After hanging in the phone loop for 20 minutes, the friendly service assistant told me my hardware problem has been reproduced and a replacement “mother logic board” has been ordered. They can’t tell when Apple will deliver, but probably not this week.
Wouldn’t it be just great if I didn’t have to poll for this kind of information, but would receive some progress email (they’ve got my email address). Or if there was an online service tracker. Or a guaranteed delivery date. Or a replacement laptop for the time being (in the end, it’ll be more than the promised 3 weeks). Just what do they do with all the Apple Care money? Spend it on new mother logic boards?
UPDATE: They actually managed to finish the laptop by Thursday, so maybe I was a bit hard on them in this post. On the bill, they had a detailed protocol of my case, including each service unit they spent, and each “customer information” (i.e. phone inquiry from my side). If they would just make that information available on the web site, UPS style, now *that* would be service.
The apple care in the Netherlands is generally even worse, except I found this one apple shop that’s also licensed to repair and they do everything in their power to help you out on the logistics front; they let you keep your mac if you can coaxe life out of it and call you when the ordered replacements parts are in (and, note, apple forces the repair guys to send back the defective parts with the next load which means you have about a 3 to 4 day window to get your mac to them when they call or THEY are in trouble, so that’s definitely above-and-beyond service), and they are very open about it when they don’t have a clue either.
Compare to another shop that takes your mac just to fix a mushy mouse button, throws it in the back for about a week until it can get shipped to the actual repair center (that one doesn’t have a walk-in repair center, just storefronts), gets it analysed as being not faulty, and after 3 weeks total get it back to you in the exact same state it was, and are edging to hit you with a service charge.
What I’m trying to say is: quality amongst european apple repair shops differs a lot, as a rule try to find a walk-in repair shop, and look around.