Wayne Priestley

Today Sunday 8th March 09 I visited the Liverpool One Apple Store.

It was a 3½ hour drive from my home, not the closest Apple Store but only an extra 30 minutes drive and I hadn’t been there before so I thought for the sake of 30 minutes I would visit a store I’d never been to before.

The reason for the visit was to have my daughters Mac Book looked at by an Apple Genius as she had a power problem.

Her battery was not charging and when the power cable was pulled out the Mac Book would instantly turn off.

It was an interesting drive, we experienced all weather conditions from blazing sun to snow blizzards.

When we got there we headed for Starbucks for a drink as I had about an hour to kill before my 3 pm appointment.

Once I got to see the Genius that afternoon I spent a few minutes telling him about the problem, I explained that the Mac Book was no longer covered under the 12 month warranty and I did not have Applecare for it.

The Genius swapped out the battery for one of their own and it instantly started charging so we knew it was a battery issue.

He plugged in a iPod Nano which he said had a battery diagnostic program on it and booted up the Mac Book.

A few seconds later a graphic appeared on the Mac Book screen with all the information about the battery.

My eyes were drawn straight to the bit that said “Battery BAD”…

All the graphics were red and reading through the rest of the information it was clear that there was to be no hope of a fix.

At the bottom of all the information displayed on the screen was a code number generated by the diagnostic program.

The Genius took this number and told me he was going to look up a few things and see if there was anything he could do.

A few minutes later he returned and told me that the code that was generated was unable to allow him to replace the battery free of charge especially since the Mac Book was out of warranty.

It wasn’t the news I wanted to hear from him, but all was not lost.
He said that because the Mac Book was only a month or so out of warranty that he thought the right thing to do was to replace it free of charge in the interests of customer service.
He would adjust the paper work accordingly.

I was once again a happy chap.

So off I went completely satisfied with Apples customer service in the same way I have read about from so many people in the past.

On the way out of the shop I stopped to have a look at the new 17″ MBP just to see how nice they were in the flesh.

I don’t know if it was just me or the fact that I was in such a good mood about the customer service I received but I decided that I would be buying myself one as soon as Snow Leopard is released.

This is not a selfish act from me, I was planning on buying my son a iMac to replace his PC as it hasn’t got much life left in it.

He wanted a laptop so he could move around the house with it, but for the money I had to spend he would be getting a 13″ screen which he was not looking forward to.

So it got me thinking, the new 17″ MBP, I could put a little extra money into the pot and buy the new 17″ MBP and give my son my 17″ MBP.

It was in some part down to the service and I’m sure if I had walked out empty handed I wouldn’t have stopped to admire the MBP.

So you could say by the Genius giving me a £90 battery for free, Apple will make another £2000.00 from me.

WOW.. is it going to work out as a £2000.00 battery