Yesterday morning, I got a disturbing report from my wife: “I just tried to wake up the computer by hitting the space bar, and it went ‘bzzzzrrrt’ and didn’t turn on.”

Crap.

That sounded bad, and when I went to check out the iMac, it smelled bad, too, like a popped capacitor. I tried all the appropriate troubleshooting stuff, and nothing worked—the iMac was dead as a doornail.

I surmised that the problem was a fried power supply. A quick look at iFixit (via the app on the iPad) confirmed that it was user-servicable—sort of. This is a late 2006 iMac we’re talking about, which wasn’t meant to be opened by a consumer. Replacing the power supply in this thing looked like changing the heater core in a ‘96 Jetta; you have to take the whole damn thing apart in order to get to it, in about 49 steps. But, the part could be had for a little less than $200. Given that we expected this machine to last a few more years, it was worth repairing.

Still, I wanted as much of a confirmation of my diagnosis as I could get from the experts before ordering any parts, which meant a trip to the Genius Bar. I am very fortunate to have an Apple Store about three miles from my house. Reservation via iPad app—check.

I strolled into the Apple Store, Roseville Galleria, with iMac in hand, right on time, and quickly made eye contact with the check-in dude holding the souped-up iPod touch. It was probably pretty easy to spot the white acrylic iMac in a store full of brushed aluminum. Check-in was no problem. I had to wait a few minutes for my spot at the Bar to open up. Soon, it was my turn with Genius Bar Guy (Update: a follow up Apple email indicates the Genius’ name is Ken).

Now, on the way to the mall, I was full of doom and gloom. Even if I had bought the extended Apple Care, this would have been outside of that. I didn’t assume that the current iMacs used the same power supply as mine, and as in a car dealership, I expected the Apple price to be at a premium, never mind the labor, and the time being sent out to some repair facility. I was just going for a diagnosis here, and I would do the repair myself¹, or sell it as is and get something new. Oh me of little faith!

Ken listened to my story, lauded my thorough troubleshooting, tried one more thing (which of course didn’t work), and agreed, probably dead power supply—certainly, that was the first thing in the power chain and should be the first thing to try fixing. He started punching up numbers to see what we were looking at. I could hardly believe he said $106, plus tax! “No sir, that’s parts and labor. No, we would do the repair here. Sometimes we have the part in stock, hang on, let me check. […] No, unfortunately we don’t have it in stock, but we are so close to Elk Grove, we usually get our parts well under the 3-5 day estimate, so we would estimate we would have it for 5 days max.”

So, I asked, if you get it apart, and determine that it’s not the power supply but the logic board (which obviously I would decline), what will I be into it in terms of labor? “Nothing.” Wow. Probably needless to say, I let them take it for repair².

Of course, they would rightly assume that if I declined the repair, I would be buying a new Mac, so it’s kind of a win-win for Apple, but that’s still great customer service. There was a complete absence of an up-sell attempt of any kind. Furthermore, they let my son use the in-store restroom when nature called (as it does so suddenly for toddlers).

I should not have been surprised by Apple’s handling of this, but given a recent month-long comedy of errors in dealing with auto repairs, I was really prepared for it to go the other way.

This is why it’s great to be an Apple customer.

Tags: Apple, Customer Service, Genius Bar

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 18th, 2011 at 11:23 am and is filed under Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.