Apple service providers

[ben@bpfh.net]

On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 04:40:25PM +0100, Martin A. Brooks wrote:
>Simon Wilcox wrote:
>>Anyone have recommendations/horror stories to share ?
>
>As the person who handled all of Fotango's apple problems, we used 
>http://www.mrsystems.co.uk/ on the basis they were closest to the 
>office.  The service was, imo, appaling, but apparently that's par for 
>the course for AppleCare, where it's okay for you to be without your 
>computer for a couple of weeks.

Avoid MR like the plague.

My MBP had a dodgy RAM stick, which was trivial to diagnose with memtest.

MR listened attentively to my description of the issue, and took my MBP, 
promising to call me the following day. 4 days later, after a series of 
increasingly vague phonecalls, I came to collect my MBP, which they hadn't
so much as touched.

I went straight to the Apple Store, where I was given the usual flannel
about there not being any appointments for several days. I made a very
polite, slightly louder than usual talking scene about having paid for my
AppleCare, etc and was seen by a Genius immediately after delivering the
line: "So what you're saying is that such a high percentage of Apple hardware
is defective, that you're unable to keep enough technical staff on hand
to deal with the issues?"

The Genius found the dodgy RAM in about 5 minutes, and I was fixed and on
my way in another 10.

Ben