The IT Nerd

I like Apple products. But a very negative experience that has been ongoing since November of last year has seriously made me reconsider being part of the ecosystem. Let’s start from the beginning.

Back in November of last year, I had an issue with the keyboard on my MacBook Pro. Specifically the “C” key would not work. No problem I figured. I took a visit to my local Apple Store after making a Genius Bar appointment. The Genius was able to diagnose it instantly and tried to repair it by replacing the specific key. That didn’t work so he ordered a new top case which includes a keyboard, battery, and trackpad and sent me home with my MacBook Pro. It came in a few days later and I took my MacBook Pro and it was promised to me five days later.

That’s where my problems began.

Five days came and went and I heard nothing from Apple. I called in and got the run around. And only when I forced the issue did I get an answer. They replaced the top case and discovered that the ambient light sensor was faulty. I was then told that they would put a “rush” on my repair by trying a new screen to see if it would fix my issue. Another day went by and nothing. That’s when I phoned the Apple Store again and pressed the issue again. I got a senior repair tech who said that he would order a new logic board (aka, the main system board) as the screen didn’t fix the issue. He assured me that he would put a new “rush” on getting the logic board into the store and into my computer. Three days after that I got a call saying that my MacBook Pro was ready.

Let me stop here for a second before I go on. I get it that stuff happens when you’re in the business of repairing stuff. But to force the customer to call in to get information on their status of their repair rather than being proactive really leaves a bad taste in the customer’s mouth. And frankly, a company like Apple should know better.

Back to the story.

I got the MacBook home, did a Time Machine restore and I thought all was fine. Except that it wasn’t. When I tried to set up Apple Pay, I got this error message:

Now one thing that I should point out is that the Apple Store asked me to remove my MacBook Pro from my Apple ID account so that the could facilitate the repair. I am guessing that this had something to do with this issue for reasons that I will get to in a moment. As part of my troubleshooting, I noted that the MacBook Pro still had the credit cards that I was trying to add associated with it. I tried to delete them from the computer, as well as from iCloud with no success as they came back within seconds. This ties into my theory about something about my Apple ID being messed up. While I figured that this was Apple’s issue, to be safe I contacted both banks associated with the credit cards in question. After 45+ minutes with each bank, they determined that there should be no reason why I shouldn’t be able to add these cards, and this was clearly Apple’s issue. And to be extra safe, I did a clean install of the operating system as that is what Apple usually falls back on when someone has an issue with a Mac. No change to the behaviour. That’s when I called Apple. And that’s really where the nightmare began. Apple opened a case, then after going through circle of troubleshooting, failing to resolve the issue, pass me along to someone else four times, claimed that the cards would disappear on their own in five days and they would follow up with me to confirm that happened.

Except they never contacted me.

So when they didn’t follow up with me when they promised to, I phoned in again. then after again going through circle of troubleshooting, failing to resolve the issue, pass me along to someone else four more times, they said that they would escalate the issue and I would hear from them in a couple of days.

I never heard from them and attempts to follow up failed. Then I discovered that the case had been closed. At this point I figured that I wasted enough time on this. So I forgot about it as clearly Apple didn’t care enough to solve this issue.That changed today with macOS Ventura 13.2.1 hit the streets. I updated and happened to check my Apple ID and found that the cards had been deleted. Now I don’t know if this Ventura update or just time was the reason why the cards were no longer present. But I decided to try and add a card. Sure enough, it failed with the same error message. So I called Apple and quoted the original case number. And then went through five people. Yes five people. All of which were playing the game of “blame the victim” by saying things like it was my network, I should not have done a Time Machine restore, go talk to my bank as it’s their fault, etc. When I kept calling them on it, the fifth guy I spoke to blamed the fact that I had installed beta software. Which was a bold faced lie as I was running a production version of macOS Ventura 13.2.1. I even offered to show him via Apple’s screen sharing feature. But he stuck to his story. Either he was misinformed, or he was just trying to get me off the phone. Either way this really left a bad taste in my mouth. And since we were engaging in a circular argument, I just ended the call.

So, I’m resigned to the fact that Apple Pay isn’t going to work on my MacBook Pro. And I’ve discovered on Reddit at least one other person who has the same issue:

So seeing as I am not the only person that has this issue, Apple clearly has an issue that they don’t want to own. And as a result, their customers are on the short end of the stick. That’s really doesn’t reflect well on Apple. And as a result several things have happened or are going to happen:

• When customer ask me if they should get a Mac, I will simply say that their hardware is fine. But their after service support leaves a lot to be desired. And the latter is more important than the former.
• I was just about to pull the trigger to get an M2 Pro Mac mini for the purposes of running my Zwift setup. But that’s not going to happen as I am not going to give Apple any more of my money as I feel that the after sales support is simply not there. Instead, I will be investigating a small form factor PC build.

So, am I going to dump my Apple hardware? No. At least not yet. But as my hardware and accessories from Apple fall out of AppleCare, and I need to look for replacements, PC’s are on the table for the first time in over a decade. The fact is that I have been around long enough to remember when Apple’s after sales support was top notch. But those days are clearly over based on this experience. Which means that I will have to make my future purchasing decisions based on the fact that Apple is no longer the company that it once was. Now I am free to be proven wrong. But I don’t think I am as even if Apple reads this, I seriously doubt that I will get a response from them as they are not the sort of company to ever apologize for screwing up. Which means that they will have one less loyal customer as a result.

This entry was posted on February 13, 2023 at 8:16 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.