Those are quality assurance issues, not customer service. Both factor into your satisfaction with a product, but they are not the same thing. Even though the ideal is both, it's entirely possible to have great QA but shitty CS, or shitty QA and great CS, and still have happy and loyal customers. It's impossible (or at least extremely impractical) to have perfection in either.

This story is about a positive customer service experience, where 1) the service person lacked a prescribed solution to the original (firmware/screen) problem, but the customer left satisfied and 2) the service person was attentive enough to solve a second problem (out of warranty, at company expense) that the customer hadn't even expressed as a complaint.

If you can't see why that's uncommonly good service, you're not paying attention.

Of course it's not that way all the time, at every location, for every customer, but it indicates Apple's atypical strategy of having their own retail stores with that kind of one-on-one support is one that can have atypically big pay off in customer satisfaction.

For comparison, Best Buy's GeekSquad would have charged the customer a minimum of $50 to even look at the problem, and on the off chance they even knew about the recalled battery, would not have been able to replace the it on the spot for free. Local shops are mostly the same story. In short, the author could not have had had the same loyalty-generating positive experience with any other brand of computer.

As a counterpoint though I have found Apple to be less than helpful when it comes to hardware issues. My Macbook Pro developed a hardware fault after I upgraded my Hard Drive.

The design of the MBP is surely aimed at discouraging you from upgrading the HD, you practically have to dismantle most of the laptop. I took it to an Apple Store in London who would not help as it was out of warranty. The store employee advised me I would be better buying a new one than repairing the laptop. So I went to an Apple Authorised Repair Shop where they quoted £120 just to look at the laptop, then parts and labour (again this would likely be £600+). I then went to an Unauthorized Apple repair shop where they took 6 weeks to repair the issues and charged £250 to replace the superdrive. The only faults found were a broken clip jamming the superdrive and a reinstall of Leopard. It is not easy to get Apple parts to repair it yourself.

So a design flaw cost me 2 months without my Laptop, the Apple Store were not interested without serious £££'s, and the Apple dealer was the same.

What design flaw? You said yourself that you dismantled it. That's a pretty solid indicator that you yourself broke it. Why on earth would you expect Apple to repair that for free? Would you expect anybody else to? Would you work for free?

Your experience with other shops is irrelevant when regarding Apple's customer service, as those shops aren't Apple. An authorized shop can charge whatever it wants for out-of-warranty repairs, and an unauthorized one, well, you're really grasping at straws if you think Apple has anything to do with that.

I don't see how anything you've written here is a counterpoint. It's just an anecdote about how much money you chose to spend to have someone fix your mistake.

I consider not having a user replaceable hard drive a design flaw. Most laptops have a hard drive bay so you can easily swap your hard drive, even the macbook has this now. What do you do when your hard drive fails? (which it will eventually) Apples answer is to pay them to fit a new hard drive or buy a new laptop.

My point with the Apple Store is they were unhelpful and unprepared to take the time to diagnose the problem. Their attitude is if your laptop that is more than a 2-3 years old you should buy a new one.

I mentioned the other Apple Dealers to point out that spare parts for Apple Macs are normally ridiculously overpriced and hard to come by. PC Laptop repair shops are happy to repair other laptops for a fraction of the price but will not touch apple products (why?).

That supposed "design flaw" did not render your computer inoperable. You did. By your own admission it was operating normally until you "upgraded" it, breaking it in the process. Don't complain about anybody else until you can take responsibility for your own mistakes.

I don't see how the store was unhelpful, given what you've already described. What nerve they have--when you walk in with a broken out-of-warranty laptop--to suggest replacing it with a new, functioning, under-warranty one. How rude and unhelpful it is to suggest a solution with a 100% chance of enabling you to have a functioning machine again! Instead, you wanted free out-of-warranty repair, which is not a service they offer. Their "attitude" has nothing to do with it: they can't give you what you want, and you didn't want what they offered.

And again with the non-Apple shops, you're being completely obtuse. Apple does not own those shops or set their rates. Being "authorized" only means that they can do repairs under warranty and receive service manuals and parts directly from Apple. Every other laptop vendor has a similar program. If a shop ripped you off, you can take it up with them. The OEM has nothing to do with it.

Finally, as I said before, you're not speaking at all to the original subject. Instead, you're bitching about how much money you spent fixing your mistake.

But the truth of the matter is that these mistakes will be made, regardless, by everyone, not just Apple. Laptops in general have a failure rate that is actually pretty high.

Given that no matter where I go I can't avoid things being potentially broken, I'd rather be well taken care of, instead of not.

Yes but I am saying we should not accept these mistakes, they are not inevitable but down to flaws in manufacturing and quality control. As a premium product these mistakes should not have occurred.

Apple make a choice to allow a certain failure rate or to skip testing of updates as getting it right 1st time is not as profitable as allowing mistakes which may or may not be cleared up at the Apple Store.

To think that these mistakes can be eliminated entirely is somewhat delusional. Yes, Apple could be doing more to increase the quality of their products, more rigorous testing, etc etc, but in the end there is an engineering limitation to how far they can take this.

Things breaking down, or manufacturing defects, can be reduced, but never eliminated.

So there are currently two choices in the market:

- Things that break down often, with no customer support. - Things that break down often, with great customer support.

I think it's pretty clear which one I'd choose :)