Tech Goes Boom

Matt Webb and his crappy 12 inch Powerbook

Boing Boing has a link to an article about Matt Webb and his ordeal with Apple's support over a bad 12 inch powerbook he was sold. After reading Matt's story, I felt really sorry for him.

After spending a couple of years in Apple's technical support staff, I can say that this was something that happened pretty rarely. It looks like he was on the receiving end of a lot of SNAFUs here. As a Mac Genius, this was the kind of thing we never wanted to see. If a customer came in with a story like this, we would make sure he went away happy. He should have been given a new machine even if he was a couple of days outside his 10 day grace period. He had done his due diligence, and was not being a difficult customer. The repeated basic troubleshooting and handing off is really indicative of phone agents who cannot read case notes and deal with situations appropriately. I saw a lot of this.

Support in the computer industry is generally in a pretty dismal state. Razor thin margins on sales make it hard to offer comprehensive support. Well trained and competent support staff cost a lot of money, and quickly chew away at the bottom line. Support agents have a really high turn over rate and more and more companies rely on documentation rather than comprehensive training for dealing with support issues. That includes not only technical issues, but the companies own policies for dealing with situations. If my handout says that people over 10 days must take the repair option, and I am not aware of an unwritten policy for people with bad machines, out of the box, then that customer is loosing out. On top of this, it's frustrating like in this case, when the technical agent is far less experienced than you and cannot infer that you have already taken all the basic troubleshooting steps.

This is not specifically an Apple problem, it's rife in the industry. In fact, Apple is consistently top rated for their service business. But that doesn't mean it's going to be a cake walk having your issues dealt with. Service is just a gigantic sore thumb.

Matt finally got some resolution to his issues in the way of a replacement machine, which is really what he should have gotten in the first place. But the incredible silliness of this whole event is just painful.