Well a lot has to do with luck. Yesterday my mailed in request for AppleCare for my iPod arrived at my home just as I came home from work! Finding the place on the website to put the enrolment number was a bit of a challange, but with patience, I discovered the correct location without having to resort to a phone call.

Previously my iPod had to get shipped to Apple to be repaired, and when they sent the box for it to be repaired, the empty box got lost or stolen from my front doorstep, and I had to call to ask for a replacement box. The ensuing call, it took him 2 hours of struggling with his computer to void the duplicate charging it was trying to put on my credit card, given the fact it wasn’t my fault the box never arrived. Worse the shipping company signed off the package as having been delivered. When I sent it in, they found nothing wrong, and delivered back the old iPod. Took it to the genius bar, told them my story, and they finally replaced my iPod. It did take an hour of waiting for them to handle other customers while I was already taken care of, but the story finished.

DHL had when I lived in a previous location returned my repaired Powerbook to a neighbor, and did not record the correct neighbor’s address. I had to learn spanish, only to find the neighbor did not have the package, and finally found it at another neighbor’s home.

I’ve had two times where Apple replaced under Applecare, what usually would be irreplaceable. I took my Powerbook into the Genius bar, which had previous fan issues and finally was reporting on the hardware test that the fan was broken. This same Powerbook had a screen replaced from having fallen to the ground, and an optical drive repair that didn’t quite go well. The fact the fan was a pre existing condition not only gave me a replacement Powerbook, but a newer model at that! Similarly I had a refurbished Airport Express base station replaced which was constantly losing its signal and turning to an orange light on its own.

On the other hand, my iMac G5 they would not even inspect unless I put back in the original RAM, or the original hard drive (I had upgraded it myself) for the capacitor issue when I took it to a genius bar.

I took a G4/400 to the Genius bar in Kansas City. Spoke with “Genius” Mike and told him that after a friend had taken a hard drive out of the machine the machine would no longer recognize my optical drive. I mentioned that it might be a loose connection. Almost an hour after my appointment, this GENIUS opened the machine, made a comment about RAM and closed the machine and hooked it up to a monitor. When the monitor would not register my system starting, he told me my motherboard was fried. Then he told me there would be an $85 bench fee to take it and look at it. I agreed as I needed the machine. Then when making the appointiment he told me that Apple, as of last month, no longer accepted my vintage Mac for repair and that I was just out.

I went home with the machine, opened the door, connected the optical drive and then went back to work on a machine this APPLE GENIUS said had a fried motherboard. Had he listened to the customer he could have helped me. Instead he had a foregone conclusion about what was wrong. This was not service in any since of the word. This experience has taught me the hubris of calling yourself a GENIUS when you don’t even use common sense. Machine is working fine by the way!

While contracting as a developer we have used a product called BlackBox to “record” everything a user is doing as they reproduce an error. Then the log is send to us and analyzed. This is done with user consent because every keystroke is recorded. Great detail is provided and can be easily filtered so the support tech doesnt have to read a million lines of events in the log. On the flip side of things, it makes it easier for users because they dont have to verbally describe what happened. They just run the logging utility, repeat the actions that caused the error, then send in the log.

This particular tool is windows specific. I wonder if a similar tool exists for a Mac?
See http://www.identify.com/products/win-net/bbx.php