Tuesday, June 9, 2009

My Long Battle With Apple Customer Service

After eight years of Apple fanaticism, for the first time, I’ve become slightly discontent with Apple’s customer support team. The manner in which Apple Care has handled my most recent repairs has left me without a working computer for the last 45 days. As a college student, this means many hours in the library completing school assignments.

In the beginning of May 2009 I brought my MacBook Pro in for repair to the Mall at Millenia in Orlando, Florida. The latch on my laptop stopped working and I simply requested a repair on the latch. The representative claims that the laptop needs to be sent in to Apple for repair and will be back to me in a few days. A few days later the laptop arrives back on my doorstep, still with a broken latch; according to the repair report they had wiped the hard drive, replaced the motherboard, and replaced the screen. I have absolutely no idea why they would replace all of these expensive parts when I just needed a latch replacement.

Several hours after booting up the computer, the computer overheats and crashes. I was then unable to use the computer for more than two hours straight without it overheating. I figured they must have done the wrong repair on my computer so, I bring it back to the Apple store for another repair. This time they agree to the latch replacement and claim they will replace the motherboard to fix the overheating issues.

On May 15th 2009 I head back to the store to pickup the computer. They give me a repair invoice for a replaced motherboard, superdrive, and bottom casing; the total came out to $186. After about an hour of dealing with different managers, I get the bill written off. Then, as I leave the store a manager gives me a talk about being responsible and that next time the repair is on me. This was a little bit irritating but, I accepted his words of wisdom and left the store.

I bring the laptop back home assuming that I would be using a fully repaired machine but, the overheating issues were just as bad as they were after the first repair. So, they fixed the latch and replaced the motherboard twice and my computer was then worse than ever, or so I thought.

I spoke with an Apple representative, Andrew Park, about the issues I had run into. He claims he will personally oversee the repair and that a box would be coming in the mail; he also stated that I would receive a replacement laptop if the repair was unsuccessful again.

The box comes and I send it in to Andrew with the computer packed inside. After 10 days go by, I am curious as to why I have not heard anything back yet so, I call Andrew for a status update. Ten phone calls and 5 days later, I am yet to hear back from him.

Given the inability to access Andrew directly, I call in again to speak with another Apple Care representative. After speaking with them for over two hours, they inform me that they have no idea where the computer is and that they will not be able to replace it.

So, what started with a broken latch ends in me being out $1999.

-Justin
jaquilia1@gmail.com

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Thousands of College Kids Celebrate 4/20

On April 20th at 4:20PM thousands of students gathered to smoke Marijuana on some college campus in the United States. I'm not sure exactly where this took place so, feel free to point it out if anybody knows.













Somebody climbing a 40 foot tree.


4:12PM



4:14PM



4:18PM



4:19PM



4:20PM
























Friday, December 22, 2006

Charges have been dropped.

I find this to be somewhat ironic that the day after I post a link to my blog on Digg.com I receive a call from the Police. Turns out that my High School is not going to follow through with any charges now that they know who did it and they wanted to be sure to let my family know before Christmas. Could it be that my blog making it to the front page of Digg made an impact...? Who knows.

Anyways, they dropped the two felony charges against me and I can pickup ALMOST all of my stuff from the police station. They decided to keep all the CDs and DVDs they took to make sure I don't have any pirated software.

As for you non-believers that think I just completely fabricated this entire story... In two weeks when I can pick up my family's stuff and the case is closed, I will post some pictures of whatever I can. In fact, I have a piece of paper stating exactly what happened the day of the intrusion. I don't want to go and start posting things like that on the internet until the case is completely closed.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Why The Swat Team Raided My House!

My name is Justin and I am currently a Senior in High School. I have been accepted and plan on attending Florida State University next year.

But, here is the problem; on December 8th, 2006 all my plans for the future have been interfered with. Picture this, I am in my third period class on this day, I receive a text message from my mother saying, "Why are the cops at our house?" Suddenly, I try to think about anything I have ever done wrong. But, you know what, I couldn't think of anything! I received one more message from my mom that day; it said, "the lawyer says not to talk to the police." The rest of my school day was spent wondering how much trouble I have gotten myself in to.

My trip home from school I kept thinking, "I really have to go to the bathroom, I hope they will let me go before they arrest me!" Oddly enough, the police were not there. Even worse though, my mom was there and about to cry after I walked in. She just said one thing, "Justin, they took everything. What did you do?" I asked her to tell me what happened because really, I had no idea what was going on at this point.

My Mom's Story... "I got a call from the neighbors while I was at work, they told me to come home quick before the cops at our house beat down the door. I came home as soon as possible only to find eight police vehicles and a swat car in front of the house. Dozens of armed police officers were surrounding the house. I let them in without any trouble because they had a search warrant to confiscate anything computer related. The cops spent at least three hours in the house searching everywhere. They took so much!"

I looked at the search warrant and the list of everything confiscated. They took over $20,000 in computers, Palm Pilots, CDs/ DVDs, and pretty much anything else with a hard drive. The search warrant also explained that someone from our household illegally accessed an Orange County Public School computer system. It was that moment that I knew exactly what I did.

What I Did... I am in Web Design class at school and the teacher is so impressed with my Web Designing skills that she always had me doing different things for the school website. So in turn, I know the password to log into the school website and make changes (through FTP). Now, here is where this all comes in to play... Several months ago my High School, Winter Park High School, played our biggest rivals, Edgewater High School in a football game. They beat us at our homecoming game 35-14. I was at home the night after the game and noticed that the school website was updated to say, "Winter Park defeated by Edgewater". I thought it would be funny to see the reaction of this football player in my Web Design class if the website were to say something different. So, I changed it from "Winter Park defeated..." to, "Winter Park CRUSHED by Edgewater 35-14!"

I got a real big kick out of it the next day! But, little did I know, the OCPS system administrators were alerted of the change. The next two months were dedicated to locating where the change was made from. Which leads me to where I am today, being charged with two felony counts, illegally accessing OCPS networks and illegally transferring data to an OCPS network. Along with that, they are going to keep my stuff for three to six months to investigate!

I sure hope this doesn't interfere with me going to FSU next year! That's right everyone, my future at FSU could be jeopardized because the Orlando Police Department sent the swat team to my house in response to my changing of the word "defeated" to "CRUSHED" on the school website.

*CHECK MY MOST RECENT BLOG FOR AN UPDATE* (12/22/06)