fun with applecare

So after establishing that my harddrive was indeed dead and dying, I called AppleCare. Until yesterday there had been no negative AppleCare experiences on my part. I had heard some horror stories from others but had never experienced such a blunder. Let’s establish some facts here. My macbook is not stock, it has a 160gb drive and 2gb of ram. Those are considered custom upgrades, and this information is attached to my serial number supposedly. So when calling, after providing my serial number, I assume that a person would check to see if the harddrive in question was availible at the applestore they were directing me to. That didn’t happen, and we drove over an hour out of our way to be told “Sorry we don’t have that here, we could order it or take the laptop and get it back to you”. To be fair, every person we talked to was very friendly and helpful. On the flip side, taking a half day from work and driving around to get nothing done right before traveling is not my idea of a good time.

I was understandably angry at this point and decided to spread the love in apple’s general direction. The woman I spoke to was very nice and helpful. She informed me that no applestore would have my drive because it was custom. Apparently they do keep a stockpile of parts on hand, but generally not for the custom configurations. Excellent. I’d spent a good part of my day trying to do something that was not possible at the onset.

At this point they are sending me another harddrive, which may or may not arrive before I have to travel again. On the bright side, my bitching got me a $60 gift certificate to the online applestore. The only downside to that, is the fact that we picked up a power adapter from the store before leaving and the certificate can not be used at a brick and mortar store. Good times.

<update>It should be noted that I did mention that I had a 160gb drive and that I wanted to find out where I could get a new drive today if it was possible. I’d call that along with my serial number enough information to provide accurate information. At this point I still have not received the certificate email either. I have received an email for a customer relations survey.</update>