First, I’d like to apologize for my absence but this post will explain everything as to why I’ve been gone. I need a computer to type up posts and sadly I’ve had one on and off for a bit now so I do apologize for not being active but I hope you enjoy this read!

To preface this, post the Apple store I’ll be typing my experience from is located in the central Florida area. I won’t say which one in respect to the company and their policies around online information about their stores but to give you an idea the experience was not at all a good one for me. I, however, own Apple products because I’m stuck inside of Apple’s ecosystem I love my Apple products for everything but games and that is where I can tell all of you that I do have a gaming laptop that I use for online games and my virtual world shenanigans. This is my experience and my opinions and what I went through when trying to get my 2018 13-inch MacBook Pro fixed because of overheating issues and a few other problems involving the top casing. Your experience, of course, may not be the same or as bad as I went through as far as customer service but this experience in its entirety has made me skeptical about going back to this particular Apple store. I’ve concluded because of my experience that if I have an issue and since my products are all covered by Apple care plus except for my iPhone that I’ll be sending it to be fixed via packaging. I hope you all enjoy this story about my experience at the Apple store as a disclaimer as I’ve stated above not everyone will go through something like I did this was just what I went through and I’m not a very happy Apple customer because of it. This is my experience and ideas regarding my visit. With that being explained over 3-4 different times let’s jump right in!

My issues with my MacBook:

To begin, I wanted to first explain all of the issues my MacBook pro 13 inches with retina display and touch bar with 256 gigs of SSD and why I was taking it to get fixed in the first place. These issues are listed as:

• Speaker cutting in and out with any type of audio
• Overheating issues everywhere 
• Fans not running with high taxing programs where I needed to photo or video edit
• Receiving video card messages when the video card is there
• Trackpad not always registering taps or “gestures”
• And the worst one my STAR keys otherwise known as my S-T-A-R keys getting stuck or typing a letter more than once after clicking it

As you can see a lot is going on I kind of held out on a lot of these issues until the Apple store in Florida near me opened up so I could take it and didn’t have to drive more than an hour to get support for it. They closed down the Apple store closest to me for renovations during the summer and opened back up September 3^rd of this year. 

Appointment Made & Taking it in:

Obviously with all of these issues after I talked to the online Apple support first since I get 24-hour support online and through the phone and after 5 times resetting the SMC in my laptop they created an appointment for me at the new Apple store closest to me which is about 30 mins away. Okay, cool right? I’m getting everything fixed. My appointment time was 12:45 in the afternoon I got there a little bit early just in case. Nobody greeted me when I first walked in which is something they did before the renovation I didn’t care though the store was packed with people and everyone seemed busy. Some people were standing around but being the somewhat shy person that I am I walked in and stood at a space in the middle of the store. Hoping that if I looked “lost” someone may come over and ask if I needed help. Bad idea on my part so after about 5 minutes of standing there I walked up to a woman and said “Hi there! I don’t mean to bother you I know you must be busy, however, I do have an appointment today at 12:45 and I just wanted to know where I go or who to talk to so I can get checked in.” honestly, I think I was being quite nice about the overall situation so she pointed me in the direction of a young man in a blue Apple shirt. Awesome! So, I go over to him its 12:05 at this point and he turns to me and says, “We go based off of scheduled time so if you want to go grab a coffee or some lunch and then come back you can. You have a lot of time to do so then you’re not sitting in the store forever, just make sure when you come back to tap one of us and let us know that you’re there and tell us where you will be so we can send someone to you.” Okay! Cool! So, what do I do? I go to the food court to order a drink and a large fry eat it quickly and go back to the store. I still showed up a little early just in case. I like being punctual when I have appointments. During this time, I did what I was told to do I tapped the same guy and one other and pointed to square ottomans on the ground in front of a screen with a projector and explained I’d be sitting over there. As I waited, I’ll be honest I was a bit bored as an older lady came in looking for someone to help her as she had an appointment herself to get her iPhone fixed. Nothing worked when she tapped on applications her phone app would work now and then but never continued for more than a few moments. She sat next to me and I could tell she was frustrated with the situation she said something similar to what I did when I first came in and had no idea where to go or who to go to or even what to do. It was very disorganized, and no one was being helped who had appointments. They were all talking to people who had questions about the products and playing with them but of course not purchasing. During this time, I and this one woman became friends our conversation went a little like this at the beginning:

Me: This seems very unorganized doesn’t it?

Her: Oh yes! I thought I was the only one to feel that way.

Me: Oh no no no! not at all, I had an appointment to get my MacBook fixed what about you?

Her: My phone isn’t working and I’m an at-home nurse, so I have to have it as most of my work is done on it.

-she shows me her phone and how it doesn’t work, the woman is in her early 60s –

From this point on we continued to talk about programs, writing, jobs, kids, family, boyfriends, her life in the past until the present. She was such an interesting and kindhearted woman and I’m glad I was able to cross paths with her and listen to her story and some of the things she had experienced in life. She did make somewhat of an impact on me that day. Then someone came up to her and said “Hi! My name is (I forget the name) How can I assist you today?” at this point, I remembered that she came in after me and then decided to check the time. At that point, it said 1:00 pm. Wow! 1? My appointment was supposed to be 12:45 what on earth happened? At this point, a young man was walking quickly past me, so I decided to tap him to get his attention. He stopped and turned to me and I said, “Hello there! I don’t mean to be rude, but my appointment was at 12:45 and it’s now 1:00 pm. I know you’re busy but I was curious as to when I’d be helped to see everyone who came in after I have gone before me and I went ahead and let two people know that I was going to be over here waiting for my appointment.” He rushed over to one of the cubes and was inputting something into his iPad he was quiet for about 3 minutes then turned to me and said, “Hello! My name is Z (won’t say the full name because of policies) How can I help you today?” Wow! Okay. At this point, I’m at a loss for words and trying to figure out just everything. I looked at him and told him the issue with my laptop he asked me if I wanted to move to the table instead to get my laptop up and running so he could do a diagnostics test. I told him I was leaving on a trip soon and it would be nice if I could have my MacBook with me because it’s smaller than my gaming PC and it can fit right into any bag I bring. He asked when I needed it by, and I said if possible, I need it before October 8^th. He told me it would be available well before then and said that Apple was going to send it out for repairs. I was happy by this because I honestly wanted a functioning laptop. I mean hell it might not be able to run virtual worlds, but I can do browser-based things, type up documents, and blog during my time on vacation. I was told to keep an eye on my e-mail specifically my iCloud e-mail since it would tell me when to come in to pick up my laptop and was estimated about 2-5 business days for it to be returned to the Apple store for pick up. The whole escapade at the Apple store took me way longer than it probably needed to luckily, I had nothing important going on that day but still what if I did? I left and a few days received the e-mail on my iCloud account after about two days to come in and pick up my MacBook.

Picking up my MacBook:

I’ll be honest, after the situation that happened a few days before I was hesitant to go back into the store. This time around they had three security guards in there standing by the door I walked in with my Vera Bradley messenger bag with my laptop case and this time instead of waiting in a space with little people in the middle of the store I got up close and personal with the woman who pointed me in the direction of the guy who checked me in a few days before. She was helping an older man purchase an Apple watch and since this particular store I found out works off commission she saw me and said she would be right with me as soon as she got something so she could finish up the purchase. I explained it was no worries and to take her time I was just picking up my MacBook Pro from out of store servicing. I waited there next to her for about 30 minutes and she told me to go over to this one girl who shortly opened up after this 30 minutes that I waited. Could she not have called someone on the walkie talkie beforehand and grabbed someone for me. It only takes 3-5 minutes to hand me my laptop with a paper telling me what was done or replaced. Okay so moving on the second woman told me to go and sit at the table and someone would be with me shortly. Okay! So, at this point minutes became hours and I was somewhat restless everyone was trying to make sales with people who weren’t purchasing the products and all I wanted was my MacBook. Finally, after about 3 hours of waiting this guy comes out with my MacBook and asks for my license to verify that it was me. I showed him everything and he gave me the laptop and told me if I wanted to stay and set it back up I could and walked away. I had a sheet telling me what had been done on it. From the paper, it looked like a lot had been done but I was astonished by how long it took me to get serviced. Why 3 hours? That is almost like a crime waiting that long. I’ve never been so disappointed with Apple’s customer service. This specific Apple store causes me extreme anxiety now and I hate going into it. After everything was set up and what not I took it home, however, something happened that I didn’t expect. 

My MacBook Was Stated to be Fixed but Was it?

I was home assuming my newly fixed product would work the way it’s supposed to. Especially since I paid $300 for Apple care plus and then technically the laptop itself is $1,500-$2,000 like come on. I just want my expensive product to work. If I pay the money, I expect that money to be placed into a product that works. I understand there are complications even with well-built technology, but this MacBook just went into servicing. Within 5 minutes of being on my laptop when I got home the keyboard and the computer itself started to heat up again. Don’t get me wrong at least I can touch and type on the keyboard without frying my fingers, but it gets abnormally warm still. Especially for just having a word document and e-mail open. I checked to see if anything was taking up CPU or anything like that and nothing. Everything seemed fine… I’m so frustrated some of my issues like the keyboard, sound, and touchpad, were working a lot better but the main issue I was concerned about still wasn’t fixed. Sadly, it’s too late to get my laptop in before I go on vacation so I’m going to take it with me as it is. But after I come back as much as I don’t want to I have to go to this dreaded store I want to talk face to face with an actual person not just send it in a box. You never know what postage trucks do to packages, etc. 

In conclusion, in all my life I’ve never had a product that doesn’t just work the way it’s supposed to. Better yet I’ve never had a product that when you take it to get fixed it still isn’t completely fixed. Like what do I have to do to have a product just work? I’m so frustrated the store experience was frustrating, the customer support experience was better but still frustrating, and the pickup process was just appalling. I’ve never been so disappointed before. But through it all, I tried to stay positive and hold my composure because I know it’s not the associate’s fault that my stuff isn’t working and it’s not their fault that there is a sea of people in their store that aren’t buying anything but lead them on as if they are. But really after two trips into that trap of a store, I would have hoped my product would have at least been fixed for the issue it has. When I take it I hope it’s better I can only hope.