AUGD: Why are Australians & New Zealanders 2nd Class Citizens
AUGD: Why are Australians & New Zealanders 2nd Class Citizens
- Subject: AUGD: Why are Australians & New Zealanders 2nd Class Citizens
- From: Greg Sharp <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 23:06:32 +1000
- Thread-topic: Why are Australians & New Zealanders 2nd Class Citizens
Just about everyone has heard the stories of exploding Sony batteries in
Dell laptops. Unfortunately a number of Macintosh laptops use the same
batteries and last week Apple announced a recall on over a million of these
faulty batteries.
It's great that Apple is going to replace these faulty batteries, but after
hearing how Apple Australia has organized the exchange it is clear that
Australians & New Zealanders are being treated as second class citizens.
Macintosh owners in the USA, Great Briton, all of Europe along with Japan
are being treated much better than us. For these people Apple is posting out
replacement batteries and providing a return paid envelope for their
customers to return the faulty batteries. This is the way it should be done.
Dell is contacting each and everyone of its affected customers personally to
handle the exchange. Again great service.
How is Apple Australia handling the exchange?
Firstly NZ customers are being told that all returns must be sent back via
Trackable Courier only (preferably via CourierPost). Customers must keep a
record of the Courier Tracking details for their old battery. Customers will
not be sent a new battery until the old one is returned to Apple Australia.
The reason that Apple Australia will not ship replacement batteries (in New
Zealand) without getting your old battery back first is that Apple Australia
requires New Zealand resellers to send the bad battery back to them within
10 days of them shipping the replacement. If they don't receive the battery
within that time frame, they will then charge the service provider the full
price of the replacement battery (about $150NZ). New Zealand resellers
refuse to be held at gunpoint with these ridiculous time frames and
requirements. These resellers did nothing wrong so why should they be held
financially responsible.
Apple's Australian customers are classed with those of "other" third world
countries and Apple Australia expect its customers to get their battery to
their service provider and pay for petrol, parking and/or postage and
packing as well as their valuable time even for customers living hundreds of
kilometres from their nearest AppleCentre. Customers have to first drop in
the battery to a service centre in person and then, when a replacement
arrives, go back again and pick up the new battery. This means 4-8 weeks
without being able to use their laptops as a mobile solution. Why the
different level of service, considering the extra we Aussies pay above the
conversion from $US and GST?
Apple Australia might consider this to be reasonable but from what I'm
hearing on every forum I visit as well as every local MUG mailing list I'm
subscribed to, the way Apple Australia is handling this exchange is not
reasonable and everyone affected is very angry with being treated as 2nd
class citizens. The following is just one example of how this mishandling of
the exchange program is affecting real world customers.
John Willcock College in Geralton, WA has a renowned 1:1 iBook program for
all their students. Currently every iBook is locked away - over 700 of them
- waiting for replacements, due to duty of care and safety issues. This is
just one school so you can begin to see how big a deal this is.
Apple Australia implemented a recall on the MacBook Pro's battery a
fortnight or two ago. This was less public then the iBook/ PowerBook recall.
All customers had to do was fill out the form on the Apple website. The
batteries were delivered by overnight express within 3-5 days at most &
Apple picked up the old batteries the following day. If this was good enough
2 weeks ago why the change of policy now?
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