Adrienne? Going cross-country? Is a Lamborghini and spandex body suits involved?

Apple's big and they make mistakes like everyone else, but... This sort of thing is why - even when they do f*ck up - I and many others love the hell out of them.

Wow, nice.

Ironically, he probably got spanked for it after the fact. Regardless, Dan in the black shirt is awesome - bravo.

@BuddyGuyMontag: Yes... Yes...! YES!!! Dean and Sammy in the Ferrari close behind. Genius.

But seriously... Great job Apple.

excellent! that mirrors the wonderful service I've always received at my local apple story (Ann Arbor, MI). They've replace various parts of my macbook (power cord, top cover) for free and always on the same day.

Black shirt dan is getting a raise. He just got Apple good publicity on Consumerist.com for the price of a $249.00 iPod. Thank you Consumerist.com for this platform of praise and condemnation. Maybe other companies will follow the example of Apple.

When I bought the iPod touch from Apple.ca and I got it, it looked as if it had been factory tampered with. In fact besides the fingerprints on the screen after I had peeled the tape off was the tiniest piece of food. I called Apple right after I opened it and informed them. I sent it in, they took note, and offered me a few things I could choose from for compensation. One of them (and the one I picked) was a $115 Belkin Tunebase. I was amazed at their service then and still am, and it's why I'll continue buying as many Apple products as I do. Nice to see this woman had the same great service as well.

Wait - they call their store staff "Geniuses"? Awfully pretentious. I'm not calling their staff idiots, I'm referring to the giant ego that seems to come from Apple and many of their customers.

Dan in the black shirt just changed my feelings about Apple from "would not pee on it if it was on fire" (I just tried to use the f---ed up uninstaller for Quicktime this morning) to "maybe worth a moment's attention", and that's pretty significant for me. (Given that it jumped the intermediate steps of "basically not worth bothering with", "mostly useless", "would not miss it if it magically disappeared", and "just another face in the crowd".)

This isn't that big of a deal, I've had a friend get her iPod replaced with a larger capacity one, no questions asked, just because it was old and the lines at the SoHo store are always long.

I wish my 30gb Ipod would have issues .. I'd love to have an 80gb!!

...Wait, sorry, I think I drifted off for a second there.

See, I thought I just read a story about an upset customer that resulted in the customer receiving service above and beyond what they expected... but that's not possible. Let me read it again.

Huh. Wowwwwwww! I guess I need to start investing in more Apple products.

I should probably reserve my sarcasm, I'm not exactly the best person to talk about poor customer service... then again, given my employer many people have low expectations by now. -_-

Show me one other tech company that would willingly choose to resolve a customer problem in a similar way. And if they did, then without hours of haggling, threats, phone calls, etc.

Wow.

This is bordering not being above and beyond for Apple. I had a friend who bought a macbook and not a week later it slipped out of her bag and fell down stairs. she was crushed (and so was it).

She'd bought applecare and so took it back to the apple store and they took one look at it and said there was no way to fix it. Then they asked if there was anything she needed backed up to the new macbook they were giving her as a replacement.

@goodcow: I can't think of a single other company that has done something like this for me, much less anyone else I know. No company has ever gone above and beyond. Besides that, if they do this regularly for customers, like you say, then that makes it even more notable.

THis is pretty much how Apple's replacement program works. Don't have the parts needed for your fix? Upgrade, gratis.

What makes it different is that the upgrade came from a store - and thus a real person, and not via the snail mail delivery system from some anonymous outsourced monkey.

They've done this for me in Feb. with my old Nano. I had AppleCare on it and I guess when it conked out they didn't have the parts or refurbs to replace, so they called me and asked me to pick a color, black I said. The next day a new black 8GB nano was dropped off by FedEx.

They've also taken care of a fried logicboard in one of my iMac's that was 2 months past warranty and I had no Apple Care on it. At first it was a dead fan I thought, and asked real nice over the phone and explained that this was my first ever Mac. They agreed to replace the fan, but they discovered that it was the logicboard that was faulty. They repaired it at no cost to me.

Back earlier in the year, my MacBook which was under warranty had problems. I took it to the Genius, who couldn't fix it either, and it was sent out for depot servicing. I was about a week away from leaving for a business trip to London. My MacBook, which was promised to me to be back on time somehow got snagged in the system, and it looked like I wouldn't have it back in time.

After talking to the store manager, the only thing he could do for me was to give me a new in box MacBook. And since the models had changed since I bought mine, I got an upgrade to the newer, faster, better machine in the bargain.

Apple is great in most occasions with customer care. But it's also important not to rant and rave like a lunatic. I'm convinced that as much as they wanted to make things right, they also were in a better position to understand my plight and help me out because I didn't act like the customer from hell when asking for their help.

@FHJay: Personally, my first gen MacBook Pro needed about a half dozen repairs and after writing to Steve Jobs I had a brand new (as in going from a Core1Duo 1.83 to a Core2Duo 2.2) MacBook Pro within 12 hours.

@aristan: I call shenanigans, since AppleCare doesn't cover accidental damage. Doesn't matter if it's a week old, or approaching three years -- if it's obvious you broke it, you get charged.

Um, anecdotal evidence does not = "Because Apple cares about their customers"

That's how things SHOULD always work. I don't know why businesses don't get that.

In the hotel I have authorization to spend up to $1000 to resolve any LEGITIMATE guest complaint. I have never done it but I have comped a suite for the night for a guest.

Keeping good customers happy is good business should be the second cardinal rule of business.

The first rule should be keeping your good employees happy because they will be the ones who take care of rule #2.

@sharkd: Call shenanigans all you want, they replaced it.

@IphtashuFitz: I'll take that challenge...first there is...no, wait, they steal porn from your machine, OK, how about...wait, no, they fired all of their good sales reps, wait, I know...no, they outsourced all of their customer support overseas, hold on a second...Packard Bell!!! I have not heard a complaint about a Packard Bell PC or PB customer service for years :-)

I have lots of good experiences with Apple, here are a couple.

Bought a G3 iBook in 2003 and had 2 years of intermittent logic board failures. Every single time my laptop was back to me fixed within 4 days of me calling. Finally it crapped out for a fifth time in the Winter of 2005 and they replaced it with a new G4 iBook, free of charge. That G4 iBook still works to this day.

Tried to buy a refurb 4GB iPhone from the online store in December of 2007. I had two of those "sorry we dropped the price on the iPhone, early adopter. have $100 credit on us" slips from the two owners of my company who were prone to buying every new shiny gadget that came out. The price of the refurb was $299 so I added it to my cart, put in both credit numbers and then my credit card but it spat back an error saying one of the credits wasn't valid. Long story short by the time it got straightened out the refurbed iPhone was out of stock and I lost out. By the end of this whole ordeal they offered me a brand new 8GB iPhone for the same price and I ended up getting my iPhone for $99 + tax, expedited shipping gratis.

I've got plenty more, suffice it to say I'm an Apple customer for life. I just couldn't see myself getting that level of support and service from Dell or HP.

I'd like to add that in 10+ years of using Apple products almost exclusively, I have never once had any technical issues. I've never had to use their incredible customer service because the products are superior. And, what do my stubborn Windows using friends complain about more than Apple? How bad their computer is and how it never works right. But, will they give Apple a shot? No way, at least, not until 50.1% of the world uses Apple.

Awesome Apple! wait........Know what would be even more great? Let us order and change batteries ourselves. I have yet to buy iPod's for the fact I refuse to have repair/parts done on something a normal consumer could do with properly designed product and/or battery compartment.

@lajoan: Hackers/trolls have explained at security conventions that Apple has terrible security protocals and processes and that if anybody actually used Apple that they'd completely own them, but for now it's not worth their time. You better hope that Apple doesn't get any significant market share.

Also, what makes the Mac OS easier to use also makes it more limiting. Anybody with half a brain about computers knows that Vista is pretty awesome now (making fun of it is so 2006) and that you can make a Wintel platform just as stable as an Apple product. And hey, at least you can find an upgradeable $1500 desktop Wintel machine...

The lovely Apple geniuses at Menlo Park Mall upgraded me to a 60GB video iPod after, no joke, 13 replacements of my 3rd generation 40GB iPod. the hard drive would die, I would get yet another refurbished one, that one would die (the record: one died on the drive home), repeat, repeat, repeat. when I tell people about this experience, they mostly seem baffled that I would stick with iPods, but I have a lot of loyalty to the company because of stories like this one and mine.

I applaud Apple for doing this, I really do. However, it should be noted for the record that the actual manufacturers cost of the new 80G Ipod, is probably in the order of $35-$50. Less than the token repair charge for the old one.

Ironically, for those interested. the cost of smaller hard drives, such as 20, 30, and 60Gig is now so prohibitively expensive that most companies are replacing units with 80gig units. It's called economy of scale, and as soon as the 64gig memory chips are economically feasible, we'll see the disk drive based iPods disappear altogether.

@PDX909: That's fascinating - how are they producing larger drives in smaller spaces for less cost?

Yr pd txs py fr sch flgrnt rdstrbtns f wlth.

Wow, what's funny is that I just came by here to look for contact info for apple, so I can tell them why I have to stop buying iPods even though I love them - basically my beloved 80GB 5th generation iPod has been replaced twice in less than two years (always with the excellent customer service, and a new, not repaired, replacement every time). But now the latest one has died AGAIN, less than a year after purchase and with an expired warranty and I have to buy a new one..... and really, I can't pay that much for a product that seems to have less longevity than a sack of potatoes.
Does anyone know if there is a contact at Apple to make a complaint about something like this?

@coren: I think most of it is just supply and demand. Manufacturers are buying the larger capacity hard drives for use in their products, so those are being mass produced in huge numbers, whereas the smaller capacity ones aren't, so they're actually more expensive to produce.

It's the same reason why a certain replacement part for an older car is sometimes twice as much as the equivalent replacement part for a new car, even though the new one is better in every way. No one's really making that old model of the part on a large scale anymore so prices are higher

A friend of mine had an old Nano that stopped talking to her computer. She brought in her MacBook & the Nano, and was informed that her OS was so old that iTunes wouldn't work anymore (hence, the source of her problem). So they upgraded her OS free to Tiger and taught her how to back up on her external hard drive (which she had also bought).

...When did Microsoft, Dell, or Gateway ever upgrade my OS for free when it became obsolete. Oh, um, NEVER?!?

Similar product but unrelated company: I had a Transcend 1GB MP3 player that had a problem with its display screen and the company replaced it with a new one rather than fix it. They didn't bend over backwards, but they did what they said they would in the time that they promised.

There was good and bad in that: the new battery lasts longer, but the software in it would no longer play songs in order by filename - the *date* of the files superceded filenames in order of preference. How dumb is that? I ended up having to edit the dates of my entire collection (thus losing all the creation dates of when I ripped them from CD) to get them to play.

And it still plays directories in random order, despite random being turned off. But since it's older and I plan to replace it soon, that's a small annoyance.

@t325: It's the same reason why a certain replacement part for an older car is sometimes twice as much as the equivalent replacement part for a new car, even though the new one is better in every way. No one's really making that old model of the part on a large scale anymore so prices are higher

Yours is a good analogy except for one minor detail: One cannot go down to a computer junkyard and get a replacement part on the cheap as one can with a car junkyard.

@IphtashuFitz: Or, to put it another way, show me a company that gives their employees that much power to solve those problems. If Apple's attitude had been "give replacements when they pry it from your cold, dead hands", we wouldn't have had the happy ending. They obviously give their people "wiggle room" when dealing with problems.

Adrienne also scored by staying calm (stressed but calm) and civil - especially in light of the first ...uh... Genius. Smart gal - calm can often get you good service (and prezzies apparently) while strident gets nada.

Kudos to her and good luck on the move.

Let me know when they stop selling the 80gb... I want an Ipod touch. :)

@FrugalFreak: I replaced an iPod mini battery with a higher capacity, and while I was in there, took out the 4GB microdrive and put in an 8GB CF card. All it took was 45 minutes and less than $40, now I have an 8GB mini with no moving parts.
It's not that difficult, but you do have to exercise caution.

@Norislolz: Anyone with half a brain would know better than to make the ridiculous claim that Vista is 'pretty awesome.' Especially to cite Intel...[bits.blogs.nytimes.com] ...I would have to think the IT people at Intel might be a bit more tech-savvy, perhaps?

A few years ago,I had issues with my 15gb iPod and when I returned it for service (1-2 weeks out of warranty), they replaced the unit with a whole new 30gb Pod. I don't think they keep old stuff around waiting for you to come in, they just replace with the next model up the food chain. I've had no issues with the folks manning the Genius Bar.

@P_Smith: Yes you can. It's called eBay ;)

But the analogy works if you want to replace it with a new part, because you won't find a new part at a junkyard either

My latest Apple experience was last week when my iPhone started acting up. Basically, whenever a keyboard was displayed the key-presses registered the wrong keys. Although it was out of warranty, the Apple Store replaced it with a brand new one, free of charge, and offered an apology for the problem (an apology costs nothing, but it's nice to hear).

Next to me at the store was someone that had dropped their laptop and broken it. Even though it was accidental damage, which isn't covered by warranty or AppleCare, it was also replaced free of charge.

Apple employees seem very empowered to RESOLVE problems in a very reasonable, person-to-person, way rather than being limited to slavishly follow the letter of the warranty.

Every time I deal with them, they go up in my estimation. Amazing, but also smart - most of my friends and family now use more Apple products because they appreciate the above-and-beyond care they show for their customers. Despite this apparently profit-depleting policy, Apple have record results. Just shows that looking after your customers pays huge dividends. I wish more companies would learn that lesson.

Despite the often deserved press about secrecy, lack of concern for early adopters, etc., the folks at the Apple Store repeatedly put the shine back on the Apple. For those who haven't visited a Genius Bar recently, take a field trip: Genius Bars are madhouses of activity, with most customers either frantic or frustrated. I've watched them multi-task across several customers at the same time, keeping their cool, and actually helping the customer. If I'm angry when i go in for a Genius Bar appointment, I'm not when I come out. Kudos to the folks who work there. I'm sure there are a few exceptions here and there, but for the most part these folks ARE the true image of Apple.

I had a similar experience with Apple. After sending a 60gb iPod back for warranty service because Apple had sent me a replacement with dust under the screen. Apple said don't bother sending it back again, we're overnighting you a new 80gb.

There are screw-ups there, but they have someone empowered to fix things as well.

Bravo, Apple!

although, my story was at a third party apple certified repair shop...
I had a ibook G4, and someone broke my LCD screen on it. the guy fixed it for me no problem within a few days. in the 2 weeks I was saving up money to pick it up... he installed MS-office and upgraded me to tiger for free. talk about awesomeness!

I guess that doesnt count though, as that was not a apple store... but a certified apple reseller and repair shop...

Honestly, I think the moral of the story is "you get what you pay for". Since Apple's margins on their merchandise tend to be so much fatter than the competition's, they can much more easily afford to handle support issues in ways that cost the company more, but tend to make for much more satisfactory customer experiences, which leads to repeat business, etc.

If Apple charged $100 less for an iPod, or $500 less for their laptops, they probably would be just as tight with returns as the competition, and Apple support would resemble "Dell Hell" much more closely.