Apple Repair Center Doesn't Repair Your Laptop, But Does Replace Your Keyboard With German Layout
When Paul, a Georgia Tech student in Atlanta, got his MacBook back from an Apple Repair center, he noticed they hadn't repaired the dent screen bezel at all—and something was a little off about the keyboard now, too. There were umlauts over the vowels, for instance, and that weird B-shaped letter thing grafted onto the question mark key, which was now up on the number row.
So when you take your Mac to get repaired and they have to send it to their repair center, politely request that a service technician with the ID 31514 at the “CTS, Apple Authorized Repair Center” in Houston, Texas does not fix your Mac.
Unless you want to type in German.
"Apple Repair Remains Dismal" [Paul Stamatiou]
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Comments:
Well if you're going to do something wrong, you may as well go full-force and do it really wrong....
In all seriousness, though, sounds like someone's RMA number got swapped with another. Probably digit transposition? I went to the blog mentioned, but the OP doesn't mention any kind of follow-up...was there a fix?
@mmmsoap - this is paul. As for follow-up, I just got the laptop returned to me today and haven't had the chance to notify apple yet. I'm hoping for a replacement..
Incidentally, can anyone tell me if Macs still handle basic foreign characters as gracefully as they did in the '90s? For some reason, Windows has always made it hard to come up with an intuitive system for handling acute and grave accents, circumflexes, etc.
IIRC, older versions of the Mac OS would let you do an option-` followed by a vowel and it would come out just right. Very handy if you're switching languages.
@Corydon: That's still the grave accent; others tend to be option-mostlikelyletter followed by the letter you want, so option-e-e is how you'd do an acute accent over an e and option-e-a is acute-accented a; umlaut lives over the u and circumflex over the i.
Jawohl baby!
@Corydon: yes they still handle foreign languages as well as they did. Some of the largest files of the OS X install is the language files.
Of course, it's just the keyboard lettering that's in German...the signals that are generated by it are handled by the operating system, and will be in English...
I kind of want this to happen to my laptop! It'd be a good conversation piece.
It's an eszett. I goes "s" as in "sass."
This was a dumb mistake for the repair person to make, but, other than aesthetics, it will have no effect on the users typing. The characters you get are dictated by the input method you select, not by the hardware you use. I can type in Japanese on an English keyboard and vice versa. If you're a touch typist, it's completely irrelevant since you don't look at the keys anyway.
That being said, Apple should give him a new/different keyboard (and fix the right problem) since that wasn't what he wanted.
@Corydon: The foreign language support, both for input and display is more robust than ever.
Creating umlauts, accents, trademark/copyright/service marks and other specialty characters is far easier than on Windows, where my experience has been that one must open a "character palette" and pick things out one-by-one.
It would be a great keyboard for aspiring touch-typists :)
Anyone know how to get my Dell laptop to type in Swahili? I'm going to try to reverse the 529 scams so I can outwit some poor unsuspecting African living in a mudhut with a T1 line.
I'm a die hard Apple user, so I'm hopelessly biased, but...
Apple is known for their customer support, it's second to none in the computer world. I've worked in IT before and spend 40 frustrating minutes trying to reach Dell support, which turns out to be someone in India named "Bob" or something who can't help or speak English. Apple support is legendary.
Not sure what happened here, probably a switched order like others have said.
This is odd because most US repair centers cannot get the foreign language keyboards, even if they want them. They are only available overseas. There were several times when I had to replace foreign keyboards with US ones because we could not get the foreign parts easily.
There was one instance where I opened a service parts box and removed a foreign keyboard (skandinavian layout), but I just pulled another service part because I care about getting things like that right.
The most likely explanation I can think of, having Apple repair experience:
1) A service part is missorted and sent to some distribution hub. It is then boxed as a keyboard service part and sent to a service provider.
2) The service provider pulls the keyboard to replace the bad one, and either doesn't notice that it is in german, or doesn't care because they don't want to expend another service part.
Even as a random mistake, this should be exceedingly rare for any repair facility in the US, since they only get a foreign keyboard by mistake.
Did the guy ever try to contact Apple to get this fixed again?
Not that a foreign keyboard matters. I ordered a computer from woot to find it had a half-Italian keyboard. It naturally works just fine, it's just aesthetically unpleasing.
@ludwigk:
Very true. We have a philosophy professor at the college I work for who really wanted a laptop with a German keyboard, and was considering flying to Germany to get one. One of our techs finally ended up talking Lenovo England into selling us a replacement so we could swap it with a new T-series.
@VidurChalciope: I had my first generation macbook prod sent in for repairs about 8 months ago, and apple sent it back to me 'fixed' without actually doing any of the repair work. I called up apple, said, 'uhm, what's up?' got bounced around on the phone for a few hours and ended up with a new macbook pro. One of the guys who I talked to at the local mac store said that this sort of thing doesn't happen very often, but when it does apple is quick to take care of it.
Its not just Apple that screws things up, I had to send my Fujitsu back 3 times to get a simple repair completed. One time they returned it with a note that said they have replaced a part and the old part was still there!
Oh well, bless their hearts.
Too bad I got the sh*t end of the stick from Apple and my school at that. Was sold a "Refurbished" macbook pro, when I paid for a new one.. everything from the lcd screen to a failing hard drive to a jacked up shell and power supply. Been given the run around for about a year now. I got all of my documents and proof that both my school and Apple requested, and no one seems to do anything about it and denies my request to replace the unit or repair. Countless Case numbers, Faxes, 800 numbers, Direct numbers, Mac "Geniuses", emails, even a letter to Steve Jobs personally! The endless circle of the broken record for me.. Goodtimes... Personally I can't stand Apple's support. Now I'm supposed to fork out my own cash if I want to use my macbook?.. small claims court against my school and apple maybe?.. I shouldn't have had to go through that to use an Apple product. I love Apple. Anyways I'll shut up now lol..
Shhh...don't wave it around, or everyone else will want one too!
@Corydon: The best solution in Windows (XP and Vista) is to change your keyboard to the US International setting - that gets you very intuitive key combos for characters found in the major European languages.
AHA! You know who else had a German keyboard....
@TWinter: Aha! So that's how it's done...And all this time Microsoft was sending me into character map and having me remember weird Alt key combinations. Thanks!
Maybe he'd find it useful. You never know when you might need an Ø,Å or Æ :)
Hey. Why or should I say, who is responsible for the damaged bezel in the first place? The user damaged it.
The tech likely got the part number crossed from Apple's pricelist (rather than order the part from the depot). Or they rushed to get this out. I wonder how they even got a German keyboard shipped to them?
I love how someone has a blog and can rant without reasonably acknowledging their fault as well.
PS: Apple needs to offer a Complete Care Warranty with 100% replacement of accidental damage, just like Dell! Imagine that...a PC maker will replace your entire unit for same price Apple charges you NOT to. I'm a PC...
I have had Apple computers since 1985 when I got my first on the student discount at the University of Michigan, and I've had Applecare since they've had it, and it's always been fantastic. I once had a computer completely replaced by them. And they've always been just great on the phone.
Did this guy call Apple back? Mistakes happen. Technicians are people. They've always made good on everything for me, and they've had smart people working for them and a level of service that other companies should emulate.
Oh yeah, and I met my boyfriend in the Apple store at the Grove six years ago. All and all, I'm a pretty thrilled Apple customer.
Das ist gut, ja?
@ShariC: Sure you can type Japanese on an English keyboard, but the symbols are what throw you off. I've been using imported Japanese laptops for the past few years and it's disorienting going back and forth. The period, comma, and a couple other symbols are the same and that's it. On the Japanese keyboards @ is its own key (Shift-2 is quote marks now), _ is Shift-\, colon is a separate key too (* is shift-:), etc. The keys don't match up to a US keyboard (physically) either.
@shufflemoomin: Aren't those Scandinavian?
And out of curiosity, how would you pronounce "SÆtersdal"?
@firestarsolo: I type on a Hello Kitty keyboard that has Japanese characters along with the standard English set at work. I never look at the keys anyway so it really makes no difference. I liked it because it was cute and this keyboard has the "correct" layout for us old skoolers ie. big enter key and the |\ key below it.
At my last job, when my coworker went on vacation, we reordered the letters on his keyboard into alphabetical order... Almost a year later and he hasn't moved them back yet.
It's amazing how good muscle memory can be on this stuff - as long as you don't look at the keys, you're gold.
the letters are pretty much the same, right? he should just pop them out and rearrange the layout for an "artistic" look. maybe foreign letters could be the new trend.
@TheWillow: When I was younger I didn't want my brother to use my computer (He would use it without asking me. Ofcourse I could NEVER use his things... but it was ok for him to use mine) Anyway I figured out that he cannot type properly without looking.. so I pulled all the keys off my keyboard and scrambled them around.. I made funny sayings like "Matt Sucks" or something.. but anyway.. since I can type without looking I just left it that way.. He was mad.. but impressed with my ingenuity. Heh.
My guess: They mixed up the work order for the computer at the repair place, popped in the wrong keyboard, and sent it back. For the lost time on the wrong repair, Apple seriously owes this person. I imagine Apple has someone reading the Consumerist, but I'd email Steve Jobs about this for good measure...
@Kimaroo: I would LOVE this to happen! I'm a touch-typist too, although I'm not as familiar with the special keys on macs that I am on PCs.
This would be the Apfel Makintosch I assume...
@Corydon: It's pretty easy, and very intuitive. Many of the key combinations involve the option key and a keystroke which somehow makes sense (u for an umlaut, n for a tilde above a character, e for an accent character), and then the character you want that modifier to appear over.
You can read more about this at [techpaedia.com]
I had a similar experience that was resolved with the help of the Apple store at the Stanford Shopping Center. My RAM died on my PowerBook G4 17" and I took it there to get it replaced. It was going to be a flat repair fee so I decided to have them fix some wear & tear on the chassis, specifically the security slot.
It gets back a week later and it boots up fine, but they said that the damage to the slot was "cosmetic". I was only billed for the RAM and I showed the Genius there the repair order and the damage. He then authorized the repair and I sent it back later and got the chassis fixed at no additional cost to me.
I recommend getting it fixed from the Apple Store since you can get someone to look at the computer there so that if there are any problems with the repair they can order it corrected on their dime.
I've had about eight repairs for Apple products in the past dozen years or so. I can tell you this: six of those repairs were flawless, with problem fixed the first time around, and turnaround occurring sooner than promised!
For the two that didn't go as planned, however, those two repairs turned my life into a living hell. Each involved sending back the product 3-4 times as issue wasn't resolved, with ending resolution measured in months instead of days; for the last of these nightmares, my experience was similar the one mentioned in the article. Not only was the repair not done, instead of sending back the original (undamaged) power source, they sent back a power source with frayed wiring as if either there was an extreme short or pet that gnawed through.
Granted, through enough patience and complaining, Apple eventually sent me two new computers with upgraded specs. It did require a lot of patience and perserverance on my part, however.
90% + of the time, Apple has an awesome service dept. The times they do mess up, however, can be legendary.
You vill use der Deutschemaschine und you vill enchoy it, schwein!
I had the exact same thing happen to me. I looked at the tech repair id and it's exactly the same. This was the second time that they tried to fix my macbook air correctly. It's been 2 months. I still don't have my computer because I refused to take it from the store after I saw that it had a European keyboard. I've talked to the myapple number 5 times and driven back and forth to the store 5 times in this 2 month ordeal. Oh btw I have already paid them $550 to fix the original damage. I want my money back and my computer fixed correctly. I totally feel your pain, Paul.
Perfectly stated, I've always had excellent service as well.
doofi.