Yesterday my MacBook Pro had to go into the Genius Bar at the local Apple store due to a dead SuperDrive. This was the fourth visit in the nine months I’ve had it, not to mention it’s initial delivery troubles (a month to arrive as it circled the country). Needless to say I wasn’t happy when I took it in, I rely on this machine for my work.

The Genius took a look at the machine, confirmed the drive was dead, pulled up its service history and then excused himself to talk to the manager. Five minutes later and I was offered a brand new machine, albeit with a wait while it was ordered.

The measure of a company is not in their sales or marketing, but customer service. Apple acknowledge that their machines fail, just like every other manufacturer. But if I had taken this machine in to PC World I would have fought for an hour just to prove I’d bought it from them, then they’d say it was out of warranty, then they’d replace it but charge me to move data across. Apple do their utmost to fix your machine first and foremost and when that fails swap it out completely for you. No muss, no fuss.

It’s going to be a pain living without a machine for however long my new one takes to arrive, but at least in the meantime I’m writing blog posts and telling people how courteously Apple replaced it rather than bitching and moaning at another poor example of customer service in the UK.