Much has happened since my last post, and I would have written about it to record my state of mind had circumstances been different. However, history did not differ from reality.
Last Wednesday, just after I published the previous post, Apple announced a stunningly cool new iPod touch. It was everything I hoped it would be, and I hope to buy one in the near future (before Christmas). I hope you enjoy yours Ruairidh. As I had expected, the Terms and Conditions of Apple’s Back to School offer restricted my choice to previous generation iPods (the iPod classic was unchanged, meaning that technically there is one current generation iPod that I could have bought).
Fair enough.
On Thursday, with money transferred and everything ready, I placed my order with Nigel:
- £858 MacBook Pro, 13.3″ screen, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2x2GB RAM, 250GB HDD, and so on. It’s the cheapest MacBook Pro currently available.
- £90 HP Photosmart Wireless Printer ((I thought it was worth paying £20 for a wireless printer, it’ll be much handier than a wired one.)).
- £152 8GB 3rd generation iPod touch ((I say 3rd generation, though it’s almost exactly the same as the 2nd generation 8GB iPod touch.)).
- £47 AppleCare upgrade to my warranty.
(I will hopefully receive a rebate of £200 for the printer and iPod.)
And that was that: estimated shipping was within 24 hours; estimated delivery was either the next day, Friday 3rd, or the following Monday or Tuesday. Now, you know already that none of these things happened, as I would have posted something immediately upon delivery, probably a photo of me passing out from fanboyism. But no.
My order didn’t ship on Thursday.
And then stuff started to happen.
For some reason, I started to research the warranty that I had purchased. It was not easy, but I slowly pieced information together. Unbeknownst to me – and I realise that I should have researched this more fully prior to placing my order – all Macs bought through Apple’s Higher Education store come with a complimentary 3 year hardware warranty, as well as a year of telephone support. I had purchased the AppleCare ‘uplift’ to that warranty, which meant that I had a 3 year hardware warranty and 3 years of telephone support. Stupidly, I hadn’t thought to ask what the basic warranty was; I was assuming that it was Apple’s basic 1 year hardware warranty with 90 days of phone support – not 3 years and 1 year!
The next morning, Friday, I woke early after worrying about this the previous night. I got up and called Apple to confirm the information that I had found out. Thanks to conflicting reports, after my research I was unsure whether or not, under the basic Higher Education warranty, Apple would collect and return my computer free of charge if it required servicing (as opposed to having to take it to an Apple Store). As far as I remember, the representative said, yes, this is included. That’s good. I also asked about telephone support – apparently that’s what you call if you want to know how to use the Finder or something. It can cost £35 a call. Oh well, I don’t need that. I have Google.
I’ll keep my £47 thank you very much, and thank you whoever got Apple to agree to a 3 year warranty for Higher Education customers. That’s saved me a lot of money ((Had the £47 warranty extension extended my hardware warranty from 1 to 3 years, I totally would have bought it.)).
I cancelled it with no problems after being on the phone for around 30 minutes discussing everything with various people ((I hope those calls weren’t expensive.)).
My order didn’t ship on Friday, and I was disappointed. It wouldn’t ship over the weekend.
My order didn’t ship on Monday, and this was worrisome. The shipping estimate was within 24 hours, and it was now well over 48 hours, so I called Apple. After dodging the robot voice, I asked the representative ((Asian accent this time. When cancelling my warranty, I spoke to 2 Americans, and Irishman and an Asian.)) where the hell my order was. After being on hold for even longer, he didn’t know, and he escalated the problem. I would have a response within “12 [working] hours”. Of course, I had no response, but a response wasn’t necessary.
On Tuesday, at around 18:00, I checked my order status. It had just changed from “Not yet shipped”… to “Shipped“! Jesus fuck, finally.
I received my tracking number later on, and my package was in Tamworth! This morning it arrived at Dundee at about 10, but I assumed that this was too late to be part of the day’s deliveries. I had plans to see George at any rate, so I went out, not expecting my order to arrive.
Well, I returned home and saw the little UPS slip. That’s life for you. It had been delivered at the of the few times in the past couple of weeks that the house has been empty! FUCK!
I’m going to stay in tomorrow so I can receive my order (even though there’ll be others in).
Wow, what a boring story and a weak ending. At least I’m excited. It’s coming tomorrow!
