I have given this place wayyyy too many chances. I originally found out about Mac Enthusiasts on Yelp as an option for Mac Repair near West LA and Santa Monica. Reading through the reviews, it looked like it would do the job, though they’d probably jack the prices way up. I decided to go with it.
My Powerbook G4 had minor water damage in the screen. I’d been using it for a year and a half with no issues at all, I just decided one day that I had some extra money, let’s get a new screen. I’d like to state again that I’d been using this computer for about a year and a half after the water damage and it worked perfectly fine.
I brought my computer to Mac Enthusiasts on Pico, and talked with the too-many-pot-brownies clerk about the replacement. I was aware that a new screen would be expensive, but he quoted close to $1000. Whatever, I was new in town at the time, I couldn’t find any other Mac repair stores around the West LA area, I went for it. In a few days time I’d be back online and I’d forget all about that big gash in my checking account.
As I’ve seen noted on both Yelp and Citysearch, a few days to these burnouts is over a week. And most of the time they will not call you. I haven’t encountered customer service this bad outside of a call to Time Warner Cable. Not to mention that the hours at this place are awful.. 9-6 M-F and then 10-4 on Saturdays. Meaning unless you can wait until Saturday to get your computer back, you have to take time off from work just to get there.
So a week goes by, I call them every day to see when it’s going to ready, I’m convinced that if I didn’t keep calling them it would have taken at least two weeks to replace the screen. Finally they tell me it’s ready so I duck out of work early to pick it up. When I get home I open it up, it’s beautiful, no water damage on the screen, it’s great, well worth the money..? NO. When I closed my Powerbook, it remained awake/lit up. What the hell was going on here? As any Powerbook user would know, when you close the book, it immediately goes to sleep. This was not happening. I called them back immediately and they transferred me to the technician that worked on my Powerbook. He had me run through my sleep settings and nothing worked. I brought the Powerbook back for them to look at, which they kept for another 3 days and didn’t call. In the end, they said they didn’t know what was wrong, but for an additional charge they could figure out what is wrong and repair it.
An additional charge? WHAT? After charging me a crazy amount of money, they wanted to milk some more repair money out of me for something THEY BROKE? I called and refused the additional repair and asked for a refund. I’m pretty sure I was talking to the brownie guy at this point, but he transferred me to the infamous Mark who apparently a lot of people have had bad experiences with. I told him I wanted a discount for my repair since they somehow caused my computer’s sleep function to stop working while repairing my computer. He told me that they would refund anything, and that the sleep function malfunction was probably due to the water damage. The water damage that was just on the screen and had not affected the computer in a year and a half. He became very defensive on the phone and in the end told me that he would give me $90 in store credit. This did not satisfy me at all, but it was the most I could get out of Mark. I considered taking them to small claims court, but figured it was not worth the hassle. To this day my sleep function does not work properly.
Months passed, and my Powerbook adapter stopped working. I decided to go to Mac Enthusiasts to redeem my $90 store credit. I called to make sure they carried adapters and to make sure that my store credit was in the system. As I assumed, there was no note of my store credit at all. When I provided them with great detail about the situation, my store credit magically appeared.
When I arrived and asked to see the adapters, they showed me the Apple adapters they carried. The Apple adapters were unpackaged, and thrown into a plastic bin. I knew just looking at them that there was a slim chance that they would last any decent amount of time. They told me about a third party adapter they had that was only $25. The brownie guy actually encouraged me to buy the non-Apple adapter as it was cheaper and worked the same. I, wanting to use up my store credit, went with the Apple adapter.
I returned home with the Apple adapter, and plugged it into my Powerbook, only to find that the adapter did not work. Big surprise here. I called right back and told them that I was going to return to the store within 10 minutes to exchange the adapter (they were closing.) I arrived at Mac Enthusiasts and knocked on the chained up gate. Some guys told me that I had to go around. There I am, with my Powerbook under my arm, walking down Pico, then turning the corner and walking down a dark alley. I knock on the back door, a short, dark haired worker (effeminate, headset-wearing guy, I think this might be Mark) takes my computer into the other room, tries the adapter, realizes it doesn’t work, gives me another one, it works, I leave, down the dark alley with my computer under my arm.
26 days go by and the adapter stops working. I’m in a good mood this time, and while I should really just head to the Apple Store and get an out-of-the-box adapter, I decide to take it back to Mac Enthusiasts, as they shouldn’t be selling products that stop working within a month. I get to the store and brownie guys says “I’m out of those.” He shows me the $25 third party adapters again and I say, sure I’ll go with that.
Now me, being a rational, and let’s say business-savvy person, ASSUME that I’ll return this broken Apple adapter, they’ll give me the $25 adapter, and I’ll get the difference as either cash back or store credit. NOT THE CASE! Brownie guy tells me that I can either buy the adapter from them for $25 or I can bring the Apple adapter to the Apple Store and “see if they’ll exchange it” for me. You see, I couldn’t exchange the Apple adapter that I bought at Mac Enthusiasts, even though I had just exchanged it 26 days earlier. These people need to get on the same page.
I went ahead and bought the $25 adapter, knowing that I had work to do and no time to head to the Apple Store. I do plan on heading to the Apple Store in the near future, just so I can confirm that brownie guy knew very well that there’s no way in hell that I’m getting an exchange from Apple.
When I do talk to the people at the Apple Store, I will tell them that they should remove Mac Enthusiasts from their referral list. The customer service is awful, they will break your computer, they will act very unprofessionally, and hell, they don’t even push the Apple products. I just read on Yelp that Mac Enthusiasts’ lawyer is threatening people that post negative Yelp reviews. It seems that plenty of people are having issues with Mac Enthusiasts. I would avoid this place at all costs.
**Update** 3/22/08
Mac Enthusiasts has continued their bullying of Yelp.com, and all of the negative comments except one have been erased! Yelp can apparently be bought. I will contact them based on this issue and post my results.
Thank God Citysearch.comis keeping it real.
