I’m Really Pissed at Apple Right Now!

Yes, you read that right! Me, the Apple fanboy, the Mac addict. Let me tell you a story.

About 5 years ago, when I was still working for Axen, I was offered an ugly heavy PC laptop as a part of my salary package. Given the price of the beast and the fact that I was quite an Apple admirer already, I proposed my boss to switch to Macbook Pros instead. And since it wouldn’t cost that much and it would potentially impact recruitment attractiveness in a very positive way, we did it. After a year of negotiation with providers, process development and all that, the big day finally arrived.

And within months, more than half of Axen consultants had wonderful 17-inch macbook pros, including me of course.

That was my first mac and I loved everything about it. But one day, the laptop started to shut down without warning. And a couple of days later, I noticed the laptop was not physically stable anymore. I turned it upside down and I saw the battery had swollen. A few Google searches later, I quickly removed the battery as the next step was likely to be explosion. I called AppleCare and they told me that the battery was not under extended warranty but since it was a factory defect, they were willing to change it exceptionally for free. They gave me a support ticket number, I went to the closest Macline and they changed it alright. That was back in 2009.

Fast forward to today. When I left Axen, the laptop was still working great but I needed more power, so I got myself one of the new Unibody ones, and I gave the old one away to my mother. She was also very happy about it and then a couple of weeks ago, she noticed the trackpad button was not working anymore and she showed me this on the webcam:

What the f…!!! I thought they had solved this swollen battery already. Actually I hoped so because with the unibody one, if it starts to swell, it will break everything inside.

Anyway, I gave her the number of AppleCare. The laptop is more than 3 years old but the battery is not covered by AppleCare anyway. And this is clearly yet another dangerous factory defect. She called… and she was turned down. Apparently the guy on the phone was not friendly at all, he said that it was normal after some time, he gave her a 30-euro discount on a new battery (which costs 139 euros, just for the record) and hung up. She told me that, I told her it was not normal at all. What is normal is for the battery to lose autonomy, not to swell to the limit of explosion. So she called back, explained that she had seen a lot of cases on the web, that it was definitely not normal and even dangerous, but they wouldn’t listen. “Take your 30 euros and get a life” is basically what they answered.

Now I’m an Apple fanboy because they build awesome products. But also because their products have proven to be very reliable. And even when there is a problem (shit happens…), they have excellent customer support… usually. But what they are doing here is really pissing me off. Apple, if you are listening…