Apple People

This week's post comes to you by way of my new MacBook Air, my tougher-to-get-than-you-can-hardly-imagine MacBook Air.

I'll start the story with the punchline, which is Bruce saying "No way," to my suggestion that he buy an Apple product when he replaces his PC lap top.

The rest of the story begins with the power surge mentioned last week that fried my poor old iMac, rendering it dead as nails.

This is what happens next:

• we gather up my spent computer and, after confirming at Best Buy that there is no way to repair it cheaply, we take it to the Apple Store in the Eaton Centre
• after a long wait in our hot coats, a nice young man assures me the MacBook Air I'm buying will serve all my computing needs and that it will take two days to migrate the data from my old machine to the new machine
• two days later an Apple person contacts me and tells me my new machine doesn't have the gigabytes to hold the data from my old machine, so, says the Apple person, "what data don't you want migrated?" I ask another question in  response, "Is it possible for me to buy another machine that does have room enough for all my data?" She thinks that's possible.
• five minutes after that call, another Apple person calls me. This one says there was some kind of power surge (this is happening a lot) at the Eaton Centre and it might take more time than normal to migrate my data. I say, "I'm coming by the store after work to buy a bigger computer, maybe you can update me then." He says sure. I say good bye.
• that night, after a long wait in my hot coat, another Apple person processes my purchase of a larger machine and tells me the data migration will take seven to ten days.
• I ask to see a manager.
• after a long wait in my hot coat, another Apple person comes out and offers an apology sufficiently abject that I grudgingly accept it but also demand that Apple give me some consideration for the inconvenience of my having to buy my computer twice and stand around so much in a hot coat. The $250 price difference in the two machines is hardly worth my time, and that's my opening bid for how they could buy back my loyalty as a customer.
• later that day I get a call from another Apple person; they are so sorry they wasted my time that they will give me a $50 gift card along with my new computer.
• two days later I am contacted at work by another Apple person; this one tells me my new machine doesn't have the gigabytes to hold the data from my old machine ...
• I wonder if this is just never going to end.
• Oops. No. They made a mistake, says one Apple person on the phone arguing with another Apple person in the background. They look further into the file and see that I did buy the new computer. This Apple person says he will call me when the data's migrated. A few hours later I get that call.
• later that day, after a long wait in my hot coat, I open up my new computer to make sure the data migration went well and ... I'll spare you the details about the phantom password problem that added half an hour to the time I spent waiting in my hot coat. 
• I am actually out of the store, my new computer tucked under my arm, when I remember the $50 gift card. One more long wait in my hot coat later, I have that, too.

The moral of this story is if, unlike Bruce, you want to buy an Apple product, you should shop when you don't need to put on a coat to go outside.

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

Karen