Apple Needs Customer Care Repair

Pope Francis called the unfettered pursuit of money “the dung of the devil.” Capitalism is key when it comes to Apple.

However, I won’t blame the man whose technological genius has far outweighed his billions earned. Steve Jobs has changed the world, but, I will air my grievances about the way Apple Inc. doesn’t care about its customers or their complaints. In a recent incident, having contacted APPLE SUPPORT, I was treated like an inept woman of misfortune and blamed for something I did not do or could not fix.

I have been an Apple user since its inception. I have owned a multitude of products all of which I have found to work extremely well. I loved my Apple MacBook Pro, IPad and an assortment of other  products that have served me well as the founder of one of the most respected children’s charities in America, as founder and Editor -In- Chief of a syndicated blog on the Huffington Post, and most of all, as an author and journalist.

My computer is my life support. I am a disciplined writer who spends no less than 8 hours a day in front of a keyboard. I rarely move my computer and sadly, I need to move myself more.

In between feeding my dog and my husband breakfast, I discovered an unusual glitch on my computer’s screen. It appeared as horizontal and vertical lines meshed together to form an unusual frame around the the lower border of  the screen. I became increasingly concerned when I discovered that I could not access or scroll across the bottom of the screen to find the apps needed to function.

I had purchased the MacPro computer with a 15- inch Retina screen at an Apple store with a warranty less than 11 months ago.

I concluded. This need not happen to a new computer… not when the product cost 2 thousand dollars. So, like any law abiding, technologically gifted but not geek citizen, I decided to call Apple for support. If I tell you I was first directed efficiently by a woman who consoled my concerns, each and everyone of them, with a Apple Caring Tone Of  Voice who then assigned me a case number and then handed me off, or I should say, suspended me into the Apple Universe where I would await  hearing from a second even more compassionate Apple Caring person named Rick. He even assured me that he would not leave my side, no, never, not until this mysterious screen shot of a problem would be solved. “Describe the problem,” he said in a lower pitched, Apple Caring Tone Of Voice.

“Lines, vertical lines, then horizontal lines… keys jamming together even when the space bar was being pressed.” Annoying rhetoric, I could hardly find words in my state of despair. Questions upon answers upon questions. ” Did you move the computer at any time,”… Rick asked. “No, I did not move the computer. It faces north like the wind which is battering my brain in a drier than dry late October day. I felt the gist of his interrogation beginning to mount or maybe we should say, he must have surmised that I was an inept Apple user, and I must have applied a 7the Generation product to the screen (holier than Green)  because I am germ phobic and can’t stand looking at a black hole with dust particles… and due to this behavioral irregularity, I must have caused the unrecognizable lines on my computer’s screen.

I surmised that Rick was not capable in believing Hillary could become our next president nor was he able to solve my irrefutable complaints that something other than me may have caused this dysfunction.

Why isn’t Gloria Allred an App?

In the end, after four consecutive return calls, (he was logging in for himself as a means of efficiency) and in all due respect to the Apple abuser, Rick concluded, I needed to speak with someone with more authority in a higher command position.

Rick was right. I needed to bust through the Silicone Valley Microchip Ceiling and find out why Apple stock is better than chicken.

Enter Sydney. Mild mannered but Apple fed from birth.

Time was wasting away… mine and hers.

Soon enough, after we had exchanged the equivalent of several MRI’s, (photos I was instructed to send via email of my screen before my MacPro had been shipped to Texas). Unlike the famous before and after shots on Dr. Oz’s miracle makeovers, my before screen shot looked Apple Lifetime Eons better than theirs. I tried to convince Sydney that this “accidental incident” was on their dime not mine.

And I can promise you this. When your computer is packed in a box and shipped by FedEx but lands in the hands of some muscular thighed guy wearing shorts, who is anxious to get beyond barbwire, aggressive dogs, and mysterious looking housewives only to hand over the recycled cardboard box (with my computer) to a set of more polished technicians, (even higher up the Apple Scale then entry level- Rick and his counterpart, bust through the glass ceiling- Sydney) who look at Apple screens by day and most likely, play Fantasy Football at night… and then, only after my computer is taken out of the box it has been traveling in for 3 days across most of southwest before landing in the yellow rose of Texas (usually sent to commemorate the death of a beloved family member) comes  THE RED ALERT.

Sydney claimed THEY found the problem… all of the technicians concluded that the screen had been punctured or cut. Sorry! I’m not into cutting. That’s not my idea of needing to feel pain.

Hell hath no furry like a woman scorned by a bunch of geeks, robotics in action, and worse, one of my own gender who is probably going to vote for Trump.

APPLE’S drones (customer care support personnel)  are unleashed everyday, firing Apple jargon faster then you can trash a file. Their targets are helpless, addicted people, who carve out a living on keyboards while gazing at screens hoping that macular degeneration or floaters don’t spell the end… very end of their careers… no… please don’t tell me the bad, comfort me with ONLY APPLE CARES GOOD NEWS. Please Sydney spare me my computer’s part… its only the screen not the internal hard drive.

Breathless, I sat at my desk empty handed with no computer in sight. Just me and my cell phone on speaker aloud.

THE APPLE TONED VOICE (Sydney’s) said, ” Your computer’s warranty does not cover this repair charge. APPLE WILL FIX YOUR COMPUTER’S SCREEN PROBLEM for $1,249.00 plus FREE SHIPPING AT NO CHARGE.

I hung up on the mole. I could not stand my computer/separation anxiety much longer. I picked up the phone and called ANY MAC REPAIR source in the area. I found two. Got two quotes. Found out that the screen needed to be sent to an APPLE REPAIR CENTER. How interesting I thought to myself?

GREAT NEWS! The cost, from a nice, local, Mac certified guy, would be 8 hundred dollars. I hung up and sent the APPLE REPLY notice back immediately requesting to RETURN MY COMPUTER AS IS. DO NOT FIX!!!!! My cell rang and rang and rang. It was Sydney. Now apologetic, so concerned about her seniority.

“We can fix your computer if you authorize the repairs,” you betcha b—h! I thought to myself.

Whether Job’s DNA has infused every micro inch of his empire including the omnipotent horde of employees who have to succumb to the desperate calls from Apple owners (after all we helped Job’s build his empire)  will soon be seen on the silver screen.

And so, if you haven’t had a chance to read the brilliant article in The New York Times by Farhad Manjoo, “In Steve Jobs, Tolerating  Tech’s Unpleasant Visionaries,”  you should. “It is one of the few pop cultural depictions of the tech industry to buy into Silicon Valley’s essential worldview: an aggressive optimism that is willing to roll over just about everything and everyone in its path in the service of what it sees as the more important goal of building tomorrow.”

In the film version of Job’s life, Manjoo quotes an argument with Steve Jobs and co-founder Steve Wozniak who like everyone else clashed with Mr. Jobs. He tells him, “Your products are better than you are brother.” And Jobs replies, “That’s the idea.”

I beg to differ.

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