, and they ended up replacing my backlit keyboard after I spilled beer on it. It also had a bad battery and something wrong with the trackpad, and those were fixed as well, and the machine continues to work great.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

I have AppleCare on a 2007-era MBP, and they ended up replacing my backlit keyboard after I spilled beer on it. It also had a bad battery and something wrong with the trackpad, and those were fixed as well, and the machine continues to work great.

I'm assuming they saw that you had spilled liquid on it and replaced it anyways? Did you tell them that's what happened?

 

[Ka0t1x]

That is what I assumed. Are you an Apple employee?

Nope but I write code/DB Admin. Weeding through crap and selectively deleting would have cost Apple more then $300 in worker's time. Its not really a loss to them.

 

[slugg]

That is odd. I've always had good experiences.

What happened with you?

What happened?

1) My iPhone 4's screen broke in my pocket, with a case and screen protector, about 3 weeks after I bought it. It wasn't even a spiderweb crack - it was a tiny little crack. One single crack... perfectly straight line. The "geniuses" at the Apple store said they had proof that I dropped it and gave me attitude about it. They said they had some kind of "behavior log" of the phone, which is a complete lie. Then they gave me more attitude and decided to replace the phone anyways. Now I know what you're thinking - "Slugg, you got a new phone! Why are you pissed?" Well, because I gave you the short version of the story. They were VERY rude to me and I had to argue quite a bit to get any real help at all.

2) When I had my MacBook Pro (before it was stolen), I brought the laptop in because the 'a' key was intermittently not responding. I showed the "genius" and she took the laptop away from me without saying a word. She comes back and says "Looks like the keycap was broken! I replaced it." Well, she did a shitty job of replacing the keycap. It looks like she bent the plastic clips that hold the key in place. The 'a' key looked like it was crooked and terrible - like as if Toys R Us made a MacBook clone. I said I was not happy with what she did to my laptop and I wanted to get it fixed to the same or better condition than when I brought it in. She said "your MacBook Pro is within cosmetic and mechanical variance. There is nothing to repair." No matter how much I fought, they wouldn't repair it.

Then as I was leaving, she tried to get me to sign a piece of paper that allowed them to work on my computer. I saw what was going on - she broke my computer without me signing a release. Finally, because of this, I had a case against the store. Instead, the manager let me get my top-case replaced altogether. That would have been great, except for the fact that it took 2 weeks for a 30 minute repair - WHEN IT WAS NEVER MY FAULT!

3) When I got my mom her iPhone 4, it stopped working when we got back to the house. I mean it was DOA - it wouldn't turn on at all. I took it back to the store and told them what happened. This was now about 1 hour after we bought it, mind you. They said that the phone was submerged in water and refused to exchange the phone. I told them to just give me a refund and they wanted to charge a 15% restocking fee. So... they'd let me get a refund, but not exchange the phone? The same phone I bought 1 hour ago? That makes sense. OH WAIT - forgot to mention that the phone was activated BY AN APPLE EMPLOYEE, put back into its box, then it *somehow* swam in water before we took it out. That also makes sense.

4) We use iMacs at work. They were all purchased in one batch. A whopping 6 out of the 12 have failed. Apple refuses to acknowledge the bad batch and will not exchange the machines for us. Additionally, each repair/replacement is taking 1 to 2 weeks.

-

I understand I'm the oddball here. But I mean... I've never had any of these problems with Dell Business or Lenovo/IBM. Honestly, it's not THAT big of a deal to me, except for the fact that almost anything voids your warranty in the Apple world. Most of the AnandTech forum users are smarter than the Apple "geniuses," so why can't we just do our own repairs? Again, Dell and IBM let you.

 

[Emulex]

you have applecare on everything right? like hp's "CARE PACK" everything changes when you purchase extended warranty.

but i've had AWESOME service on my ole macbook the wifi broke and it has dents on every corner (dropped,but it was cheap) and under applecare they didn't flinch as i handed the beater over and they fixed me up with a new wifi card (age 1year old) .

neighbor dropped his new i7 macbook the first day. dented the crap out of the case. took it in to see if it was damaged and they just replaced the damage skin GRATIS.

they must keep track of how many apple products we own

 

[Kadarin]

I'm assuming they saw that you had spilled liquid on it and replaced it anyways? Did you tell them that's what happened?

I told them what was wrong with the laptop, and that I was expecting that some of it might be covered under warranty and some might not. I was surprised when they came back and said there was no charge.

 

[themillak]

I have a macbook pro circa 2007ish that I got the extended apple care on. The computer isn't bad (other than it turned out I didn't really end up liking macs) but the battery was atrocious. After a few months the battery health fell to ~40% and stayed charged for less than an hour. When I was in the states I brought the computer to the genius bar and they sold me a new battery and they noticed the palm mark I had left on the case and offered to fix it. They also claimed that the bad battery was due to a bad logic circuit/board/something and were going to replace that. I left the laptop with them for a day or two and I got it back with a list of repairs and how much money it would've cost if I hadn't had the apple care. in the end it was new logic board, new keyboard surround thingy that had my palm sweat mark, new base where i had dinged the corner at some point, new screen for some other reason and another 2 or 3 things. Basically it looked like I kept my hard drive and ram maybe and had a completely new laptop. And according to their apple costs I saved more than $1000.

But of course the battery did its thing again and is back to ~40% health.

 

[James Bond]

Update:

Bummer, it looks like they are only refunding me around $100 now. Which is what I deserve, because that is all that was downloaded fraudulently, but still a bummer! To quote the Apple rep, "There was a mistake in your refund email.".

 

[StinkyPinky]

We have a mix of Imacs and Dell at work and I find Apples support to be pretty poor to be honest. Dell are always here next day on-site whereas Apple just fluff around and often take well over a week. It's just excruciating.

 

[JC86]

Customer service is always a YMMV situation. My personal experience is more or less a mixed bag. My iPhone home button started to not respond anymore. Granted, I had spilled some coffee on it, not enough to trigger the sensors or anything but enough, imo, to cause some damage. I made an appointment, took it in, reproduced the problem to the guy and walked out with a replacement phone in 10 minutes. The funny thing is the home button started responding after he started testing the problem and he still replaced it. He told me he saw me reproduce the problem and thats good enough for Apple to replace it, no questions asked.
A lesson learned from my previous posts is that you HAVE to make an appointment or else they will not accommodate you, no exceptions. My cousin dropped his Iphone 4 in a sink and was completely honest with the GB and they replaced it too, apparently appreciating the honesty. Which is pretty cool.