Surely they receive the most dumb(and easy fix) questions from hardware ignorant customers... Easy to attend and everybody happy!! LOL !!! (joke)

Here lies the problem. Who are these people who require support?

There's a huge difference between Apple users and regular PC users.

Also if you want to know how to use pc, find instructor, go to training class, RTFM

use their tech support... then they should say this.

Their tech support is AWFUL. We paid for expedited shipping of leopard recovery discs (next day) and after 4 days we STILL didn't have it. We then had to wait another 2 days to finally get them.

There are so many other stories about how bad their customer service is that I have don't have room to list it all here.

Ever been to the iStore with an issue? "I'm sorry, you don't have an appointment we can't help you." But I build my own computers so what do I really care?

Those are some heavy questions. How do I modify my power settings and how do I change to an external monitor?... If they took more than 15 seconds to answer the question that is an automatic fail. How about they ask some real questions and we can talk.

The last time I needed DELL tech support was 4 years ago and it was as great an experience as finding out your motherboard is fried could be.

The guy I talked to (had an Indian accent) walked me through troubleshooting finally coming down to "Lets send it in" DELL shipped me an empty box, I dropped the laptop in, applied prepaid shipping sticker, called DHP, they came to my door and picked it up. Six weeks later I had it back and have had zero problems hardware wise since.

hmm... that reminds me the experience from HP for my laptop w/ GeForce 8400M GS. It was before HP release their BIOS update to make the graphic chip cooler to prevent NVIDIA's famouse graphic chip defect. After the long wait and all sort of selection on my phone pade... the HP customer service representive located on the otherside of the earth asked me to formated my HD and reinstall my windows vista to fix my graphic freez up problem.... even after spend more than 20 min to tell him very clearly about what is known about the graphic defect on that chip.... oh well.... they just don't want to fix it....

I sorted of gave up and took the once for a while graphic freeze up... till the problem was solved by HP is BIOS update which turned my fan to the max most of the time....

I am not surprised that HP's CS is rated at the bottom.

But wait! Apple doesn't need tech support because their products are flawless.

Hmm.

Granted these are questions that tech support receives (akin to "Can you just send me the Internet on a disk because I don't want to pay a monthly fee for it."), let's try something where tech support is really needed. Example: a failed mobo, DIMM, CPU, HDD, i/o panel, inverter, etc. With Apple... good luck. With Dell, and possibly the others, you may go through some diags and the next business day (assuming your warranty features this) you have a tech at your door with parts in hand. If it's a server it's there in less than 4 hours.
As far as hold times... When you're #1 and #2 in the market (and use an OS that supports much wider variety of hardware and software) the support queue is going to be a little longer. Duh.

People who own Apple computers and people who own PCs are a TOTALLY different bread. Flipping through the channels I saw Kim Kardashian with a pink Mac Book....nuff said. People buy PCs to get sh*t done...people by Apple products to color coordinate their wardrobe.

Half of apples problems are solved by ISP techs.... (as bad as they are)... my internet is down.. and btw .. my ipod wont sync up.. "go ahead and reboot your Mac" and boom free time for APPLE TECH SUPPORT!!

So you're putting down a whole operating system because it's user-friendly and easy and also includes a UNIX command line for hardcore users? That makes sense. And all PC users are brilliant? I'm sure 90% of the PC users I know will love to hear that, when they don't even know what a browser is or how to find a file on their computer or how to save to JPG or even what version Windows they're using or how much RAM or HD space they have or how to clean out temp files. I grew up with Macs, and I still probably knew more about PCs than most people who used them. Your logic implies that only computer illiterate people buy Macs and computer savvy people buy PCs, when PCs hold a dominate market share and 90% of the people who use them are retarded. In reality, people buy PCs because they're cheap, not better. People who don't know the difference between Mac and PC and just want a computer will buy whatever they see that's cheap. And people who want to play games and get the most for their money will build their own computer and completely skip the middleman. Lack of game support and the inability to install OS X on non-Apple systems is the only real disadvantage Macs have since for people who like games, the choice is a no-brainer. And high system prices are common with EVERY computer manufacturer.

Maxor has a point about cheap...but that also brings up.. a large ratio of PC users vs Mac.. which also means higher demand in tech support.. its harder to support 200million users compared to 2 million (example here)..

It's part of the apple premium everyone knew this already, but in a tech forum can't say too much love for paying extra for something you probably wont use.

agreed, dell tech support ftl.

Those are tech support questions?

The three correct responses to those questions
1)That will be 49.99. What's your credit card number?
2)Please go buy a book or take a class.
3)Sorry you're too stupid to have a computer please
return the unit ASAP. Some please have real tech issues.

Here here. Unless you're a heavy gamer, OS X is an absolute dream to use. Its incredibly easy to use and is, on the whole, harder to break than Windows. Sure a 'pro' user can do whatever they want with Windows and have no problem, but that's true with any OS. OS X's UNIX underpinnings is superb for any pro user wanting to do some more technical work. As an example, the number of astrophysicists that use OS X vastly outnumbers those using Windows.

Why does this always turn into a Apple VS PC thing.

First off, I have never had a real bad tech support problem(Well, logitech was a pain since they did not have my address in there system, but yeah).

Lets see, Call HP.

Me: Hey, my battery does not hold a charge anymore.
HP: Ok, try this, this and this.
Me: Ok, still no good.
HP: Ok can i have your address, We will send you a new battery and you just put the old one in the box and send it back to us.

~~2 days later~~
New higher capacity batter. YAY

Next time, For some reason they shipped a computer with the partitions backwards. So little system partition and big recovery one.

Call,

ME: The partitions are messed up windows is the size on a recovery and the recovery is the rest of the drive.
HP: Ok, Is it a raid system?
Me: Nope
HP: Ok address please so we can send you a CD with will fix it for you.

~~3 days later~~

New recovery CD's so if they ever change the drive, its easy to get it back to HP a HP factory state. In the meantime, I just used partition magic to fix it. This was more to make sure they new this may be a problem for others.

Not sure I would call that a bad tech support.

Since HP,Dell,ect have many more support reps, there may be more variation is support. That said, so far they have been just fine for me and others.

My friends who have Dells had good stories, One of Dell coming right to the house for a dead board and other similar situations. Once again, depends on who you get.

No they don't. Falcon NW does. I always root for the underdog. Falcons are ~ the same price as the Apple Macs.

until it explodes, then they make you sign a wavier.

Best?


Only reason why they're rated the 'best' is because no one calls them; where as to HP or Dell, you have hundred or thousands of calls per month; can't please everyone.

I tried to put Windows XP Pro x64 on my brand new Macbook of which I paid 600 for and 1000 for the Apple Tax [1600 total], opened the box; broken restore disk, figure I wouldn't need it anyway since macs never crash [see commercial]. Had it working for an hour, then it crashes; figured Windows... Rebooted into OSX - Pinwheel of death, reboot, OSX login screen stuck.

Call Apple
Indian Tech Running Redhat: Hi Thanks For calling Apple, how may I help
you?
Me: OSX keeps crashing on me from the login, can you guys send me
restore disk? mine broke in the box and I can't get the OS to run.
Tech: We can't send you a restore disk, it came with the box
Me: It broke in the box, I'm request a replacement please and help with
a crash
Tech [With an attitude]: Ok, what else?
Me: Do you know how to make my Macbook stop crashing?
Tech: I'm not sure, I am unable to troubleshoot the issue since you
don't have internet.

Of course, what did you expect?

$2000 out of your $2300 laptop is for the "Tech Support"

That is because they run on a broken OS and overpriced cheesy hardware

I wouldn't be surprised that Apple has the best tech support. We did pay for better service essentially when we buy our Macs. I rather invest money into a better after sales service even if I'm a computer hobbyist. I'm pretty sure there are many things that are actually faulty that you can't fix and have to rely on the warranty. I've never had to yell at any Apple tech support, but oh man, if I had to contact Acer, or esp. Dell (on behalf of my friends), I get so frustrated. The two worst laptop and cheapest manufacturers have the worst customer service, doesn't surprise me at all. I get so much Dell laptop fix requests that I just basically ban fixing Dells and never recommend Dells.

Oh and a great thing about Apple's AppleCare is when my old laptop was basically a lemon, they gave me the most expensive Macbook model (not Macbook Pro) for free. My new laptop was worth more than the purchase cost. Now that's what I call customer service.

why do you guys have to be PC apologists? move out of your mom's basement, get a job, then get a mac.

btw, DELL and HP tech support really sucks. How do i know this? i work for Dell over here in the far east, and if you can hear the calls i listen to on a daily basis, it would make you weep blood. 'nuff said.

Yes, dell and hp tech support are aweful. I seriously wish I could ban dell's and hp's from the campus we're I'm a tech at.

But then again I'd prolly be out of a job...

Apple is suppose to be user friendly so... having a good tech support is a good backbone to stand behind their products.

Dell will actually help you a lot. Read about owners of the Alienware M17x (the new one) which is through Dell and not Alienware. First off, its base warranty is 1 year in home service. This gets you a tech at your house within 2 business days of when you call and they will replace any part of your laptop - OR if it is something significant, you return laptop and get a brand new one at no charge (no shipping or anything). How is that something you can complain about?

Ya I am sure if you buy the cheapest Dell or HP laptop it will break (shocker there? I know) and need to be fixed, but at the high end, support is always excellent, from any company.

Well this is true. The #1 fix for a Mac is reboot your computer. This does say something about their product....and their users.