At first, I was not to keen of going to the Apple Store to get it fixed. Yet, I needed it fixed so I could use my laptop. The reason behind me not wanting to go to the Apple store is because I didn't want to pay a large sum of money for this issue. All I wanted was my keyboard fixed. I thought about it and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like I would just have to go to Apple. I picked up my iPhone and , through the Apple Store App, scheduled my appointment at the Genius Bar for Friday afternoon.
At about 2:30 PM Friday afternoon I arrive at the Apple Store. I am greeted by a nice elderly man who signs me in. He tells me to stroll on towards the back and wait there until I am called. I knew this already, it wasn't my first time going to the Apple Store, but I just went with the flow. After about five minutes I am called to the counter. The Genius, let's call him Genius, asked me what was going on. I explained to him my keyboard was not working, and, before he could ask, told him my laptop was out of warranty. With that Genius typed some things on his computer and said "Well, we are giving free repairs on cracked laptop cases, let's see if we can fit you in there." That moment just blew me away. The first thing he offered my out of date, out of warranty, product was a free repair. I gladly said yes. Genius explained to me that they would take off my old keyboard and replace it with a brand new one. Genius also made me understand that Apple was not responsible for any data loss that may occur during the operation. I wasn't surprised by this, I had a time machine backup anyway just in case. I filled out the necessary paper work and gave Genius my computer. He told me it would be ready with in 24 hours.
I left the story overjoyed with my experience. I got a brand new keyboard, and I had to pay nothing for it. The cost of the replacement would have been $74! I drove home and started working on some things around the house that needed to get done. It wasn't until about 6 PM that I received a call. When I answered, it was Genius from the Apple Store. He informed me my computer was ready and I could come pick it up when I was ready. I was a little taken aback. I had not expected the repair to be done so quickly. I didn't have time Friday night to pick it up, so I went Saturday afternoon to get it. I walked it, told them I was picking up a Genius Bar repair, and strolled on towards the back. I told another Apple Genius the same thing, and he went to the back to get my laptop. I booted it up in the store to make sure everything worked fine. As I expected it did, and with no data lost.
There was one more thing that happened on the way out. I was looking around, checking out the new Macbook Pros with Thunderbolt. I was approached by another Apple employee, a nice elderly man. He asked me if I had any questions or if there was anything he could help me with. I responded with "No thank you, I am just looking around". He must have noticed me eyeing the new Macbooks because the next thing he said was "You know, these are the new Macbooks. They have Thunderbolt. Let me tell you, I got one of these and going from a dual core processor to a quad core is amazing. The speed difference is mind boggling." I nodded and kept looking. It was at that point that my brother, who was there with me, asked if there were any cords or products for Thunderbolt. The sales rep started talking about how nothing was out yet, but there were products in the making. He asked my brother what type of laptop he had, to which he responded "A Macbook which I bought last year". The sales rep said it was too bad he had bought it last year, if it were in the last three months they could give him the new one for free in exchange for his old one. He did state that my brother could upgrade his RAM to 8GB and that would help speed it up. For some reason it was then that the sales rep looked at me and said "Do you know how to do that?" I responded "Yes" and kept quiet. He continued to talk with my brother about various things such as dual booting windows or running VMWare Fusion. Each time though, he asked me if I knew how to do these things. I kept answering yes. It was after about 5 minutes that he said to me, politely, the following: "You know, you seem to know a lot. You should look into getting a job at the Genius Bar as a Genius." It was right there and then that may experience became almost perfect. Now I have to think about whether or not to look into getting a job there.
~Dave
No comments:
Post a Comment