Ahh, the pleasures of emailing Steve Jobs. Once again a reader writes in to tell us that after a warranty repair was denied, emailing Steve Jobs resulted in, uh, undenial. Undenial is not a word, but it is what happens when you email Steve Jobs.

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to write in to tell you how much Apple’s Executive Support rocks!

Two weekends ago I had a problem with my old iBook G3. The problem was the logic board got fried and was supposed to be covered under the iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program (http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/). I called their Customer Relations department on Thursday and pleaded my case. They told me I was 9 months late and they would not cover the repair under the program. Naturally, I wrote a letter to Steve Jobs.

On Friday I got a call from Dina in the executive relations department. She said she had received my letter and would have no problem extending the program to cover my laptop. She patched me through to a support engineer who did few minutes of troubleshooting with me to make sure they properly diagnosed the problem. He said what I was experiencing did sound like it was the iBook logic board problem. He said they would replace the logic board, PRAM and the screen to make sure they got it and everything in between fixed. The engineer then said he would be dispatching a prepaid box to my door.

Monday morning I got a call from Dina again. She told me that according to the tracking information the prepaid box was delivered to my house this morning. I got home that evening, and there it was. I packaged up my iBook according to the instructions in the box (they even put tape in there!) and called DHL on Tuesday morning for a pickup.

Thursday (yesterday) morning I get another call from Dina. This time she said FedEx made an attempt to deliver my repaired iBook, however no one was at home to accept the package. I told her I was at work and wouldn’t be home until around 5:30 EST. She said she would call FedEx and have them try again later in the day. Shortly after getting home the doorbell rings and its FedEx.

To make a long story short: I wrote Apple a letter last Thursday. Got a call from Dina on last Friday, and my almost-new-except-for-the-hard-drive repaired iBook the following Thursday (yesterday), all without me having to fork over a penny. In less than a weeks time the whole process was executed from start to finish.

This is what I call excellent customer service!

Chris

Dina, who are you? You’re like a superhero or something. Do you have a cape? Moral: If Apple denies your warranty, try emailing Steve Jobs. Write a good letter though. Don’t send him a “boycott gas on May 15” forward. He hates those. sjobs@apple.com.

(Photo: Lazy_Lightening)

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