Let me relay to you a recent, fun little experience I had this week with AppleCare. How recent is this experience? Well, let’s just say that I’m writing this article as I wait on hold for a call that’s taken 30 minutes of my life so far. [Update: the call (my second call to AppleCare on this issue) has taken 40+ minutes, and this post has now evolved into a full on rant]. But I digress.
Anyway, I have a 17 month old MacBook, and as some of you may have heard, battery longevity on new Macs just ain’t what it used to be. And so after less than a year and a half of semi-regular battery use, handy dandy Coconut Battery (a free app that gives info on your Mac’s battery) tells me that my battery is running at 38% of its original capacity—a statistic corroborated by the fact that my battery has been dying often after less than an hour of regular use.
This is a problem, and since I purchased extended AppleCare, it seemed to be an easily solvable one. So I called them up and told the agent “Yo, my battery’s whack, send me a new 1 plz?” to which the agent replied “word”. (This conversation has been paraphrased to spare you the boring details). After getting my battery info and deciding that I indeed qualified for a new one, the agent then asked me for my credit card info. This struck me as a little odd, because weren’t they going to send me one for free?
“Don’t worry”, the agent told me, “we’re taking down your credit info to make sure that you send us back your old battery. If you don’t send it back within 30 days of receiving your new battery, we’ll charge $130 to your account.” Fair enough, I thought, and so I coughed up my VISA debit account number. This was a mistake. Maybe it was my mistake, because you see, when someone says that they’ll charge me after 30 days, I take that to mean that they’ll charge me after, yes, 30 days (in this case, only if I proved to be a delinquent customer).
What the agent didn’t tell me is that Apple would place a “pending charge” for $130 on my card—instantly. And so signing on to my online banking account today, I was greeted with news that my debit account totaled a whopping -$51. Yes, that is a negative sign. Yes I know I’m broke and I should have enough money in my account to cover a $130 charge, but that’s beside the point. By failing to notify me of a charge, Apple caused me to overdraft my account. This also typically triggers a cash advance from my line of credit followed by a $10 overdraft fee from BofA.
At this point I’m fuming: Clearly a careless mistake has been made, and a second call to AppleCare should rectify this issue.
So I call, I hold, I get to an agent and explain the issue to him, and he responds with “oh, right, that’s normal. We put a ‘pending charge’ on your account that gets removed once we receive your old battery”. I let the agent know that I was not notified of any “pending charges”, and that as such, Apple had caused me to over draft.
“Uh, let me contact another department. Please hold.”
This process repeated itself, with me being put on hold for around 30 minutes while being juggled to different operators. It was finally decided that I would need to fax, that’s right, fax my original bank statement to Apple’s finance department with my over draft charge highlighted, so they can consider possibly reimbursing me.
You see, the agent explained to me, it was my mistake for giving them a VISA debit number instead of a VISA credit number, because there’s a difference, ya know. What that has to do with them charging me without giving me proper notification, I’m not sure.
So that’s where I’m at now. I need to contact my bank, request a paper statement, head out to Kinkos and fax it to Apple, in hopes that they might refund me for my troubles. Lameness.
And so I’m telling this story in hopes that you, dear reader, may take steps in the future to avoid this pain. When your battery craps out and you call in for a new one, please, for the love of God, make sure you have at least $130 in whatever account you use. Or else you may be in for a world of annoyance.
That is always how companies have done it.
If you book a hotel room, they put a pending charge on your card.
It protects them from you racking up your charge and when they try to charge it it reject the card.
NEVER use a debit card for this kind of thing.
@Nathan: That's good to know, but it still would have been nice for the agent to tell me that a pending charge would be placed on the card, instead of describing it as a "only if you don't return the old battery in 30 days" charge.
I read a similar story about restaurants. When they run your card they will often put a pending charge of up to twice the total to cover any tip that you might add to the receipt. You go buy a $5 lunch and your card has a pending charge of $10 until it settles a couple days later. The story related how this cause problems for some students since they found much of their account balance consumed by these pending charges.
In my experience Apple specifically, and large corporations in general, will do nothing for you under these circumstances. You might have better luck asking your bank to reverse the overdraft fee.
At least EA told me they were going to put a pending charge on the card when I had to RMA my Rock Band guitar. So I knew to put it on an actual credit card instead of my bank card.
The knucklehead at Applecare should have been honest and up-front about what the charge hold would do.
Clearly MacUser's not paying you enough!
Whatever Apple was expected to do, giving the debit acct. # when you couldn't cover the possible charges was the problem. Can't just expect them to tell you everything you'll need to know and have it all go perfectly, even *GASP* with our beloved Apple!
Curious - why not go to a local Apple store and just swap the battery for a new one?
I guess I'm the only one asking why are you being charged an overdraft fee for a pending charge? Seems like the fee should come when the charge actually clears.
You don't have an Apple Store close to you? This is something that I would just go in for. I had my battery start having issues after about 2 years of having it. I walked into my Apple Store, I was at the counter for about 10 minutes and walked out with a new one.
The problem with debit cards, such as a "Visa Debit Card" and a credit card is that banks take the money out and put it on hold. PHYSICALLY on hold. Whereas credit cards, it doesn't get deducted. It puts a hold on your account, and a pending charge, but credit cards don't actually deduct the amount instantly from your credit line. Whereas a debit, well, there it goes. I learned that too.
It is the fault of the uninformed consumer, not Apple's.
It's nice to know I'm not the only one who finds myself in this predicament. Having barely anything in checking since it always gets depleted all the time.
I stopped using debit cards after a similar thing happened to me (coincidentally with BofA).
Credit cards have more consumer protections and had you used one you would have avoided this. Use a credit card, pay it off every month and this will never happen to you again.
Or.... if you don't have applecare, just sign up for the next battery recall and don't return your old battery! Viola! brand new battery ready to use after a year and a half!
Sorry David, but it's your own fault for giving out a debit card number for a potential change when you don't have enough money to cover it. I certainly have had some complaints about Apple, but this does not seem to be a reasonable one.
@normal guy: The issue isn't whether or not I had the money to cover the charge, it was the way in which the "charge" was described to me by the Apple rep. It was made out as if I would only be charged in the event that I fail to return my old battery, and even then, the charge wouldn't occur for 30 days. Call me naive, but if I give out my debit card for something I'm told won't be charged to me for 30 days, I'm not going to scramble to make sure the funds are there right away.
Just used CoconutBattery and apparently my battery capacity has gone up 300mAh after 251 charges and 15 months. That's not quite what I expected to see!
@James
Debit cards and credit cards have exactly the same protection for the consumer. They couldn't have the Visa logo on them if it were otherwise. Go read Visa's website.
i also learnt that apple places MULTIPLE charges on your account when you shop at the online apple store.
every time i buy something from them, my credit card company calls me to ask me if i'm the one using my card MULTIPLE times at an online store when in fact, it was only once... and that too takes days to clear up, so even if it's a credit card, you can't really use that part of your credit line.
and apple is the only online store i know of that charges you BEFORE shipping your product. amazon doesn't do that, and i shop there a lot.
i bought a macbook at apple.com and they charged my account for the macbook and some other crazy stuff like a few $1 charges... suddenly the macbook became unavailable for 5-7 days so i decided to cancel the order. those apple charges remained on my account for almost a week before vanishing into thin air.
after that, i never bought anything from the online apple store again.
Mine's gone up to 5412 mAh after 12 months/70 load cycles.
I've got a macbook with the same issue. Called applecare, and worked out that my battery is part of a batch with known issues. Solution - they'll send out a new one. Need credit card info til I send back the old one. I don't use visa or mastercard here (in the UK), and they wouldn't take debit card info - perhaps this is why.
Maybe I'll try an apple store by just just turning up. I tried to reserve a battery, seeing as I had a case-number and an already identified faulty battery, but they wouldn't ensure that they'll have replacement in stock.... So it might be a wasted journey... We'll see.
The problem (as I alluded to earlier) is that you are given a debit card and told you can use it exactly like a credit card. Indeed, you can hand it to a clerk or submit the number of the phone or internet and the credit card processing system will never give any indication that it isn't a credit card. The processor, however, is not treating them the same way. Had you given him a credit card number for a card with less than $130 of credit remaining, the transaction would have failed.