My shocking visit to the Apple Genius Bar
For years, I've asserted that in selling products and building up brand loyalty, feelings are more important than rational things. People are more likely to make purchase decisions based on emotions than intellect. Oftentimes, particularly with brands that evoke loyalty, buyers' emotional responses are irrational. I see this characteristic among hardcore Apple fans, who brisk at what they perceive to be the slightest criticism of the company or its products. I must say that I'm feeling surprisingly good about Apple today. For the second time in nearly three years, Apple gave me a new computer to replace one recently purchased -- each a MacBook Air. But is it good customer service or faulty products? When the Air was Bad My more recent saga started on March 1st, when the 11.6-inch MacBook Air I purchased in November fatally crashed, just as my workday was beginning. I temporarily switched to Google's Cr-48 laptop running Chrome OS, resulting in a surprisingly good week-long user experience. Based on Air's behavior over several days prior to its failure, and final crash, I suspected hard drive failure, even though Air uses flash memory (e.g., the drive has no moving parts). Later that day, I hauled the ailing Air to Apple Store Fashion Valley, where a Genius ran tests. According to his notes: "Ran FSCK, unit had multiple issues" and "repair errored out with Signal 8 and could not be repaired." The Apple Genius also suspected hard drive failure and ordered a 128GB flash replacement. I left the Genius Bar not feeling too good about Apple or its products. In June 2008, I hauled a first-generation MacBook Air into Apple Store UTC (both shops are in San Diego, Calif.), also for hard drive failure. I started using the computer two months earlier. The store didn't have facilities to replace the drive, so the Apple Genius gave me a new MacBook Air, to my complete surprise. The hard drive on that computer failed in September 2010. I had a local Mac repair shop replace the dead drive with a 64GB SSD. A very good friend had been pining for my newer Air, and he expressed great interest in buying it following the repair. I was ready to give it up and move over to Google's cloud computer. I liked the Chrome OS experience that much. Apple completed the repair on March 3rd, with unexpected results. Mac OS X "Snow Leopard" wouldn't install after replacing the flash drive. In the end, the Apple Store replaced the logic board! WTH? I received the computer with new logic board and the old flash drive. I wasn't feeling exactly good about that. No disrespect to the Apple employee(s) who serviced the laptop, the store isn't exactly a clean-room environment like the factory (or as I suppose it to be). I was feeling even more like selling the computer to my friend. But I wanted to make sure everything was OK with the Mac, too. So I continued using the Cr-48 as my primary machine, while slowly setting up the MacBook Air. That experience deserves calling out. I used to think Macs were so easy to set up, particularly compared to Windows machines. No longer. MobileMe sync restored address book, bookmarks, calendar and email settings, among other things, which got me basically going quickly. But there was still the process of reinstalling applications. By comparison, Google's cloud is instant, and that's a huge advantage Chrome OS has over Mac OS X or Windows. The user logs into his or her Google account and everything is there and ready to use, including Web Applications. Anyone can have this experience using Chrome 10, right now. Doing the Right Thing On the afternoon of March 9, I started using MacBook Air as my primary computer. Then trouble began. The computer's earlier breakdown started with several crashes to a pale-colored background with air yeezy no icons or anything else there. Applications behaved erratically over four or five days before the eventual fatal crash. Suddenly, and quite shockingly, the crashes returned; there was a post-repair problem. I warmed up the Cr-48, logged onto the local store's website and booked another appointment for the Apple Genius Bar. Hours later, I grimly greeted another Apple Genius. His initial tests found nothing obviously wrong with the computer, although the store could run more intensive tests overnight that might reveal something. I was flummoxed. "You guys replaced the logic board. What else is in there besides the flash drive?" I asked the Genius. Not much. He started to say something about a new computer, but stopped mid sentence. He was looking at a screen and could see that my Air was a configure-to-order model. "What would make it right for you?" he asked. I finished what he started to say but stopped short of: A new laptop -- seeing that's what he wanted to do. I told him that in my experience Apple stores typically carry the highest CTO configs for sale just not on display. According to his inventory list, the only non-standard model had 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of memory and 128GB flash drive. But my Air had the 1.6GHz processor. I seriously considered swapping down. "Let me see what I can do," and he left. A few minutes later the Genius returned with a new boxed, MacBook Air; he pointed to the configuration label. He found my exact configuration. "I didn't know we carried these," he said. Less than five minutes later, I walked out of the Apple Store with a new computer. Yeah, I was feeling pretty damn good about Apple. Now that is customer service.