Carl Hutzler’s Blog

I bought a refurbished Mac Book Pro a little over a year ago now. The machine had some issues on the day I got it and I got these repaired quickly. But then it developed a speaker and fan issue a few months in. So again, I took it into the Apple Store in Tysons to have it fixed. And they got it back to me fairly quickly. It worked well for a couple of months but then developed a series of issues - screen backlight was faded in the middle, bluetooth was cutting in and out, and a graphic card “flashing” issue on my external monitor. Again I took it in and this time they had to keep the machine for nearly a month due to a part availability issue.

Now several months since the last repair, I again started experiencing Bluetooth: Not Available issues. I spoke with customer service again on the phone and they could not help. So I tried a fresh install of the OS and a few other things (PRAM/Power Unit resets) and it was still flaky. Then yesterday my bluetooth flaked out and simply would not come back. So I packed up the machine in the original box and took it to the Apple Store in Tysons.

I asked for a manager and got one quickly. After 30 seconds of starting into my carefully rehearsed speech about how this machine was now his and I wanted a new one, he stopped me and asked if I had ever been offered a replacement machine…I said No. He said that I should have been offered one a long time back as the issues I experienced were not acceptable.

He got his lead Genius guy to come over and handle the paperwork which was complicated by the fact that it had Apple Care on it and the machine was a refurb in the first place. But after about 45 minutes, I left with a brand new Mac Book Pro.

On the way out, the original manager who helped me happened to see me leaving and asked “Hope everything got worked out and you have better luck with the new machine, Carl”. Wow, he even remember my name. Impressive.

In 45 minutes I went from hating Apple to loving Apple once again. Not bad.