Apple Customer Service Failure at Every Level: Or How I Learned to stop Worrying and Quit Buying Macs

I host an internet-based radio show that reaches a fairly broad audience. Each week I deliver my tirades to my audience and when I’m treated fairly, I treat that person to some of the same, lifting them up above the cloud of my vengeance and staying my wrath. Prepare then, Apple, to lose thy place among the exalted. You have failed me.

I have been a Mac enthusiast for the last 8 years since my first Mac desktop purchase. Tired of the daily maintenance of anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-trojan, anti-malware, anti-familytime, anti-usability software that encases the average windows system in a very thin bubble of easily exploitable, and definitely not Pope-like protection, the transition had been painless, and I thought, well earned after my years of uncompensated Windows vulnerability patrol. When it was time, in the fall of 2007, to outfit my new home studio I purchased one of the brand new core 2 duo Imacs. I know, I know. Why would you buy an all-in-one integrated system? Two words: consumer confidence. By this time I had purchased 2 Mac minis, one macbook, one macbook pro, and now the 24” intel mac. The whole family had been outfitted. For the most part, the only unit that was receiving moderate to heavy use was the imac. All was happy in the land of mac, the evil virus rebellion had been squashed and we rejoiced with barrels of the finest meads, retiring to our drinking halls at night, happy members of the mac cult I had always heard so much about. My Jonestown, however, was about to be served the proverbial kool-aid. The beginning of 2009 marked the downturn for my imac’s overall health. Things seemed to slow down a bit. We no longer frolicked in the fields of our internet and Photoshop of our youths, we meandered lazily on intensive tasks and eventually the concussive blast of my first hard drive failure was felt throughout my little kingdom. No problem I thought, I’m under warranty. This is Apple. The uber –hip, utra saavy, we-know-what-our-customers want industry shakers right?

Turns out that the Apple representative informed me that my initial one year warranty was a week expired. Ok. So hook me up with Apple Care, brothah. I have a credit card and me and debt go way back. No? Well, I assumed that after paying another $100.00 annually for my .mac account and idisk that I would have received an email informing me that it was time to pay up. I should have? Oh, well I didn’t. My first verbal disagreement ensues with Apple’s less than cheery service. After two days and two fraud disputes over using my Apple credit card to pay for Apple Care (the representative finally submitted when it was admitted that my email they had on file was actually different than the one that I had set up… how this happened will later be explored in a future episode of Mystery Quest as we both agreed the mix up was near impossible, but nevertheless had indeed happened) You see, and this makes perfect sense, that when you try to use your Apple Card to make a purchase through Apple, a red flag goes through to the bank that this could be a possible fraudulant charge. Again, why not? Since I had agreed to take the trip to Crazyville why not stop at all the local sites and learn about the town’s thriving logging operations. Sigh. I pay for the Apple Care after numerous attempts by Apple to refuse my money and deny me service. I win. Not really, but I’m desperate after my exchanges and frankly the trip to planet Customer Service Insanity had left me a bit rattled.

I find an Apple Certified Service Center in my area and decide to take it there instead of an Apple Store thinking I might get more personal attention. They give me so much personal attention that they extend the repair time of 2-3 days to two weeks. For a hard drive. Yeah. I finally get my unit back, reinstall everything and I’m back up and running. I’m reunited with the wayward traveler who has found his way back home. We reminisce, but his journey has left him changed, different somehow. He has trouble sleeping, and when I say he has trouble sleeping I mean that he goes to sleep and DOES NOT WAKE UP. I reboot and change the energy saver settings. Wait you must for the Halls of Valhalla my friend as there will be no rest for you in this life!!! So my system must never sleep. My system is now the autistic insomniac girl from Real Genius, but I have my machine back and I’ll weather the small inconvenience because I can’t spend another two weeks working exclusively on my laptop.

I back up my system on a pretty neurotic basis. Mostly I use external drives and occasionally I use discs just to be sure. I started racking up coasters in a pretty short amount of time. Oh but the stress of war had really taken its toll on our traveler. My optical drive checked out. The awesome thing is that it checked out right in the middle of my Snow Leopard installation. Yay! If you’re going to step up to me, don’t half-step, optical drive. Don’t half-step. Hey, hey, this man be prepared though. I gots my Apple Care, and there shouldn’t be an issue. Apparently Apple Stores only carry flux capacitors, warp cores and other mythological and totally intangible replacement parts, because they have NOTHING ELSE IN STOCK. Hello Totally Indifferent and Disinterested 19 year old Mac Store employee. Mac go boom, no more worky. How long bring back from Black Sleep of Khali Ma? 2-3 days. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

Over the next week and a half of I and my Mac’s trial separation I find myself thinking a lot about our relationship. Was I asking for too much? I rarely every used a pc anymore and I knew a thing or two about discretion, so that couldn’t be it. Was I losing that loving feeling? I decide to give this thing another go and try to find what we once had. Afterall, I had a lot of time invested in this relationship by now. Lots and lots and lots of time. All those brooding long distance drives to the Mac stores and repair centers kept playing over and over again in my mind, but I had made a commitment.

My Mac and I regarded each other that day as I finally picked it up from repair and we made a silent promise: never again. Everything seemed fine after that. As a sign that we were willing to change I purchased more memory: promise memory, if you will. If there is one thing that today’s hits and tomorrow’s favorites of soft rock have taught me is that promises are sadly made to be broken.

I should put a Kerouacian title on the next few paragraphs. Maybe Dead, Pixels Dead Soldiers? Maybe that’s too Robert Frost… dead pixels are the syphilis of the designer’s world. Why won’t this spot go away? I keep using the microfiber cloth but this spot just won’t go away!!! Everything feels fine, but Oh my God… are those dead pixels?!?!?! A week ago I noticed two dead pixels. Two dead pixels. Side by Side. RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN. I lie to myself and choose a darker wallpaper. I’m back in school now and the intense curriculum for my Masters forces me to use my laptop more. It’s a big deal but it can wait. I sit on my sofa and pick up my apple remote. I’ll just listen to the soothing sounds of the RiverDance as I learn about the weighted cost of capital. Remote seems to have its line of sight blocked or something, hmmm. Too bad my studio has more free space than the frickin Tardis. I now also have bad IR sensor it seems. The combination, and those of you with heart murmurs might want to write this down, is a surefire tapdance to the sounds of a coronary. I call Customer Service, who now practically knows what kind of cereal I eat and why I get especially ticklish after jogging asks about the wife and kids and I proceed to tell him about the myriad of new problems. We make an appointment for me at a local store for the Genius Bar (giggle).

I arrive at the Genius Bar at a different Mac Store location with my Mac practically coughing and wheezing at this point (the Mac. Not me. But I did save two bullets. Ya know, in case we absolutely had to.) Hello Totally Indifferent and Disinterested 19 year old Mac Store Employee. Good to see you part of family business. Saw your brother at other store. Mac no respond to remote. Honeymoon Over. Do need Carousel? Renewal? Wait for it. Wait for it. … 2-3 Days.

Every man has a trigger, and I’m not talking about the well-oiled hair trigger of a BA-K-47 assault rifle as the sight reflects the sun from your thoroughly researched and well out-of-site vantage point. I’m talking about the trigger that signifies the end of tolerance, the end of patience…ok so these two triggers are very similar. I spit words through my clenched teeth. Very diplomatic and carefully chosen words: “Replace it”. I didn’t want a repair, I didn’t want this machine back. I wanted it replaced. I had already brought it in twice previously and now I just wanted a new system. I might have well just crapped out a live tiger right there on the counter, because the look that I received rested somewhere between confusion and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. “I could go get my manager?” It was a question and it almost seemed distant and rhetorical as if it shouldn’t have been said aloud. “Yes” was my answer.

This next paragraph was going to be spent issuing a love letter to the truly majestic and buoyant man breasts of the Mac store manager, but I thought it petty, so I’m not going to do it. Manager has obviously read Conrad as he steps over the brown tiger in the room and borrows the other employee’s confused child-like stare. I explain my multiple issues with “the lemon” and how now that it was going to need a new IR sensor, a new video card (I left the red-yellow pixel shift that accompanied my Safari use out of this blog because it sounded like a wedding dance and things are already getting confusing), a new display and a new logic board, I simply wanted a replacement unit. I even said that I would pay for an upgrade to a new unit as my faith in the older product line had been considerably shaken. Of course at that moment a shockingly stealthy giraffe must have crawled out of my pants to challenge the ass-tiger to a rousing game of yahtzee because the manager’s face turned the shade of hemorrage and crumpled in on itself more confused than before.

His response was that since the unit had not been in for repair before (huh?) that there was no grounds for a replacement (whaaaaaaaaa??????). Employee #1 then casually slid over and pressed a key on the store’s computer that either showed a new screen or actually turned it on and the manager was presented with information on the previous repairs. I was then informed that this still didn’t warrant a replacement. Wiping the blood off of my hands from where my fingernails were progressively digging deeper I explained that repairing this “lemon” (I thought the good folks at Apple would appreciate the fruit analogy) was just going to lead to more repairs and that a replacement would solve this. I do want to thank the good folks at Apple for laughing at me after I left and not directly to my face, as the answer was again a “no”. I further explained that I was simply tired of lugging the unit back and forth to be serviced and then being without the machine for weeks at a time. I was then told that I had always had the option of a technician actually coming out to my property to check the machine and then take it for repairs. Umm, really? Looks like that option had never been explained to me. EVER.

So the latest breaking news from this morning is that they were currently waiting on the last of the parts to arrive (today being day three of my 2-3 days). I was then informed that even if it did arrive today, that there were no repairs being done today and just to let me know, there is a LOT of work that has to be done on this machine … “Frustration is in the lead with Piping Hot Anger in a close second and the dark horse in running, Ritual Suicide is closing in. Wait, what’s this? Vein Splitting Fury has suddenly made this race interesting in a surprise move here in the last hour!!!”…

I have had horrible customer service. I’m not going to even say that HP’s customer service back in the day when I was still in the PC game was stellar. Here’s the difference: I paid 598.00 for my HP in 2005. I paid (including Apple Care, tax, etc.) 2500.00 for my Mac in 2007. There are certain expectations that come with a product that is touted for its reliability and a company that boasts of its customer relations. After meeting the same kind of service on three different occasions from three different locations, I can’t call this a fluke, nor can I chalk it up to “bad policy”. I place the blame firmly on a company that has forgotten that not everyone who buys their products falls squarely and neatly under one tax bracket. There are those of us who intend to make our purchases last and are not impressed with a 2500.00 lemon when they could have just as easily settled for a 600.00 one. Could be the reason I decided to go Mac in the first place, huh? Too bad this is a story that goes from first place to last place way too quickly.

Artificial Immortality: At What Point Do We Stop Being Human?

With the scientific advances that have been made in medical care over the past few decades with things such as artificial organs, prosthetic limbs, and computer technology, how far are we from making ourselves immortal?



Nowadays we have artificial kidneys and other organs, but those are only good for a limited time, but with advances in medical technology, how far off are we really from having parts that will not only function for longer, but will be better than the real thing? What about organs that are interchangeable by the person that they are installed in? I know we have seen fictional cyborgs like Robocop, but how far off is that from becoming a reality? Was Murphy still alive in that shell, or was he just a skinning on a robot that accidentally carried over some memories from a previous life?



This scenario raises many questions for me. It makes me wonder if we will be able to produce artificial immortality and what parts of the body are actually fully necessary to still be human. I'm sure a fully working artificial heart will not be far off to where it will plug into the brain and use electronic pulses from the brain to know when to speed up or slow down as necessary. It seems there is now also a way to combine living neurons with microchips. We already have somewhat artificial limbs and I'm sure there is someone somewhere working on a way to replace our veins and arteries with surgical tubing. I know people who have metal bars working as a bone when the bone was shattered, and how many senior citizens have you heard of having an artificial hip?

Sure we want our loved ones to be with us forever, but there is also the ethical question of how long should we keep someone alive and when we do have the ability to keep someone alive artificially, at what point should we pull the plug and send them to the afterlife, or are they already in the afterlife and the living entity is just a soulless shell of a person. Where do we cross the line from being living to dead? I think the best answer to this is to just listen to our hearts.

Mark

If I Never See Bigfoot, Does He Not Exist?

We’ve all heard the philosophical phrase “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Since sound is vibration that is transmitted to our senses through the mechanism of the ear and recognized as sound only at our nerve centers. The falling of the tree or any other disturbance will produce vibration of the air. If there are no ears to hear, there will be no sound." So in other words, if one never sees Bigfoot or anything commonly classified as paranormal, does it not exist and in turn lessen their credibility when discussing the topic?


As many of you probably know by now, I have been an avid paranormal enthusiast (ok...I take that back, a paranormal fanatic being the more fitting term) for as long as I can remember, yet never have I seen anything that can be considered paranormal. Does this make me or anyone else that fits this description any less credible when he/she is looked at as somewhat of a paranormal SME (Subject Matter Expert)? I’d like to believe that it affords me a little extra objectivity when debating with skeptics or responding to one of the many expert guests we interview weekly on ‘The Parafactor Radio Show‘. Though I yearn for the opportunity to step in some proverbial Sasquatch poop, there is also another part of me that is scared to death and wants no part of a firsthand encounter with the beast or anything paranormal for that matter. I believe it is this inherent fear of the unknown and the never ending quest for truth that keeps me coming back for more.


There is also an additional part of me that is afraid of being disappointed by the paranormal much like meeting that sports hero and finding out he did steroids his whole career to achieve those lofty statistics. For example, maybe Bigfoot is a big jerk and no fun to hang out with at all. Maybe he just wants to sit around and watch bad reality television while smoking cheap cigars, or better yet, crash fancy White House shindigs! I guess everyone has their flaws; sports stars, celebrities, politicians, and yes, even Bigfoot. I’m almost certain that The Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, Extraterrestrials, Chupacobra, Champ, etc., etc., etc., all have their share of faults and inadequacies as well. This doesn’t make us love them any less, does it?


My point being in all of this is that it’s ok to have an interest in, or even worship, something that may never have tangibility. It’s even ok to revere those with flaws and imperfections. I recall reading somewhere that man (shortcomings and all) was created in God’s image, so wouldn’t this hold true for paranormal beings too? Have passion for whomever and whatever you believe in, regardless of whether or not you can reach out and touch them.




Jon

Calling all Succubi

The first time I saw Ghostbusters, as a boy, it made an impression on me. That impression as memory serves me now is as follows: “What the hell was that ghost doing unzipping Dan Ackroyd’s pants and why is he so damn happy about it?!?!?!” A sidenote that I must now include is that Ghostbusters also marked a period of my adolescence where I swore randomly. I think I was just angry because I was being picked on by a man who would later live out his twenties in the basement of a YMCA. It also could have been Turrets Syndrome…

My first impression of Ghostbusters as an adult was as follows: “Where the hell can I find a succubus?” I mean, really, is this the worst that hell’s legions of demons can throw my way? I hear a creak on the stairs (not the “I will drag your almost impossibly endowed girlfriend through the hall and baby-soft talcum powder Paranormal Activity creak”) and a dark horned figure stands in the doorway, pitchfork or whatever bails hay in hell in hand, leveraging a taloned finger at me and says.” Ash Hamilton. Your name has been inked in the book of Leviathan. Prepare to be drained of all bodily fluids by thorough sexing that will not result in pregnancy, an STD that makes you pass wing nuts out your urethra or awkward conversations that begin with. “So did that constitute a “half-and-half” or an “around the world”?

Where was Dante Alighieri when Satan added that particular level of hell, “Lessee, we get uh fire dancing on the soles of the feet, buncha lawyers in a river of boiling blood…uh, hey Mephistopheles! I’m thinking of switching things up a bit…I can’t just put another blood river here.” (Satan here is played by character actor Joe Pantoliano) How did this one get through the cracks? This is a pretty big oversight to make its way outta hell’s audit.

Which brings me to my dilemma. How does one go about procuring one of these little kittens? I tried being virtuous and pious. No succubi. Tried being that “haunted man living on the edge, one step away from losing his soul…and his humanity. This summer ex - cop Tyler Trent learns the very definition of…” No succubi. Apparently there is also one thing that Craigslist does not have…succubi. Did see an ad for a bi-curious Wiccan trying to pay for culinary school. No succubi.

So this is my call to arms. I am looking for a succubi. I am even willing to sublet someone else’s succubi if an arrangement of mutual benefit can be met. I’ll even go Sunday, Monday, Tuesday if I have to. I would prefer a succubus who takes care of herself, maybe late thirties/ early forties, but dishy. Luckily the lack of a corporeal body will probably make this one a sure thing. Oh… if sharing succubi, I don’t want to know what you have named it. I will name it and that will make things less weird for me; probably Raven or Candy.

Ewww that Smell: Do Olfactory Hallucinations Support the Multiverse Theory?

Phantom smells seem to accompany the paranormal on almost every level. From the smell of rotten eggs that sometimes marks spirit activity to the overwhelming odors of the skunk ape, aptly named for the very smell that precedes it, the paranormal is an odiferous area of study. Are these odors, like the banal and unsuspicious smells we encounter everyday, simply an attribute of the phenomena, or might they allude to a mechanism by which the phenomena presents itself?

Phantosmia is usually an indicator of a serious illness and phantom smells can be the harbingers of horrible medical concerns including epilepsy and brain tumors. Phantosmia, which has been linked to temporal lobe seizures, often accompanies epilepsy stemming from the hippocampus.


Temporal lobe epilepsy in particular has been somewhat of a catchall explanation for ghosts among debunkers and the scientific field in general. Temporal lobe seizures have often been associated with “seeing” ghosts and have even been singled out in possession cases. The aspect of “alien control” associated with temporal lobe conditions replaces the demonic when there is reason to suspect hyperactivity in the temporoparietal cortex, again, making the temporal lobe a convenient neurological patsy when it comes to explaining away the paranormal. It is a patsy so convenient, in fact, that it incurs suspicion through the frequency of its diagnosis.

The temporal lobe itself is not limited to producing just olfactory hallucinations and here is where the skeptic gets a little more fuel for their fire. The ventral part of the temporal cortices are responsible for such high perception recognition as faces and scenes. Put together the instances of phantosmia, alien control (which has a wide range of seemingly paranormal attributes from feeling as though there is a presence in the room to actually losing physical control of your body), and visual hallucinations stemming from the fusiform gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus part of the temporal cortex and you have all the makings of a serious haunting. Or is it that easy?


If it was, we would seemingly see a lack of both EVPs and thermal imagery, you would think. Could mass hallucinations be the culprit again then? Are our ghost hunters all victims of a form of temporal lobe epilepsy specific in it’s conditions? Let’s pose an alternative. Trauma to the brain can often cause temporal lobe lesions. Many people who have temporal lobe lesions may have some of the effects of temporal lobe epilepsy varying in severity. What if exposure to a rip in dimensional barriers could tax both the fusiform gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus areas to such an extent that temporary damage is done to that area of the temporal lobe? Let’s go a step further and ask if these areas of the brain HAVE to be manipulated in order for the multiverse to be seen. If so, can a brush with the paranormal lead to multiple exposures simply due to the damage done to the temporal lobe during that first incident? What if overstimulation caused by paranormal activity results in a small lesion in the temporal lobe? If damage or stress to the temporal lobe opens one up to paranormal experiences can the forming of lesions snowball and intensify these experiences?

(Continued in Part 2)

Ash

Skepticism and The Fourth Kind

Have you ever found yourself, trying to explain your theory on the mole
people or some other paranormal topic to a new friend or coworker? Have
you ever been greeted with skepticism and the "he might be crazy look?"
I have. In fact I was greeted with it not once, not twice, but three
times this week.

So why was met with such skepticism? Was it the topic of abduction? I
don't think so. Was it the words I used to articulate my views?
Probably. One thing I have learned in my years of being open to things
beyond Starbucks and the box we are expected to live within, is that the
saying, "it's not what you say, but how you say it" is true. If you get
the chance email me your experiences with the skeptics, how did you
handle it?

Speaking of abduction, the Fourth Kind is out and I am looking forward to
meeting it with my own kind of skepticism this Friday. Keep your
spoilers out of my inbox :-). Those that may not know The Fourth Kind is
an abduction film that takes place in a very remote Alaskan town. No
soccer moms or minivans in these parts, just Milla Jovovich and a bunch
of really cold abductees. Apparently there is some fact to this film,
but ill avoid looking into that and exploring that, until after I have
seen the movie.

Greg

Rise of the Robots: Are we our own Terminators?

On a previous episode of The Parafactor we covered a story about robots that were being designed to perform scientific experiments that would allow them to reason for themselves. This sort of spontaneous intelligence could be
a blessing or a curse. If executed correctly we might be able
to get definitive proof that life either does or did exist on other planets, utilizing the resilience and longevity of thinking machines for prolonged space travel. We might be able to help the severely handicapped through programmed “super providers”; nannies and caregivers that always remember to administer medication, and that never need to sleep.

So let's say that they will be used for good. They have the capacity to
store as much information as their hard drive will hold, and if it gets
full you can always upgrade it or even have the unit itself switch out its own hard drives when need be. This will give them countless different scenarios to run
through where each scenario can be sorted, logged and utilized for reference. We can program thinking machies to sort
through different drugs and find the correct combination of medicines to
cure diseases. We can run situational computations based on our fossil fuel resources to help move away from our reliance on oil. If these are the goals
that we are working towards, then I am all for it.

There is, on the other hand, that whole becoming self aware thing where machines see the apparent aberrations in mankind and start to develop their own contingency plans to deal with it. How will we be able to damage them at all when the scientists/mechanics that built them have built them to survive in the harshest environments on other worlds? The very design that enables their functionality could very spell our ruin. And how long until that functionality is recognized for its hidden resource and the production is moved towards alternative applications.

Let's look at the alternative now; metal killing machines. Is it all that farfetched to think the government will send robots into war against other countries? We see it as an element of blockbuster science fiction, but is it really all that unthinkable? Remember that drone technology is currently siphoning off some major defense dollars. If they do end up going this route, will they be able to differentiate between friends and enemies. Their enemies could be of any race, creed, or
class and the robots will need a way to determine who to shoot. If there is
a malfunction it could turn into a bloodbath for the wrong side, so they
will need to be not only to be intelligent, but also somewhat aware; an astute awareness that goes far beyond our current not-so-successful facial recognition attempts and move into musculature of the face and even potential phoneme recognition and predictive facial feature recognition based on certain dialects. Sounds a little like ethnic profiling doesn’t it? And we haven’t even the time to look at the social implications. Let’s just refer back to Asimov and move on.


When they become aware of the world around them, they will shortly then become “self-aware”. It’s a more term we apply more to Cyberdine Industries, but pop cultural references aside, it is the turning point that we all fear. If they become self aware, they may realize that they are being used as killing
machines and that self awareness may turn from quizzical to philosophical to pragmatic in just a few beats of the war drum. There is a fine line between patriotism and sadism, and personality often drives the latter. Sure,
we think Data from Star Trek was cool, but they won't be him.. It could be Cyberdine’s Skynet, and it wouldn't be pretty.
It has already happened once
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/11/us_war_robot_rebellion_iraq/
in the S.W.O.R.D.S. project (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance
Direct-action System). Luckily nobody was hurt this time. So what do you
do when you try it once and it doesn't work? The only logical answer is
to try, try again. This time
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/09/transformer_robot_can_transform
_into_a_robot/ , they're making transformers as part of a project
called M.A.A.R.S. (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System). What will
happen next?

Mark