One of the annoying things about Apple is that they insist on doing silly currency conversions. As a result it’s a lot more attractive to buy Apple hardware AND software in the US and import it into Europe..
But what about customer service and after sales support?
Will Apple’s Irish team help you if your Los Angeles bought hardware is causing you problems?
It’s an interesting question … I don’t have the answer, since the only hardware I bought in the US was either low cost (mighty mouse USB) or for someone else (iPhone and iPod nano)
However Adrian Weckler is having issues with his new Apple MacBook and seemingly Apple Ireland aren’t going to help him. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.. Of course it would also be interesting to know if he said who he was when he rang in… Not that his name would have meant anything to a call centre staff member, but you never know….
Friend of mine bought a MacBook last year on my recommendation. He was living in Japan at the time and moved back to Ireland in September.
However back in November the HD died and was still under warranty. As he is now living in Dublin he called up Mactivate who actually called to collect the laptop from him. Once they got the replacement HD from Apple he was back in action again.
Don’t think so… when my brother had a problem with his US-bought iPod he had to send it back to America and use an American address to get it fixed.
A bigger question for me is “Is AppleCare a scam?” I don’t know a lot about consumer rights, but I believe there are laws that protect us beyond 6 months if we find a fault in the product. Paying for AppleCare would make sense if they cover you when you drop your laptop and break your screen or hard drive or something, but I believe they charge you to fix things like this even if you have AppleCare? If they’re only going to replace faulty hardware, aren’t they required by law to do this within a certain time frame anyway? I haven’t really looked into it, so maybe it is not the case, but I always declined the protection plans and found it much cheaper to buy a replacement hard drive myself if there were any issues.