Feedback

Since Apple seems to have no mechanism to provide feedback on Apple Care and openly states they won't respond to comments submitted through Product Feedback, I'm leaving this in discussion in the hope that a) someone actually responds and b) others will see this and be forewarned.

My 1 year-old Macbook Pro died last week. Wouldn't turn on, chime, backlight, anything. Completely bricked. I called customer service who had me unsuccessfully run through some power cycle shortcuts before telling me I needed to take it into the apple store for a genius bar appointment.

Took the computer in and was told that it seems to logic board might have died, and that they'd need to send it off to the repair center. They asked if I had a recent backup, and I was clear that I did not, because each time I've tried to complete one in the past 5 months (with a supposedly 'fast' USB-C external HDD also purchased from apple), I've had to abandon it due to it taken hours to complete. I was emphatic that I needed the data on the hard drive, which I use for work, and has intellectual property that I had not yet synced with any cloud-based service.

They asked for my password, which I was reluctant to give, but did so after they said that the repair center would wipe my machine if they could not log in. I handed over my password, emphasizing again that in no scenario should they wipe the HDD. I was assured that I would receive a phone call should they need to wipe my hard drive prior to them doing so. Had this happened, I'd have asked them to send it back and would have contacted a data recovery service. I never received a call.

Fast forward a few days and I get an e-mail that my machine is ready to pick up. Surprise surprise, I'm handed a completely wiped machine. The apple store rep seemed to have no knowledge of my previous assertions that the machine was not to be wiped under any circumstances, and basically blamed everything on the repair center, which was described in a way that makes them sound like a bunch of uncontrollable, heartless, machine-wiping cowboys who don't read notes or communicate with customers. I was pretty furious at this point, having received a half-apology and no semblance of restitution, partial refund on applecare, 5% discount, NOTHING. Just a "hey, this is what happens with the repair center, we'll pass on your feedback." They couldn't even tell me why the malfunction happened in the first place.

They did offer to call the repair center and ask that they retrieve the old logic board to be sent back to me, so that I could pay out of pocket to try and recover some of the data, which I would have done in the first place had they been honest about their process. Then I got a phone call today saying that the logic board, the hard drive, and with it all of my data, had been destroyed already. I'm now out of pocket on apple care, and have lost considerable money through the intellectual property and client work that was destroyed with it.

I've spent the best part of $10,000 on Apple products and AppleCare over the past few years. This level of service and complete lack of willingness to problem solve or provide restitution is really disheartening, and for the first time has made me wonder why I spent so much on overpriced products when this is the level of service I get when one fails. I'm sure I sign away all legal rights when I check the old "agree" button, but given that I was seemingly flatly lied to and my emphatic instructions about not destroying my data were blatantly ignored, I'll explore legal options should I not receive an adequate response to this message. This isn't customer service, it's just Apple thumbing their nose at one of their best customers that they have significantly let down because they know they can afford to lose me.