John Travis
August 4th, 2005, 07:13 PM
Sorry if this sounds like a rant (well, I guess it is), but this is just plain bad business.
I ordered a new G4 powerbook a couple weeks ago after doing some research, I thought that's what would best suit my needs. However after some further thinking and some advice from friends, I decided that the G5 desktop was a better choice (even though I'd lose portability).
So I called Apple and they said my order had just gone into the shipping phase or something like that and that I'd have to wait until it arrived and get an RMA.
So I waited a week and it just arrived today, I called to get an RMA and was immediately told that my product was customized and therefore unreturnable.
I was more than a little surprised and asked the sales agent how it had been customized. She said that the hard drive was 100GB and the memory had been upgraded.
First of all the I never changed the hard drive setting on the order page, so obviously anyone who just orders a powerbook with a default setting is ordering it customized and unreturnable. And I didn't realize that changing the memory option to one step up (the only thing I did do) would make it ineligible for return.
I complained and she said that their policy was clearly stated and that there was no way I could have not know about it (I don't think one line on their sales info page is all that great, it seems very sneaky for a large company like Apple). I asked if I could to a manager and she said no, and that she could transfer me to another sales associate, but they'd tell me the same thing, and that there was nothing more she could do.
At this point I almost lost it and, long story short, I finally got her to give my number to a sales manager who is supposedly going to call me back in 48 to 72 hours.
Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but they really need to make that a lot clearer on their website. I mean, it's not a standard policy with all manufacturers. Dell, for instance, let's you return all their products as long as they're unopened.
I ordered a new G4 powerbook a couple weeks ago after doing some research, I thought that's what would best suit my needs. However after some further thinking and some advice from friends, I decided that the G5 desktop was a better choice (even though I'd lose portability).
So I called Apple and they said my order had just gone into the shipping phase or something like that and that I'd have to wait until it arrived and get an RMA.
So I waited a week and it just arrived today, I called to get an RMA and was immediately told that my product was customized and therefore unreturnable.
I was more than a little surprised and asked the sales agent how it had been customized. She said that the hard drive was 100GB and the memory had been upgraded.
First of all the I never changed the hard drive setting on the order page, so obviously anyone who just orders a powerbook with a default setting is ordering it customized and unreturnable. And I didn't realize that changing the memory option to one step up (the only thing I did do) would make it ineligible for return.
I complained and she said that their policy was clearly stated and that there was no way I could have not know about it (I don't think one line on their sales info page is all that great, it seems very sneaky for a large company like Apple). I asked if I could to a manager and she said no, and that she could transfer me to another sales associate, but they'd tell me the same thing, and that there was nothing more she could do.
At this point I almost lost it and, long story short, I finally got her to give my number to a sales manager who is supposedly going to call me back in 48 to 72 hours.
Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but they really need to make that a lot clearer on their website. I mean, it's not a standard policy with all manufacturers. Dell, for instance, let's you return all their products as long as they're unopened.