Letter
to the Editor, MacWorld
I
switched to Apple products after years of cursing Windows and Android-based
systems, spending $3000 on two Macbook Pros and an iPhone 5c within the last
year. What a mistake!
My
Macbook crashed on me after less than 6 months, taking me 8-10 hours to read
forums, reinstalling the OS, and recovering from a Time Machine
backup. Next, my iPhone 5C froze while on vacation. After finding our way
back to the hotel using non-technological resources (asking for directions and
following signs), I spent much of the next two days on the phone with Apple
support (Adranna) instead of relaxing on the beach or taking in the sights.
Restoring the phone did not work, so Adrianna told me I needed to have the
phone replaced when I got home.
Long
story short, she told me I could upgrade to a 5S due to the fact that I lost
confidence in the 5C, but Apple refused to honor her promise, stating
"policy prohibits a from exchanging to another model even when the
customer offers to pay the difference", which I was. After talking to
numerous employees, being called a liar, and expressing my disappointment about
Apple's products and customer service with senior customer service reps, I have
up and had the iPhone replaced.
Over
the past month, I have spent an additional 50-60 hours on the phone
partitioning my Macbook's hard drive, backing up my data, wiping the hard drive
clean, and reinstalling MacOS and transferring my data after the piece of junk
locked-up again. I had to deal with chronic slowness and THE BLUE SCREEN OF
DEATH on my PC, but NEVER HAD A COMPUTER CRASH in the decades of using
non-Apple products!
I hag
expressed my dismay with each of the 10-15 Apple employees I have spoken to
over the past few months and they only confirmed my concerns ... APPLE DOES NOT
CARE ABOUT INDIVIDUAL CONSUMERS AND REFUSES TO DO ANYTHING OTHER THAN PLACATE
ME. As an Apple investor (owner of $25,000 to $50,000 in Apple shares at any
given time) and American consumer, I am appalled by the lack customer service
and support I have experienced at the hands of another institution that terrorizes
consumers with impunity. Needless to say, I will never spend another penny on
Apple products. All consumers and shareholders should be warned and concerned.
C.T.
Sorrentino, LtCol, USAF (Ret)
aka
CombatActivist
Read
more detail about my experience:
On a
recent trip to Puerto Rico to film a travel video and review hotels,
restaurants, and tourist attractions, my iPhone died mid-trip. Using my phone
for navigation on an island well known for difficulty locating addresses,
taking photos and filming video, uploading them along with check-ins, reviews,
and tips on Yelp (where I am an "Elite '14 member), TripAdvisor (I am a
"Senior Contributor"), Foursquare, and Facebook pages, and locating
attractions, restaurants, parks, and beaches, our visit literally came to a
standstill when my 3-month old iPhone 5c (unlocked for Family Mobile - $600)
stopped responding.
We
were 50 miles from our hotel in San Germán when my nearly fully (80%) charged
phone went dark. Having used Waze's navigation and social
media app to get there, we were suddenly stranded in an unfamiliar area
with no way to get back. Unsure how to return to Rincón where we were staying,
I called Apple iPhone customer service using my wife's phone. Over the next 30-40
minutes, I was told that there was no Apple Store in Puerto Rico and that I had
to connect my phone to my computer (back in the room), connecting to iTunes to
see if I could get the phone to work.
We
figured out how to get back to the hotel on our own and I plugged the iPhone in
to my computer, but nothing happened. I then plugged the phone into the adapter
and electric socket to charge it overnight and went to bed. When we awoke, the
phone was back on, but it quickly went dark again and would not respond no
matter how long I pushed the start button. It was time to call Apple again.
The
iPhone technical support representative's name was Adreana and she was very
nice and helpful. She told me to hold down the "on/off button" and
"back" button simultaneously for 10 seconds and low-and-behold
... the phone came on! Why did the rep I called from San Germán not tell
me about this "hard start" feature, allowing us to possibly navigate
our way back to Rincón using Waze instead of winging-it?
I
spent over an hour-and-a-half on the phone with Adreanna, finally having to
reset the phone from a back-up I had fortunately made on my computer two days
earlier. Because the reset was taking so long, she told me she would call me
back before going home to see how it went and determine whether or not the
problem was resolved. It was not. The phone had again gone dark shortly after
resetting it. Adreanna told me that I would have to have the phone replaced,
but because it was a Friday night and nothing could be done until Monday (???)
I would have to wait until I got home to go to an Apple Store to get a new
phone.
Adreanna
made the appointment for me the day after our scheduled return at the Leawood,
Kansas store, the closest to our home in Lawrence and a 40 mile drive each way.
I told her that I had wanted a 5s originally, but because I needed a phone and
because there was an unknown wait-time for the new 5s, I had no choice to get
the 5c. I also told her that I was displeased with the 5c and lost all
confidence in the model after what we had been through, asking if I could
upgrade to the 5s instead of replacing it with a 5c, EVEN OFFERING TO PAY THE
DIFFERENCE IN COST! She told me that would be likely and would call me at the
store at my designated appointment time (12:50pm CST - January 15, 2014) to
explain to "The Genius" what had been going on and to help me get the
phone I needed. I sent Apple the following message before departing Puerto
Rico:
"My
phone is still shutting down, it has ruined my vacation, and my travel video I
am producing. I am a food and travel critic, yelp Elite member, and TripAdvisor
SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR and depend on my phone for photos, videos and to write
reviews of places I am visiting. This is not just inconvenient, it has ruined
my vacation and disrupted my livelihood.
C.T.
Sorrentino, LtCol, USAF (Ret)
LPC,
NCC"
Arriving
at the Apple Store for my appointment the following Wednesday, I was passed
around like a volleyball from genius to genius, finally ending up with a guy
named "Chad" (who looked like the actor who plays Spock in the
new Star Trek movies, also a star of the hit series "Heroes").
Chad was not a good listener and the volume on a video they
had playing for an in-store workshop was so loud we could barely hear ourselves
think.
Chad
had me go through the entire very lengthy story again even though Adreanna and
the other reps had made extensive notes in the case they had created about my
problems. I told him that Adreanna would be calling any minute to explain
everything, telling him she had told me I could probably upgrade to the 5s ...
WHOAH ... HOLD IT RIGHT THERE PAL was the response I received as Chad quickly
squashed that possibility by stating that "Apple only makes model for
model exchanges, there's no way to upgrade according to Apple policy". I
told Chad that Adreanna explained that it was possible and asked if he could
check with a supervisor, which he did, only to return to tell me SORRY BUB!
I
asked him how it was that their employee, Adreanna, could tell me one thing only
to drive 80 miles and wasting an entire afternoon to be told it was not
possible? I would have had them ship a 5c to my house so it would be there when
I returned if I had been told "it was not possible" in the first
place, but he could obviously care less. He then asked me to tell him the whole
story again, as if he were trying to catch me in a lie, but his only solution
was to "call iPhone support, talk to Adreanna, and see if they would
upgrade my phone to a 5c". I left the store a very unsatisfied customer to
say the least!
Extremely
upset and distraught after getting the runaround from a company I had heard so
many wonderful things about and wasting so much time trying get help I
deserved, I waited until the next day to calm down before I called Adreanna. At
12:50pm on the nose, the phone rang and it was her, having noted the wrong date
in her calendar even though she had made the appointment.
I
told Adreanna what had occurred at the Apple Store and she told me "I will
inform my supervisor, we will call the store and get this fixed, and I will
call you back soon and let you know what happens". I waited ... and waited
... and waited, but Adreanna did not call. Odd! I waited a few days, thinking
that it was more complex than I had realized and believing that Adreanna surely
would not just blow me off, Apple would not do that to a customer who had spent
$3,000 over the past six months on their products ... OR WOULD THEY?
The
following week I called Apple again, having to explain the whole situation
again, but got the same answers ... "Adreanna? We have no idea who she is
and she never should have told you those things. You cannot upgrade to a 5s,
simple as that!" I asked to speak to a supervisor to find out why I had
been told I could upgrade, why I had wasted so much of my time on the phone and
driving back and forth to the store if it were in-fact impossible ...
"Don't you care about integrity? Don't you care about customer
service?" I asked.
I was
put on-hold for close to 30 minutes before a Customer Care Supervisor came on
the phone and while telling out of one side of her mouth how concerned she was
about my "customer satisfaction", insisted in a rather snotty tone of
voice that I was "lying" out of the other. "Our reps would never
tell you that you could upgrade, it's not our policy" she said. I said
"so are you calling me a liar", to which she replied "I did not
say that". No, she may not have said it in those words, but her comment
left little to the imagination regarding her opinion of my character.
As a
disabled-Veteran and retired Air Force officer, I take great pride in my
character, my integrity, and my honor. When she questioned my integrity, the
conversation was over as far as I was concerned. I was so upset that I told her
"you win, I am done wasting my time on a company that has so little
concern or respect for their customers as is the case with Apple".
I went
to the Apple Store in Colorado Springs to replace my 5c with a 5c "PER
APPLE POLICY" in early February. After telling the young
"genius" my story, for the 6th time at least, she brought the manager
over to talk to me. He said "we'll make an exception to policy based on
your experience and upgrade your 5C to a 5S. You'll have to return the new 5C,
get a refund, and purchase a 5S for an extra $100." I asked him WHY HE
COULD UPGRADE MY PHONE WHEN I HAD WASTED 30-40 HOURS AND DRIVEN OVER 100 MILES
ONLY TO BE TOLD IT WAS "IMPOSSIBLE"? I thanked him for his kind
offer, but by that time I was so fed-up with the way I had been treated, I told
him "thanks, but no thanks … I will not give another penny of my hard
earned money to Apple after the way I have been treated". I left the store
with my new 5C.
Now, my Macbook Pro 13" (mid-2012) is acting up again! I
had to reset the computer from a backup about 4 months ago following
instructions on the Apple Support site after it would not boot no matter what I
tried. That seemed to solve the problem, but Safari would not work (along with
a couple other programs), so while at the Colorado Springs Apple Store I asked
them to taker a look at it. They ended up keeping it overnight to reinstall the
operating system which I was told was "corrupt". Safari was working
again, but the other programs still had issues.
Two weeks ago when I could not
boot the computer or get past the grey screen with the white Apple and the
endlessly revolving wheel, not even in Safe Mode. Again, I tried
to solve the problem using Apple Support instructions, but
was unsuccessful, so I called their 800 number. The woman on the phone
said I would have to partition my hard drive, which she helped me do,
reinstall the operating system on the new partition, then follow the
instructions after the computer restarted. I and a doctors appointment
and could not stay on the phone, so she told me to call back if there were
any problems.
The computer started after reinstalling the OS on the new
partition and I followed the instructions as she had told me. It appeared
as though the computer was setting-up as if I had not used it before, which I
assumed was because of the new partition (which was eating up much more of my
500 GB hard drive by the way). When it asked me to select a backup to restore
from, the recent backups from the week before (when the computer had last been
working) were nowhere to be found on my 4TB network drive where I had
safely stored them for months. The only backups listed were from May 2013,
shortly after I bought the computer, so I assumed it wa again an issue with the
new partition.
Once the backup was installed, I immediately went to Microsoft
Outlook to check the emails I had not been able to view for nearly 6 days by
then. When I checked my folders, all of the emails between May and now were
gone … my work and personal email history was nowhere to be found,
including those from three large lawsuits I am involved in, my father's funeral
arrangements at Arlington National Cemetery in May, and documentation from
our (very challenging) tenants in Kansas City (among many others)! All of our
photos disappeared and the video on Puerto Rico I had spent dozens of hours
creating for my YouTube (CombatCritic's
TravelValue) channel was gone!
I called Apple again on March 12,
2014 to find out where my Outlook (.olm) file went as well as the backups from
two weeks ago so I can get back to work, recover critical emails, and locate my
Puerto Rico video that disappeared in iMovie during this process.
I spoke with
Andrew who helped me get permissions to the old partition of the hard-drive
where the missing files supposedly reside. Because the process took so long, he
had me call back later so that I could get some work done, promising to make "extensive
notes" so I would not have to explain for the umpteenth time to an Apple
Support Representative. Before I hung up, Andrew tried to sell me the
"extended warranty" because my warranty was to expire in 61 days. I
told Andrew that I have spent $3,000 on Apple products less than a year ago and
WILL NOT SPEND ANOTHER PENNY ON PRODUCTS THAT SHOULD LAST MUCH LONGER THAN
12-36 MONTHS ... thanks, but no thanks!
When I called back a few hours later
to continue with the next step, backing-up both partitions of the
hard-drive so we could then wipe the hard-drive clean and restore the computer
from its original (out-of-the-box) state with the files and programs I need
from the two partitions, Melissa #1 answered the phone.
Even though
Andrew had made "extensive notes", Melissa #1 acted as if she had
nothing to go on and made me explain most everything. She was obviously
clueless, making me wait on-hold while she asked her supervisors what to do
next. I had to guide her through the process even though she is supposed to be
"the expert". She finally decided that we should back-up the hard
drive my 1TB external hard drive (Western Digital - My Passport), but because
it would take several hours, I had to call back and go through the next step
with another technician. I explained again how disappointed I am in
Apple products, that I have wasted 40-50 hours of my time (between these
problems and the debacle with my iPhone 5C in January and February), and that I
am at wits-end. She placated me, as all other Apple employees have done,
with words of sympathy, but zero action or follow-through. We made an
appointment for 7:15pm to have a technician call me back to complete the next
steps (clear the hard drive and reinstall from back-up).
At 7:oopm, I checked
the back-up to see if had finished, but it still had 22 hours to go! I then
realized that Melissa #1's instructions were inadequate and the back-up was not
being made to My Passport, but to my 4TB network drive, exactly where she told
me it should not be saved. So at 7:15pm when Melissa #2 called back, I told her
what had happened and that I had initiated another back-up, this time to
My Passport, and that because it would take severel hours, I would have to
call back in the morning to proceed with the next steps.
March 13, 2014 -
10:21am (CST): I will update this post after the next phone call.
I am
done fighting with these social cretins, will use my iPhone and Mac until they
die (which should not take long based on my experience), and will go back to a
Windows or Android-based phone and a non-Apple computer when they do ... FOOL
ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU; FOOL ME TWICE ... AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN APPLE!
CombatCritic
Gives Apple, Inc. 1 Out of 10 Bombs for their poor products, customer
service, and judgment ... More Bombs Are Better!
Key
Words: Apple, computer, Mac, iPhone, 5c, 5s, Macbook Pro, Macbook, poor,
customer, service, integrity, honor, character, Institutional, terrorism,
InstitutionalTerrorism, CombatCritic
