It was nice to see a Belfast Blogger on Macsurfer this morning though it went a little sour when I read the comments.
The biggest thing I like about blogging is the potential for conversation and by extension, for resolution. It’s also an opportunity to present both sides of a “truth” so that others can make their own judgements.
This reminds me of LAST week when Andy from GoodOnPaper.org complained about the service at Mac-Sys. There was some fault with the LCD panel which was actually beyond our control and when he discovered it, he didn’t report the issue. What happened? We engaged him directly, explained the situation and, even Andy will admit, SAVED THE DAY. As he said,
“Bringing the problem to the attention of MacSys, instead of not and then complaining to anyone but, obviously doesn’t pay off.”
“Brabazon”, on the AlanInBelfast post above, says he’s looking forward to dealing direct with Apple and not being messed about by the only AASP in Mallusk. I can’t engage with “Brabazon” directly because his blogger link doesn’t link to a public profile and it’s probably not kosher to have a discussion like that on AlanInBelfast’s blog so I’m doing what I can here.
Seriously — Does anyone think that any business exists solely to mess you about?
I’m not denying that there have been struggles in the past. Like it or not, it’s not my fault that Macs and PCs have hardware failures. It’s also not my fault when parts for a repair are faulty or simply not available for long periods. But I’ll bear these gripes and take them on the chin in return for some honest conversation.
So, Brabazon, rather than making veiled accusations that you were ‘messed around’, contact me directly and tell me what the problem is. I can’t promise that whatever happened will be resolved exactly to your satisfaction but I can certainly put to rest any notion that you were messed about.
I apologise if my comment on AiB caused offence, but I can only draw on my own experience, which for some reason left me feeling less than satisfied. I imagine this unease has a lot to do with the fact that Mac-Sys occupies a unique position as the only AASP in NI, and therefore has no direct competition. This lack of competition only fosters the opinion that they were not required to be as helpful as they might otherwise have been if I had options of where I could take my sickly Mac, and could effectively charge whatever they liked for the repair… I have a colleague who subsequently had a torrid experience at the hands of Mac-Sys, and certainly did feel ‘messed about’, and this served to re-enforce my overall view of the service…
My AiB post was merely me rejoicing in the fact that the opening of the Apple store will give us punters a direct contact with Apple in Belfast, rather than through the ‘middle-man’ of our solitary AASP, and wasn’t intended as a personal attack on the folks at Mac-Sys… Every business has to be able to take the odd bit of criticism on the chin, learn from it, improve and survive against the competition – assuming there is competition of course… 🙂
hi Brabazon,
For the record, we welcome Apple to Belfast even though we recognise they will be our biggest competitor. Sometimes the only recourse we have, when faced with the unsolvable, is to send people directly to Apple and let them try to get satisfaction there because, in many cases, our hands are tied. The contracts are long and onerous and, to be honest, it’s a testament to the guys in Mac-Sys now that they’ve been around for nearly five years and haven’t gone the way of Macinni, Memsis or any of the other Mac companies which have over-promised and under-delivered in Northern Ireland’s recent past.
In our experience, the most embittered detractors of Mac-Sys tend to be those who have been bitten by contract and policy. Those who mistake a ‘warranty’ for ‘insurance’, those who think the best way to deal with a problem is to threaten and cajole and those who have an over-riding sense of entitlement. Apple’s hardware problem machines (ibook G3s spring to mind) were a curse for several years due to the ongoing logic board issues where the response, while they tried to discover the issue, was to send out boards with the same intermittent fault. This meant there were individuals who had 3-4 logic board failures. Mac-Sys, of course, bore the brunt of their dissatisfaction. One individual on one forum seems to have taken this personally and, sadly, there’s probably nothing I can do to help.
Every company will always have its worst customer and I guess it’s important to identify who that is and either accept that they can never be pleased or potentially risk your business trying to please them.
The guys at Mac-Sys love their work and they take a lot of pride in it.
Glad you all got together in the end!