+1 for Apple Customer Service

[Planter]

bought a used macbook pro intel i5, 2.4 ghz laptop off ebay. The guy I bought it from had loaded a bunch of software on it I didn't want, so I wiped the system, and attempted to reinstall from the recovery partition, but MAC has it to where you have to use your apple id associated with your account to finish the install of Lion. Even though I already had a copy I had burned to disc it wouldn't boot from the Lion disc, guess it's some sort of anti-piracy safeguard or something. The guy didn't include the original MAC OSX discs when I bought it either.

So I called Apple, explained the situation, they asked for the serial #, and then at no charge to me, they overnight Fed Ex'd me the MAC OS X 10.6.3 install discs to my front door, and from there I was able to upgrade to 10.6.8 by updating, used my Lion 10.7 disc, then upgraded by update to 10.7.2.

I've run into this with Windows in the past when buying PC's or laptop's PC, and Microsoft never once offered to send me a free copy of the OS, they always wanted me to pay, typically maybe offering to knock off $30 or $40. Not saying Microsoft doesn't or hasn't sent a free copy to anyone, but just never offered to me in the past and customer service is what makes a big difference to me with any company.

Big Thumbs Up for Apple's Customer Service Deptartment. That's what I call service!

 

[Satyr]

bought a used macbook pro intel i5, 2.4 ghz laptop off ebay. The guy I bought it from had loaded a bunch of software on it I didn't want, so I wiped the system, and attempted to reinstall from the recovery partition, but MAC has it to where you have to use your apple id associated with your account to finish the install of Lion. Even though I already had a copy I had burned to disc it wouldn't boot from the Lion disc, guess it's some sort of anti-piracy safeguard or something. The guy didn't include the original MAC OSX discs when I bought it either.

So I called Apple, explained the situation, they asked for the serial #, and then at no charge to me, they overnight Fed Ex'd me the MAC OS X 10.6.3 install discs to my front door, and from there I was able to upgrade to 10.6.8 by updating, used my Lion 10.7 disc, then upgraded by update to 10.7.2.

I've run into this with Windows in the past when buying PC's or laptop's PC, and Microsoft never once offered to send me a free copy of the OS, they always wanted me to pay, typically maybe offering to knock off $30 or $40. Not saying Microsoft doesn't or hasn't sent a free copy to anyone, but just never offered to me in the past and customer service is what makes a big difference to me with any company.

Big Thumbs Up for Apple's Customer Service Deptartment. That's what I call service!

That's pretty nice. The other benefit of Apple is that their operating systems are so much cheaper than Windows versions. It makes it so piracy is much less prevalent. Then again, even with all those benefits, Microsoft still controls ~75% of the operating systems world.

Either way, kudos to Apple for taking care of you. How do you like iOS? I have played around with it on a Hackintosh but never got driver support figured out and stopped using it. Have considered buying an Apple laptop bug am concerned that I will spend all that money and not like what I get.

 

[S7OCK_03]

 

[Planter]

That's pretty nice. The other benefit of Apple is that their operating systems are so much cheaper than Windows versions. It makes it so piracy is much less prevalent. Then again, even with all those benefits, Microsoft still controls ~75% of the operating systems world.

Either way, kudos to Apple for taking care of you. How do you like iOS? I have played around with it on a Hackintosh but never got driver support figured out and stopped using it. Have considered buying an Apple laptop bug am concerned that I will spend all that money and not like what I get.

i love it, works great for what I need to do, and this is my 3rd mac computer. have a 27" iMAC i got last april that still runs great, i had a 2006-2007 model 13" macbook but recently sold it to upgrade to a faster processor, bigger video chip and more memory to run a few other video editing and digital animation programs the old one wouldn't run with slowing down too much.

I tried the Hackintosh thing on my Dell Latitude, but had the same problem you did with getting driver support. recently i've heard VMWare now offers a virtual environment for PC that you can install MAC OS on to, much in the same way you can install Windows on a MAC, but i haven't seen it for myself so could be rumor.

It's definitely different and takes getting used to, i hated it at first, but it's only because there were things I was used to on Windows/PC, like the keyboard and mouse but after 30 days, it was all 2nd nature and smooth sailing from there. I didn't have much of a choice though, I needed it for work to do my work (digital animation) on, so it was either adapt, or find a new job lol.

Ended up using a microsoft keyboard and a logitech mouse, and it resolved almost all of my issues with the mac keyboard, the only one that still gets me is the delete button won't move files to the trash bin, quite annoying but I can live with it.

There's only 3 other things that somewhat annoy me, but I can live with and that's there is no button to eject discs from the cd/dvd drive, there is no button to simply turn the monitor off instead you have to put the sys prefs to turn the display off after a minute up to 3 hours, and Apple doesn't offer a blu-ray drive for any of their computers, because Steve Jobs opted not to go with blu-ray because he believed the technology won't last long enough to warrant the investment. How he came to that conclusion I don't know, but I was able to purchase an external blu-ray drive and I downloaded Mac Blu-Ray player and I can watch Blu-Ray's without issue. The external blu-ray drive was supposed to be a burner, but so far it won't recognize blank blu-ray's, but I've seen a lot of issues with this drive, where people are having the same issues with it online, and there's no firmware support for it, it was just a cheapie off ebay, so I'm going to drop some cash on a LG off macsales.com and see what happens. At worst, I can boot into Windows 7 and burn from there if needs be, I have it loaded.

Aside from that, I can't complain. It's stable, it's fast and it does everything I need it to do and more and I have yet to have any trouble out of the iMAC, never had any issues with the macbook pro, and so far no issues with my macbook pro and just upgraded from 8GB memory to 16GB for $50 on the iMAC, and upgraded the new macbook pro from 4 GB to 8GB for $50 as well. I spend far less time troubleshooting errors on my macs than I do on a pc, which is nice because you actually get to use the computer and do what you need to do without having to dick around with a bunch of permissions, settings or missing .dll files.

 

[txyaloo]

I've run into this with Windows in the past when buying PC's or laptop's PC, and Microsoft never once offered to send me a free copy of the OS, they always wanted me to pay, typically maybe offering to knock off $30 or $40. Not saying Microsoft doesn't or hasn't sent a free copy to anyone, but just never offered to me in the past and customer service is what makes a big difference to me with any company.

Gee... I wonder why?

Could it be because Apple makes the computers, installs the OS, and knows exactly what OS was on the computer when it left manufacturing? Nooooo, that couldn't possibly be the reason.

Why would Microsoft offer to send you a copy of an OS when they have no clue whether that computer actually shipped with Windows?

If you purchased a retail copy of Windows directly from Microsoft or an authorized retailer, they would be glad to help you with it. If it came on the computer, it's the OEM's responsibility to provide support.

 

[Planter]

Gee... I wonder why?

Could it be because Apple makes the computers, installs the OS, and knows exactly what OS was on the computer when it left manufacturing? Nooooo, that couldn't possibly be the reason.

Why would Microsoft offer to send you a copy of an OS when they have no clue whether that computer actually shipped with Windows?

If you purchased a retail copy of Windows directly from Microsoft or an authorized retailer, they would be glad to help you with it. If it came on the computer, it's the OEM's responsibility to provide support.

true. but i have run into this with pc makers as well, hp, dell and acer.

 

[oldmodman]

My next door neighbor has a Mac that he got from his son. It's about five years old and it developed a black line running through the screen.
I suggested he take it to the Apple store and they repaired it for free.

So
Five year old computer, long out of warranty.
Not the original owner.
Repair should have cost around three hundred dollars.

Apple fixed it for free.:banana:

 

[ViciousJay]

so you wasted a full day for a cd when you could have gone on another machine, torrented and burned a copy of Lion and been done in say 2 hours.... dear lord you are dumb :nonono:

 

[carrrnuttt]

Planter's in this video somewhere:

[youtube_browser]0QMhOIySiyE[/youtube_browser]

 

[TrevorR90]

so you wasted a full day for a cd when you could have gone on another machine, torrented and burned a copy of Lion and been done in say 2 hours.... dear lord you are dumb :nonono:

I'd rather have an official copy of said operating system instead of some blank cd with a copy of lion on it. Just saying.

 

[Carbd86GT]

so you wasted a full day for a cd when you could have gone on another machine, torrented and burned a copy of Lion and been done in say 2 hours.... dear lord you are dumb :nonono:

It's not that easy. My friend is an Apple Genius and he had this issue last night with a personal machine he was selling to someone. Was reformatting the machine, lost his thumb drive with the correct lion dmg, and tried booting from recovery, no bueno. Ended up having to install snow leopard and upgrading from there via app store download (since he purchased lion through app store, he didn't have to buy it again, just had to DL it). It was also a 27" iMac.

My buddy is always telling me how they are told to take care of people that come in. Apple hooks almost everyone up.

 

[LogiWorld123]

Back in the day, Microsoft sent me 15 5.25" discs of Dos 6.22 because my 3" drive crapped out.

Overnight.

HP also overnighted me a recovery DVD after my HD failed on a laptop.


I guess this post really should be "Surprise, I got great customer service from a big company"

 

[S7OCK_03]

My friend is an Apple Genius

I think there's a joke in there somewhere.

 

[Planter]

so you wasted a full day for a cd when you could have gone on another machine, torrented and burned a copy of Lion and been done in say 2 hours.... dear lord you are dumb :nonono:

I guess you could have read the part where I uh, tried that...it's mentioned in the original post.

who's the dummy now? :shrug:

It's not that easy. My friend is an Apple Genius and he had this issue last night with a personal machine he was selling to someone. Was reformatting the machine, lost his thumb drive with the correct lion dmg, and tried booting from recovery, no bueno. Ended up having to install snow leopard and upgrading from there via app store download (since he purchased lion through app store, he didn't have to buy it again, just had to DL it). It was also a 27" iMac.

My buddy is always telling me how they are told to take care of people that come in. Apple hooks almost everyone up.

yep, exactly what happened to me. I had the CD but it wouldn't boot from it no matter what I did. tried copying it a thumb drive, wouldn't take either, kept asking for my apple id, which I didn't have one. I had purchased my copy of Lion on a thumb drive, made a backup to a disc, and then ruined it a few months ago by leaving it in my jeans pockets which went through the washer.

although I was kinda dumb for selling my MAC 10.6.8 disc with the previous macbook I just sold.

 

[VirtualSVT]

I guess this post really should be "Surprise, I got great customer service from a big company"

Correct

 

[Planter]

Back in the day, Microsoft sent me 15 5.25" discs of Dos 6.22 because my 3" drive crapped out.

Overnight.

HP also overnighted me a recovery DVD after my HD failed on a laptop.


I guess this post really should be "Surprise, I got great customer service from a big company"

were they both stuff you bought used previously? or stuff you originally purchased?

 

[LogiWorld123]

were they both stuff you bought used previously? or stuff you originally purchased?

EDIT- Both used. Computer was an 8086 that had 6.22 installed (DOS 3.5"s came with it, along with Windows 3.1) and the laptop i snagged off some guy in the college dorms.

 

[txyaloo]

true. but i have run into this with pc makers as well, hp, dell and acer.

Were you the original owner? Was the system still under warranty?

Microsoft has agreements in place with OEMs regarding the support they are to provide. Again, Apple makes the OS and makes the computers the OS is sold on. It's obvious support will be different.

I had no problem sending OS media out for customer satisfaction at Dell. It cost us $2 and made the customer happy. Not everyone thought the same way.

If Microsoft made a PC and only sold a "version" of Windows that came originally installed on that PC, you would probably see the same level of support.

 

[Planter]

Were you the original owner? Was the system still under warranty?

Microsoft has agreements in place with OEMs regarding the support they are to provide. Again, Apple makes the OS and makes the computers the OS is sold on. It's obvious support will be different.

I had no problem sending OS media out for customer satisfaction at Dell. It cost us $2 and made the customer happy. Not everyone thought the same way.

If Microsoft made a PC and only sold a "version" of Windows that came originally installed on that PC, you would probably see the same level of support.

no warranties, acer was used, the hp was used off ebay/craigslist, and the dell was purchased new. actually had the disc for the dell, but the sticker that was in the battery compartment on the dell laptop was missing, no one at dell or microsoft seemed to want to help.

but I get where your coming from.

 

[low03tb]