beatworm.co.uk

A week later, I phoned back as suggested. I used the number from the apple store shipment tracking form, as before. I did as I had been told, and read out my incident number to the representative who answered This time, the Apple Store support chap pointed out I was dialling the wrong number for technical support, before offering to transfer me to the right department.

Immediate connect. A reasurring Irish accent enunciating an Applecare support menu. I select ‘other’. Less than five minutes on hold. Nice jazz at a reasonable volume, rather than distorted techno-metal. A friendly, intelligible voice takes the call, takes my case number, and then puts me on wait for another couple of minutes while he digs out the details.

He returns to confirm everything I’d managed to deduce from the UPS number. An order had been created with UPS, and they’d been credited, but no shipment collection had ever been made. He’s checked with the dispatch team, and the battery order is there, ready to go. He’ll chase it up with UPS, and anticipates it should be delivered to me within a couple of days. I explain about the useless tracking number on my battery program confirmation email, and he tells me that these are from an entirely separate order numbering systems to the store, you need to phone technical support. I grumble a bit about the wait time, he’s very apologetic.

This is the Apple support I’m used to. Ok, someone screwed up, but they’re on to it, and it didn’t take more than ten minutes of my time to let them know. Why so different from last week’s call center hell ? My best guess is that it has to be the valid incident case number. Presumably, if you hand out Applecare credentials or a case number early in the chain you get fast-tracked to a higher tier of support. A further conclusion to draw; for Apple laptops, which in my experience are more likely to feature technical problems than their desktop machines, Applecare should probably be considered a mandatory part of the purchase cost.