Dianchi Daole!

Finally! My G4 Powerbook Battery Replacement, originally uploaded by timbeckenham.

I'm not very happy with Apple Customer service. In earlier entries I've written about the problems receiving my Apple Powerbook replacement battery. I've been very frustrated by dealing with Apple Australia during this. I took the opportunity to replace my battery during an extended visit back home in Oz when I was informed that I would be supplied with another battery within the duration of my stay. Nuh'uh! As of Monday evening this week, it took 10 weeks for my Powerbook replacement battery to arrive in my hot little hands. That's +6 weeks from the 3 to 4 weeks I was originally told.

Understandably, I have 'special circumstances' that required co-ordination of both Apple Australia & Apple China to deliver my battery. The scary thing was that this arrangement had been established over 6 FUCKING weeks ago. For six weeks, no one bothered to pull their their proverbial finger out to deliver this battery. For the past 3 weeks, I had called Apple Australia to determine the status of this replacement, but was met with stone-wall responses from three separate customer service representatives along the lines of....

"Hmm, that should've been done by now, I'll look into it".

No sh!t Sherlock! It's amazing what a threat to deliver a letter of complaint, and then a letter from a solicitor can do to motivate a bunch of people and a company. I felt as though resorting to the John Laws/Alan Jones demographic's standard response of "I've got a good mind to write a letter about this..." was a little outside my generation's slacker response - but there you go. After this threat, it took 3 working days to receive my battery after this last phone call. It looks as though I have learnt something from my time working for 'The Man'.

I have been informed that person handling my case was dealing with torn stomach muscles. Ok, that's bad. But the problem is that Apple as an organisation hadn't deemed it necessary to reassign the case to a capable agent? I still haven't been informed why the person's case hadn't been dealt with in a timely manner, like passing it back into the work chain? The disdain that I've been treated with during this case is fucked. If Apple was serious about their customers, they would have provided replacement batteries upfront to those people who bought (through no fault of their own) poorly-engineered laptop batteries. Fucking terrible Apple. Service like this will make people switch to Mac for sure.

The only good thing about this is that I'm mobile and able to change my workspace at will. It's good to get out of the apartment I've been relegated to most of the day.

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