Who do I turn to when Apple Execs refuse to help?

Tech Support
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Last year I bought a MBP 15"… top of the line. I started having keyboard issues and lock up with either spinning beach balls or no response at all. Finally, my ‘H’ key stopped working. I have to create a TextExpander where if I typed the letter 'I" twice, it would convert to H. I took the laptop to the “genius” bar and they wanted to send the laptop away. I left as this was not an option for me. I called in and asked for an advanced replacement and that they could charge my card until the received the bad one. They did not want to do this. I had my issue escalated to the executive office at Apple and they would not budge. They said it would be normally a week but because of the hurricane, it would be three weeks. Since taking a month off of work was NOT an option, I bought a brand spanking new MBP and shipped the “old” one back.

The new one works exceptionally well and I am very happy with it. However I recvd the old one back and they replaced the keyboard, battery (I did not know there was anything wrong with it), the top bezel (they must have broken it taking it off), and replaced missing screws, the last one being scary since I NEVER undid any screws. However upon receiving the laptop and turning it on, I logged into iCloud and it wanted to enable some email accounts. Mind you, I sent it with a wiped drive and they installed Mojave @ Apple. Anyhow, this particular email account has 3 emails in it. It is an account I NEVER use. The MBP went into a 1hour beach ball with a black screen. NO OTHER APP WAS INSTALLED. I called into “support” and the guy tells me he is going to send me a screen share request. I told him I could not accept it because the machine was not responsive at all. He told me to reboot it. I did and we did the screen share. He then told me, “well I do not see the beach ball so you should be OK now. Call us if it happens again”. WTH did he just say? If this is the response why bother. More especially, If I am doing a presentation to 200 people, I am going to say, “sorry folks, gotta call Apple, lets reschedule this talk”.

I called the Executive office again and they said they would not replace the laptop. She (exec) said that I need to contact support when it happens and they would assist me. I asked how many time would I need to do this before they admitted that the laptop was a lemon and replace it. She said “we do not work off of what ifs”. I asked her that once my Apple care runs out and I am still playing these games, will they still cover me. Again she repeated the same.

My question, and thank you if you are still reading this, is WHAT DO I DO? I cannot escalate higher than the executive office. Apparently if “she” told me to go pound same, I have no recourse. I remain a faithful Apple Juice drinker as I just bought the new 32GB MBP, Apple Watch 4th gen, HomePod x3, & new iPad Pro.

Please help.

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My understanding is that because of the way they’re constructed the keyboard, top case, and battery are generally replaced as a unit.

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I have had 2 MacBooks replaced under warranty over the last 10 years. It takes 3 attempted repairs before they consider a replacement

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Yep, happened with my 2012 Retina MacBook Pro and can confirm that this is the official policy. Three major repairs, then replace. Mysterious, intermittent sudden shutdowns. Worked with a senior Apple care rep for 6 months. Sent it in 3 times for major part replacements to try and nail down what might be causing the issue. After the third major service, they replaced it (with an equivalent 2015 model since the 2012s were no longer available).

Turnaround time for each service was usually only about 3 or 4 days, which was a serious inconvenience, but between my iPad and my partners computer I could manage, barely. But there’s really nothing Apple could do, repairs take time, parts need to be ordered, that’s just reality.

I suppose other than start some kind of loaner program (and some resellers have that, for a fee). Many of our work lives now require continuous access to a computer, but many of us only have one computer, and as the saying goes, 2 is 1 and 1 is none. We’re good at backing up our data, not so good about making sure we have backup hardware, but for many of us we probably should start to think about that. All the data backups in the world don’t do us any good to prevent downtime when our hardware fails.

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