Hacker Noon: “Apple’s number is finally up”

I’m also pleased to be one of the many people who stood up to Apple in our own small way and put pressure on them to accept this.

But I’m also angry that I had to go through all this and even at the end Apple couldn’t be gracious about it.

The machine I returned for a refund? It took nearly a month for the money to come back to me. By then of course, I’d long already spent it all on the new machines. The second time I’ve had to spend thousands while waiting for Apple to give me my thousands back.

Even after I had it sent back to the UK, it took them days to collect it, days for it to get to them. A week or more for them to check it (again) and then start the refund process.

And amazingly they only pay refunds on Tuesdays (oddly, they accept payment 24 hours a day, every day of the year), and for some reason my refund wasn’t processed when it should have been.

Still, not to worry eh Apple? It’s only money. Ah hang on, no, let’s worry. It’s my money, and unlike Apple I don’t have a couple of hundred billion dollars sat around in offshore accounts.

John Risby

A twisted story on a couple of levels. First, that Apple has finally acknowledged design problems with their new keyboard mechanism, covering Mac models dating back to 2015 – the author of this article had no less than four devices with issues, which he returned or had repaired multiple times.

After denying it for more than two years—and screwing countless customers—Apple has finally admitted that the MacBook scissor keyboard is faulty.

This is not how you put customers first. What the hell is going on at Apple? It is no longer the company I used to admire.

— dustin curtis (@dcurtis) June 22, 2018

Secondly, the sheer amount of delays and procedural obstacles used to discourage replacements, no doubt to try to make sales look better. This policy of paying refunds only one day of the week is unheard of. As one commenter noticed, this gives Apple the opportunity to accrue interest on these funds over multiple days, at the expense of their loyal users. I’ve requested refunds from Amazon for missed orders a couple of times and received them within two to three days of the request – and Amazon isn’t even present in my country with a point of sale or warehouse, I’m ordering from Germany!

But what I find the most stunning is the obstinance of the author in staying with Apple, after all this ordeal. Even while replacing his laptop with a Chromebook, he built a Hackintosh desktop to run macOS… It’s almost like Apple customers are suffering a form of Stockholm syndrome, hostage to an ecosystem offering them less and less satisfaction, while demanding more and more allegiance.