I’m pissed. Is this what Apple call customer service? Again, it’s Thursday and 3 more days of the week went by without a sign from the Apple Store CentrO.

Am I impatient? Hell, yeah! I am! I mean, I’ve taken my not cheap 2.200€ iMac to the Apple Store CentrO a few WEEKS ago, you know the story, I don’t want to repeat myself. Getting a new one is fine, but it takes ages! Really ages! Last Saturday I’ve got the call that it will take a few more days – and that they have NO IDEA when this BTO iMac will be ready. I mean, sure, they told me it will take 2-3 weeks. 2 weeks ended yesterday if you count it from the day when they finally ordered it for me (the replacement one). Sure – 1 more week to go – right? But how long could it take to build an iMac in Ireland and ship it to Germany!? Every other computer builder like DELL, HP, IBM, Lenovo would possibly laugh about that.

Honestly, I was really thinking of getting a 2nd 27″ i3 tomorrow to use as 2nd screen (same height) and emergency system. Would look nice like this:

I’d already placed a reservation for tomorrows Black Friday which is also a rebated day in Germany at the Apple Stores. But to be honest, I woke up this morning and I’m really about to rethink this idea. Why? Because it’s damn much money, because Apple’s customer care really SUCKS.

Imagine you bought a computer to do your work – you buy a performant one because your mobile computer is not able to do the work fast enough (yeah thanks to dumb and bad implemented Flash on Mac OS X!), so you buy a big computer and invest a lot of money. Then it behaves strange, you take it to your Apple Store and they are not able to fix it – 1 1/2 weeks messed. Then they are so nice and tell you that you will get a new one – and you’re waiting 2 more weeks so far! So the iMac is meanwhile nearly 4 weeks away. You are pushed back to a great mobile device which is just not able to process your heavy load tasks for you. This sucks, Apple!

What have they offered to me when I asked how to do my work? “You can buy a new iMac right now and return it when you get your new BTO one.”. Hold on a second. Do you understand what that means? I would have to INVEST 2.000€+ for an iMac! Getting the money back also takes 3 weeks (via giro). That’s a very unsatisfying idea. Still now sure why they didn’t gave me a Core i7 2.93GHz from their stock and let me wait. Because of the 130MHz? LOL! Sorry… but I think shipping costs more than this price difference! The result: Me, as angry customer, rethinking the whole Apple idea.

Would I go and use Linux all day long for my work? No – no Photoshop there.
Would I go and use Windows all day long for my work? Maybe – no thrilled by this idea but as longer as this process takes, I’m thinking more and more of it!

You may now say: They told you 2-3 weeks, so if they deliver it on Wednesday, Dec 1st, it will be in time – you’re right. But in the same sentence they told me that it will NOT take so long. Seriously? What is “not that long?” 2 weeks + 6 days?…

Ok – you got it – I’m angry.

What’s your idea about that? Please – let me know!

UPDATE
Hey guys,
as promised, here’s a little update.

I went to the store last night to talk to a responsible person in the Apple Store personally. Of course, the Store Manager I talked to on the phone before was not there anymore. So I talked to a sales guy I know from previous shoppings. In my mind the nicest guy there – so we discussed – around and hour. The iMac “building process” is already gone too far. Hmm interesting – on the other side I just talked to the store and got the information that all “traffic lights” are now “green” and they start with the BTO now.

But to come back to last night’s visit. Because the complete process is already in their system, they couldn’t stop it nor delete it and give me a Mac Pro instead of the iMac (smallest version). But they told me that I can now buy a Mac Pro and if they can’t stop or delete the order for the BTO iMac, I could bringt it back, get my money back and take the replaced iMac with me. But for an unknown reason, I said no to the Mac Pro. I had 2x Mac Pros and I was not really happy with them. Also – I have no good displays anymore to attach, this would create some additional costs. Another argument is to buy RAM and that the Quad Core Xeon Mac Pro is slower than the current iMac. So I said: Thank you for the advise and went home.

This morning, I stand up at 6am and drove to the CentrO store again to run my planned route with the Dual iMac 27″. 101€ price off for the iMac 27″ Core i3 3.2GHz – nice! So I got one and honestly, it’s here, in it’s box. I couldn’t find any time yet to unbox it – also – I want to take a short movie for my podcast.

So why did I changed my mind so rapidly and gave more money to those unfriendly people in the store? Well, Black Friday rebate and a some issues with my MacBook that turns pretty hot when running Flash – and starting Monday for the next week – I need to run a Flash environment 12h+ a day for a customer project. Yikes! So that’s the reason. It was there, was reduced and is a fine computer.

Here’s a photo of the box and how it looks still right now while typing this:

The small blue box is a new G-Drive 320GB FW800/USB2 2.5″ HD for photos when I’m out of office and need to store a large amount of RAW files. This is the second one – the first sounded “broken”. This one works great. It’s a bit loud. A 7200upm Enterprise Class Hitachi HD is built in, so that’s ok Will use it mostly to put data on it, and then put it back into the nice leather-box that came with it. On the road, it’s nice to have USB2 (my MacBook has no FireWire :/), bur here at home, I can load the data with FW800 speed down to my RAID boxes.

In the end – I still don’t know WHEN I will receive my new iMac 27″ i7. And noone seems to care about it. That’s sad and disappointing and MAYBE a reason to say bye to the Macs, but honestly – I still like OS X and my known environment for work too much to leave for something evil & ugly like Windows…

And yeah – Hackintosh is great idea when I really start to render more stuff any day A 12 Core Xeon workstation made out of PC components running Compressor sounds VERY good – but that’s really a plan for the future and time when I’m not that busy like now.

More updates to come soon, hopefully!

UPDATE 2
Morning, here’s the unboxing video I’ve taken yesterday Enjoy it!

UPDATE 3
So, guys, it’s Sunday. On Friday I should got a call from the Store Manager to give me some “grab-able” details when the new iMac will arrive. No call back. Of course, so I called (again) – and yeah – good luck it’s a local number and I don’t need to pay for that – and surprise: the Manager was not on the store. The woman taking the call told me he will call me back on Saturday. Ok – I was on the road, so I had redirected my phone calls to my mobile – but – surprise! No call on Saturday, too.

So I really think I need to be a bit MORE aggressive with them. 1 month+ now – that’s no service. So I will call them on Monday and tell them that, if I can’t pick this new iMac up by Wednesday, I want my money back. Also – I will return both just bought iMacs (my wifes iMac 21.5″ i3 and the above in the video unboxed iMac 27″ i3). That’s ok and my wife is on my side here. I mean, I’ve spend 2.800€ on 2 new iMacs and am still treated like shit? Yeah – you can’t buy service there – for sure – and that’s not reason why I’d spend money there.

You may say: this will NOT take you further. You’re absolutely right, but I then give them a sign: Not every customer could be treated like that. What’s the solution? No idea so far – I’ve an old PC here and like kayoone is his a bit pissed comment down below has mentioned: it’s not a problem to put this box under my desk, connect a screen and use this for the mentioned flash environment. Not fine – not the way I wanted it – but in the end: will work.

I’m excited for the next week – so keep an eye on this if you’re interested in the story

UPDATE 4
It’s a few days later and I just saw that Apple has booked 670€ from my VISA. Hmm… 670€!? Wait a moment – that SSD should max. cost 540€.

So I spend another hour on the phone, calling with the AppleCare in Cork and (again) with the Store Manager in the CentrO. It turns out, that they haven’t listened to me. I said that I wanted to have the SSD ONLY, I’ve a lot storage in the basement, so I don’t really need another 1TB HD, but fine. We found a way to solve this: I will get a 130€ voucher/coupon when I pick it up and I can keep the 1TB HD as “present”. *lol* Sorry, but… nothing fits better here.

I also got a call from the nice lady from AppleCare telling me that the iMac is alreay in transfer to Oberhausen and send me an eMail with the tracking code. That’s true! So the iMac will arrive on Thursday and I will pick it up with this configuration:

- Apple iMac 27″
- Core i7 2.93GHz
- 4GB RAM (will be (hopefully) upgraded for free to 8GB by the Store)
- 256GB Apple SSD
- 1TB HD
- ATI HD5750
…

I’ve already ordered 16GB RAM for this machine and will put the 4x2GB into my wife’s iMac 21.5″ i3 and the “screen” iMac, so we will have 8GB in the i3′s and 16GB in the i7. That should be more than enough even for heavy video editing.

On Sunday, I experiences a lot of bad headache and neckpain. I was working the first day with my iMac 27″ i3. I thought: “Oh damnit – 27″ is too much for me.”. I maybe should point out, that I have put the iMac on the left corner of the desk, to be able to use it with the MacBook the same time. Why? Because I was in need to move the stuff over and install things parallel to my work (yeah – I had to work on that particular Sunday ).

I was already about to think about alternatives. The Mac Pro idea came up the second time, but I told my wife to try it again the next day.

On Monday morning, pretty early for me (7:00am), I moved the iMac into the middle of my desk and see – no issues. No headache nor neck pain! Great!

I’m just not sure if it’s a wise idea to use 2x 27″ displays the same time, but hey – it’s here, I CAN give it back it I want to, so I’ll try The next weekend, I will use the setup I mentioned above:

27″ i3 (connected via Mini DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort to:) 27″ i7

Let’s see how this works.

Of course, I said that I was treated like sh*t (and that’s true and in your comments, you guys agree with me). So I said to the nice woman from AppleCare, that I want a goodie for all this mess. She agreed and asked me to call once I have the iMac and everything is fine. I will do, I mentioned that I want an iPod Nano – not for me – but my wife finds it so cute . She’s pretty sure that this will be no problem. Back in Dec/Jan 2009/2010 when I had bought the Mac Pro, the first one was broken (DOA – Dead on arrival), so I returned it and got a new one and also got an “AirPort Express” as a goodie which works until today pretty good! Just as a hint for you. I hate to beg, but in this case – you can really get something from them for free. Of course they will try to give you 50€ on your giro/VISA first, but stay hard and say what you want!

That’s it for today – I will keep you updated again (but I think with a new post called “iMac 27″ i7 finally arrived and it rocks!” or so

UPDATE 5
Is a peaceful one. Take a look at this:

Excited if it arrives today (it will) or better said: If I could pick it up later today I call it “Super” because, well – it’s maxed out once it’s here!