Beware of the MacMechanic in Santa Barbara
The Mac Mechanic is getting this bit of bad press because of their poor customer service.
Here is my side of the story.
On Friday 04/10/2009 I took my 1yr 2mo old 15″ MacBook Pro to the Mac Mechanic in Santa Barbara because it failed to wake up from sleep in the morning. I had used the computer the night before and put it to sleep as I always do. This is one of the great advantages of a mac over a PC. Long story short, I got on my other computer and searched for solutions from others having the same trouble. After about an hour of reboots and resets no video at all. I could here is spinning up and I always got the confirmation tone, but no video on either the external screen or the native screen. Bummer! I mean this was the weekend to do the taxes and now I did not have a functioning computer with all the information in it.
Now I have used the Mac Mechanic before and had been somewhat happy with them. Between them and the Mac Shac in Goleta, I could almost always find what I needed with information, hardware or software. They are building our mac store now.
So, I took the computer to the Mac Mechanic in Santa Barbara when they first opened up at 10:00am. I was told they should be able to get a diagnostic on it today. According to their diary of events on my computer, the got to it around 1:15 that afternoon, and by 4:15 had backed up my hard drive and diagnosed the problem to be the logic board. Around 4:30 a voice message was left on my answering service to the tone of:
“We have diagnosed your computer it has a bad logic board and will be about $1500 to repair. We realize this is a lot and wanted you to know we were able to back up your data and can transfer that to any new mac if you decide to buy a new one rather than fix this one. blah blah”
Well, to say I was a little surprised that a computer only 14 months old needed a fifteen hundred dollar repair, was an understatement.
I did not listen to the message until after the Mac Mechanic had closed so, I was unable to call them and ask for more details. I did have enough information to go research the problem though. So on another computer, a pc I might add, I went to the Apple website and searched for answers. I found one too!
According to Apple’s Service article number TS2377 titled MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues, my computer may contain a defective video card and they know about it and are covering the repair for 2 years. Yippee!
Come Saturday morning, I am on the phone with Apple customer care making sure my computer is one of the units listed in the service article. Good News, it is! and there is a test to be performed by the Apple Authorized Service Provider (which Mac Mechanic is) to see if it qualifies for the repair.
Armed with this information, I am a happy camper and visit the Mac Mechanic. When I get there I speak with their employee Manabu about my woes and ask him for help. He assures me first thing Monday morning he will notify the tech of my findings. In the mean time I drop $800.00 bucks for a new Mac Mini to transfer my hard drive information into so I can finish my taxes in time. Manabu made me spending my money and getting the new unit effortless. Needless to say their customer service when you are spending money is excellent!
Sunday goes by, my mini works great and I get my taxes done. whew.
Now the horror of the story. By Monday afternoon I had not heard anything from the Mac Mechanic of Santa Barbara, so I stopped by. When I got there I asked about my computer and was told that they had rerun the tests, talked to Apple and the repair was not covered. THIS WAS A BLATANT LIE! Disappointed I asked to have my computer back and left quite disgruntled at Apple.
When I got home I read the repair diary of my computer with the MacMechanic, and unlike Friday where they notated everything that was done to the computer, Monday showed nothing except an entry at the exact moment I came in to pick up the computer saying customer came in to pick up computer.
Because of their records, I am positive I was lied to by the staff of the MacMechanic Monday afternoon and that no other work or tests had been performed towards resolving the issue with the Technical article TS2377 from Apple.
Now one of the great things of using a laptop with a second display is two displays. I was spoiled with this and had found out that the new Mac Mini is powerful enough to support two screens, even a 30″ display if so desired. So I went looking for another display. One of my stops was another authorized Apple reseller, Samy’s Camera on Chapala.
I went in, was greeted quickly, and asked how I could be helped. I told him I was looking for a display, preferably an older 20″ cinema display to match the one I already had. Well I guess the stars were shining on me that day, he had a used one on consignment and sold it to me for a very fair price. Then the conversation got over to my MacBook Pro and how I was disgruntled with MacMechanic because they refused to repair the computer under the Apple Service Article parameters, heck they even refused to look it up!
Anyway that Monday I left the computer with them, and on Thursday I picked it up with a new logic board in it and working beautifully and zero, yes zero cost to me. Come to find out, it was the graphics card on the logic board that had failed and Apple was very willing to repair it under warranty. I have since reformatted the computer, it is for sale and when I sell it, I will be looking for a MacBook Air for my travels, keeping the mini at home running two displays.
So Mac Mechanic employees, because of your lack of communication with each other, lieing to me because you did not want to check out the information I did the research on (which you should have done) you have lost a customer for life! and to be truthful I hope you lose a few more because of this blog entry/article.
