Only Human

Travis J. Todd’s Story

Send to Friend | Report Story

So, long story short...

While Travis J. Todd was having my Powerbook repaired

Travis J. Todd made the mistake of

trusting Apple Technical Support

My Advice to You is

double, triple, quadruple check whether a service is covered

Here's the whole story

My hard drive fried on my Powerbook G4. To complicate matters, I'm currently living in Germany. There are no Apple retail stores here only "certified" Apple repair shops.

So, after a couple days of finally hunting one down, I took my computer in. It's covered under Apple Care Protection (which I spent a good deal of money on) so I figured it shouldn't cost me anything. It's never that easy is it?

They ask me if I'd like them to try and recover the data. I say sure, that'd be lovely.

"Well, that will cost you an extra 240 Euros for us just to try."

Cue gaping stare.

What? Just to try? So, I tell them to hold off on that until I call Apple. I call a friendly guy at Apple named Andrew who assures me that they shouldn't charge me for that, and all I have to do is call Apple Germany and have them reference the case number, call the shop and then I'll be set.

I have the girlfriend call Apple Germany (her German is much better than mine) and they tell me that Andrew hasn't written anything in the case number. All it says is I called.

By now I've lost 3 days due to the time differences and opening hours of both continent's apple customer support lines so I tell the shop to go ahead and try to recover the data and I'll work it out with Apple afterwards.

Bad move. No company wants to give you money in hindsight. Even one that pretends to be customer friendly, like Apple.

I finally get my computer back with no data recovered (as the program said it would finish recovering the data with an ETA of two years) and a hefty bill of 240 Euros. Then I proceeded to call Apple and present them with the scenario of how their employee gave me false information and how they should reimburse me.

No dice. Apparently "data recovery" is not covered under Apple Care. Even if they don't recover any data. After an hour and a half on the phone all I got from three different employees was a lot of "Sorries."