Cracked trackpad, Geniuses, and baby vomit
Apple sent me an email asking me to rate my experience yesterday with their Indy Apple Store, so I guess I should honor their request.
Three days ago, the trackpad on my '23 Macbook Pro 14" cracked. It had been sitting next to me and when I picked it up, there was this crack from left to right across the trackpad. Nothing dropped on it, and no damage to my laptop anywhere.
This is my twentieth to thirtieth Mac laptop over my lifetime. This current one is nine months old, so warranty should cover the repair.
I initiate a chat with Apple CS and it’s mind-numbing. She tells me I have two choices: either I can send it in and it will take 7-10 days to repair or I can go to the closest Genius Bar and they might be able to repair it. She says nothing about the repair being covered by warranty. She just keeps asking me if I was using the laptop when it cracked, which I’d already said I wasn’t. Then if I dropped anything on it, which I’d already told her I didn’t. Again and again, I said the laptop wasn’t damaged in any way and the crack appeared spontaneously while the laptop was sitting still beside me. In other words, she kept insinuating that I was lying to her.
Explaining I work on my laptop and can’t give it up for 7-10 days, I also explained that the closest Apple Store is an hour and a half away, so it’s a three hour trip. That explained, I asked if there was a trackpad for the M3 MacBook Pro at the store and how long would the repair take?
She said she couldn’t give me that information. The part might be there and it might not, but I’d have to set up an appointment at the Genius Bar, then physically have them look at my trackpad before they’d tell me if they had the part.
I offered to send her a picture of the crack and reminded her she knew everything about me and my trackpad from her records, but she wasn’t interested in any pictures of anything. She just kept saying that she couldn’t tell me whether or not the store had the part and couldn’t put me in touch with the store to ask them. Appointment and three hours driving to find out was my only option.
I was furious, but finally settled on taking the three hours to drive to the store and ask. She set up my appointment.
Showed up there yesterday, a little early. Apple’s “genius” came over and looked at my laptop, then said he’d be gone for a few minutes and left. Ten minutes later, he comes back out and sits down next to me before telling me they can fix the laptop for me two ways, from which I can choose. Either they will take the laptop and send it in for repairs or they will order the part and I can come back up when it arrives and they’ll fix it in store.
I was furious once more, explaining to him that this was precisely what I had tried to avoid. I said I had spent half an hour on Apple’s CS chat the day before trying to get them to find out if his store had the part, but they had refused to find out, saying only I’d have to go there myself to find out. I explained I’d asked Apple’s CS chat woman if it couldn’t be found out by her or me calling the store?
My genius sitting next to me responded, “No, we’re not allowed to give out that information.” Then he added, “No one is allowed to give out that information.” He was very firm on this point. Very firm and repeatedly firm.
I said to him, “This is ridiculous. It’s an easy repair and could have been done right now if you had the part, but instead, I have to drive three hours and sit here just for you to tell me you don’t have the part and I’ll have to drive three more hours to come back.
He said I’d also have to pay $180 for the repair.
I said, “No, this computer is under warranty and I will not pay one penny for it to be repaired. You will repair it for me free. You see this laptop has absolutely no damage anywhere. Apple likely has some bad tolerances inside and I wouldn’t be surprised if, as time goes on, you find yourselves having to replace a number of 14" MacBook Pro M3 ’23s in the coming months and years.
I had one of your laptops catch fire while I was using it, so I know the drill. I’ve bought and used 20-30 of your laptops through the years. I’ve used your bad screens and bad keyboards, so I think what you’re looking at here is another Apple production or design flaw.”
He responded, “That may be, and if that’s what it is, Apple will make good on it and offer everyone who owns that computer a repair program.”
“Yes, I know that’s what Apple will do, but it will be years from now, and no help to me. Right now, I have a new and undamaged computer and you’re demanding I pay you $180 to fix its trackpad."
He said, “Well, your trackpad is cracked, and we don’t cover cracked trackpads under our warranty.”
“But there’s NO DAMAGE,” I said loudly. “It cracked SPONTANEOUSLY and I WASN’T EVEN USING IT when it happened.”
“Yes, I know,” he responded.
We finally settled on me not having it fixed at all. He promised me the crack wouldn’t get any worse, so it seemed to us both that leaving it cracked was my best option.
It’s my observation that Apple has recently replaced Customer Service agents and Apple Store geniuses with humanoids running on AI. Both the chat lady and the genius man were incapable of hearing and responding in any way to anything. All they could do was stare at their screens and read their their script.
Truthfully, both struck me as AI bots, and I have concluded that this is Apple today. It is the perfectly heartless and soulless machine, and it's running on AI which has been set on the “Supercilious Affect” mode.
Over almost forty years, I’ve had to deal with Apple about defects maybe five times, and this one was so very awful and unhelpful and devoid of humanity that I find myself relieved at how old I am and how few years I’ll have to keep putting up with Tim Cook and his conceited groupies.
Guy Kawasaki used to evangelize the market, but Apple employees now only evangelize each other.
“Aren’t we great?”
"Aren’t you great?”
"You know, everyone knows how great we are. You can see it in their eyes when they walk in here!”
"You’re FABULOUS, and so am I!”
A little anecdote saved for the end.
While I was waiting for Apple’s Genius to show up, a young mother walked in and sat down across the Genius Bar table from me. She had a stroller with a cute little year-old baby who was munching on something similar to Cheerios the mother regularly dropped on her stroller tray. In between snacks for the baby, the mother was working on her computer.
No eye contact until we both heard those fateful noises of a toddler puking. Looking down, the little one had projectile vomited—all over herself, the front of the stroller, and a puddle about two square feet on the floor that was thick and contained solids as well as a whole lot of congealed liquid.
It was a mess anywhere, but to have such squalor in the middle of an Apple Genius Bar was a violation of Apple policy and presentation on the level of a homeless man coming in and peeing in the corner.
I was off my stool and looking for towels to help clean it up. Went over to a female genius and explained a young mother’s baby had just vomited all over the floor, and could she please get me some paper towels so I could start cleaning it up?
The genius stared at me. It took her a few seconds to process what I’d just said to her. Finally, she said, “Give me a few moments,” and turned back to talking to some customer.
It was clear she wasn’t able to help with the towels, so I found one of the managers–this one also a woman—and explained a baby had vomited all over the floor and could she please get me some towels to clean it up? I had to repeat myself before the specter of horror registered with her. Then, slowly, she started walking over to the “secret door granting entry to the bowels of an Apple Store.”
I waited outside the door for a couple minutes, then went back to the mother and said towels would be coming soon.
The mother was working on cleaning up her little one and the stroller. She said “She’s never thrown up before,” which being the grandpa to thirty, I had trouble believing. Lucky mom. Until now.
It was between five and ten minutes before that lady manager arrived with a small handful of paper towels, none of them wet, and nothing else. Squeamishly or daintily or with revulsion—take your pick—she proferred her little towlet pile in my direction while gazing down with horror at the mess on her Apple Store floor.She didn’t get down on her knees to clean it up, nor had or did any of her geniuses. I got down and cleaned it up.
The manager didn’t thank me. The mother did.
When it was all cleaned up and the slow and unhelpful Apple bots had vanished, I smiled at the mother and said, “Well, today was the best day of your life, wasn’t it? Your little one projectile vomited onto the floor of an Apple Store and Apple doesn’t do babies." She smiled back, and then my Genius bot arrived to read his script to me...