Apple generally tends to be good at customer service, it's part of the whole user experience thing which has helped bring Apple back from the dead. this fact makes my recent trip to the Genius Bar all the more disappointing.
my daughter was using her mother's macbook to watch a DVD while on vacation, and let the battery run all the way down. it appears that the battery was/is in the process of failing, and the laptop's timers/counters for tracking battery status weren't in sync with the actual state of the battery. the result was a very hard shutdown, and something got corrupted - like maybe the binary of finder, based on the subsequent behavior of the macbook. now at this point, i don't actually know that the battery is the problem.
once we got things charged back up, boots were painfully slow, and logins failed partway through -- finder appeared to launch then crash. we were on vacation, so i didn't have the install dvd. two days ago, back at home, i tried to boot from the install disk only to discover it had the exact same behavior as my own macbook pro had displayed when the pro's battery was dead. note that i haven't put two-and-two together yet, i haven't yet become aware that defunct laptop batteries are the common issue.
so i figure to make an appointment at the genius bar at the local apple store, but i go online and discover they apparently want me to try phone support first. that's ok, the laptop is still covered by applecare, so i request support and wait for their call. they call back fairly soon, and it turns out that they're stumped by the problem two. we spend a lot of time on it, then get a genius bar appointment set up for 2pm the next day (yesterday as i type this).
i show up slightly early for the appointment, figuring to go check in right away and then kill time, except now the customer service starts to decay a little (it was fine up to now.) the guy doing the check in is no where to be found. after 5 or so minutes, he finally shows up. i get checked in, and finally someone is assigned to me at about 2:20. the guy is fairly knowledgeable. the diagnostics show a bad battery, but we agree that it's plugged in, so stuff should work. we also agree that the not booting from dvd is something that needs to be addressed, and plug in a USB drive with the install images. that works fine, and we run an install-and-archive to replace the broken copy of Leopard with a good one while preserving all the personal files and applications. it's going to take a while, so the apple guy goes off to handle another customer while the install happens. i presume after the install is verified as successful, he'll be back to look at the can't-boot-from-dvd problem.
except he never comes back. the install-and-archive finishes, logins work properly. i see that he's handling a customer with a macbook of some sort that needs to be sent to the depot, i figure that can take a while. in the meantime i install a bunch of the updates to Leopard. this takes a while, and he still never comes back, clearly moving on to other customers (he actually headed behind the counter several times, carefully avoiding any eye contact with me.)
finally, at 4pm i give up, and get one of the other employees to unplug the power brick from behind the counter so i can leave.
so here are the issues:
- this was an open ticket that was never properly closed, and hasn't been followed up on. this is a major faux pas in any competent customer service organization
- there doesn't seem to be any sort of customer service manager or shift leader watching, i sat at that counter waiting a long time. the other genius bar staff mostly pretended to ignore me. the one who gave me the brick back seemed relieved i was leaving. a customer who is left sitting for an extended period of time, until they get to the point of simply walking out is something that you would think might be of concern.
i have subsequently figured out that macbooks and macbook pros with bad batteries may not boot from DVDs, this turns out to have been the case for both laptops. it's interesting to me that both apple phone support and the genius bar folks don't seem to know this. i'm 2 for 2 on it, but then small sample size does apply.