Srcasm

It was a dark and gloomy day in the Middleton-Kozak household when the MacBook’s power adapter ceased to function.  Magda screamed out in agony over the fact that her batter would no longer charge and she would have no way of getting online — Oh wait, we had 4 computers, 3 Blackberrys and a G1 in the household so that wasn’t a problem but the laptop not charging was an inconvenience to say the least.

Fast forward a day or two later, we decided to take it to the Apple store at the King of Prussia mall on Halloween and on the day that the Phillies parade was in Philadelphia.  This meant that there were little to no people at the mall for this time of year.  We got into the Apple store and went to the Genius Bar (the place where the Apple geeks live to fix Apple gear).

After signing in, they told us it would be 5-10 minutes before we were seen.  It was 2.  After Tim, the friendly tech, took a look at the machine, he said that it wasn’t the battery or the power adapter so it had to be the DC board in the laptop.  Something was screwy with it and it would get power to run but no power to charge the device.  He did however explain that it could be fixed by Apple for free (under the Apple Care plan).  Another win for Apple.

Tim said that we should leave it with the store for 3-5 days so that they could replace the hardware and all would be right in the world again.  We made sure they had the proper information to get ahold of us when it was fixed and left to go shopping for clothing (which I despise).

About 2 hours later, Magda got a call on her cell phone from Tim.  He left a voicemail that said that the laptop was finished and we could pick it up.  The time to fix went from 3-5 days down to 2 hours.  That was excellent as we were still at the mall so with a quick swing over to the Apple store again, we had the laptop back and it took a charge.  They get a huge thank you from me for the speedy recovery of the beloved device.

While I am not an Apple or Mac fan boy and I own many PCs as well as a few Apple devices, I will say that their customer service and support is one of the best in the country.  I have never had such a pleasant experience getting a piece of hardware fixed and with the speed they won’t a new spot in my heart.  I would go so far as to say that if Apple wanted to give me a MacBook Air for my new consulting job, I would be proud to use it.  (Hint, hint.)

Frank Eliason (aka @ComcastCares) and his team of phenomenal people are at it again!  They’ve had a bit of publicity on ZDNet, Brian Solis’ blog and even the Get Satisfaction crew is getting satisfied.

Today, I had a strange issue — I could no longer get the music channels on my digital box.  A quick reboot of the box didn’t fix it so I sent an email to Frank’s team.  Within the hour Catherine, from PA/De Corporate Escalations, had both called me and emailed me to see if we could get to the bottom of my problem.  After a quick call back, she had booked a service call for 7-9pm on Thursday (that’s right, a two hour window next day).  About 5 minutes later she called to ask if anyone had sent a signal to the box yet.  Nope?  She did and within seconds the music channels reappeared.  The fiancée was happy and so was I and she got to close a ticket in probably near-record time.  I want to make sure I say thanks to that whole team.  And keep up the great work, Comcast.

As for everyone else, learn from this.  Comcast has had historically poor support but they are working their butts off to get better.  When I call Verizon, AT&T, PGW and the rest of the bunch, I would love to actually get an educated, nice person on the phone — or at least be able to reach out to them on Twitter.