I have to start this post by saying "Dear Apple Computer company, I love you."
When I came home from work last night my husband Tom was freaked out about his Powerbook. During the day it started making ugly, grinding noises and then it wouldn't boot up. Yikes. After calling me at work to make computer grinding sounds over the phone, he called the Burlington (MA) Apple store and they suggested he make an online appointment at the Genius Bar (so he wouldn't have to wait.) He went online and picked today at 2:55pm. (Love the specificity!)
Today we wandered over to the Genius Bar and arrived at 2:55 on the dot. And they called Tom's name at 2:55 on the dot. A very nice young man named David was our assigned Genius.
I have to say this in the way that only Bostonians can comprehend - what a good kid. Pleasant, calm, approachable, reasonable, not a genius-snot at all. Genius David patiently listened to Tom explain the weird behavior of the laptop and then Genius David went through the steps of removing the battery and the startup bypass multiple key thing. Sure enough, it booted up. He ran some diagnostics and it checked out fine.
Tom was in super freak-out mode because in a rare moment of being way too busy with photography assignments, he had not performed his monthly back up - and the laptop holds all our household finance stuff, his contracts & databases and his email accounts. He asked Genius David if he could back up the hard drive immediately. Genius David said it was easy to do - just get an external hard drive and it wouldn't take much time to copy over. The other choice was to have a tech charge $150 an hour for data backup. The 60G hard drive (that he should have had anyway) was only $129 - and Genius David guided Tom through the copy procedure. Oh yeah - there was no charge because their diagnosis didn't find anything wrong with the computer.
Genius David was never impatient or rude, nor did he exhibit the behavior that we have come to expect from many IT service people. The Geek Squad has been working to reform the image of IT service - but the Genius Bar has it nailed right now.
Having done my time in retail, I know what a word to someone's manager means. I asked for Genius David's boss and spoke to the store manager to tell him that he saved Tom's sanity. We spoke for a few minutes and he promised to extend our gratitude to Genius David and thanked us for taking the time to pass along the praise. He then gave Tom a card good for an hour of an Apple employee's time for help, training, or service.
The "net net" of the visit - Apple turned a panic situation into a successful save and reinforced the superior brand excellence. Is there hope for other retailers?
PS - I'm still waiting for the iPhone, supposedly still due out in June. I cannot wait!
BTW if the hard drive is making strange noises it is very likely near death; this from an Apple technician looking at my similarly stricken PowerBook G4 on Saturday. The dirty little secret of laptops: their hard drives are only designed to last 2 1/2 years. Bless Apple for selling me a $349 AppleCare protection plan?
Posted by: Jeff Flemings | March 18, 2007 at 03:44 PM
There is an excellent website for online backup information, news and articles. Check it out here:
http://www.BackupReview.info
This site lists more than 400 online backup companies and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.
Cheers,
Posted by: Jennifer | March 18, 2007 at 03:39 PM