The CampFire

[Mahachippy]

Why oh why must Apple have good customer service!? It does absolutely nothing for my pc fanboy-ism!

I downloaded a couple of albums from the iTunes store with a giftcard I got for Christmas from my sister that I had planned to put on my iPod.

Weeeelllll...I made a boneheaded mistake yesterday and deleted my entire iTunes library without thinking. Unfortunately I hadn't backed up my purchases from the iTunes store and thus lost them in the process.

I was a bit, shall we say upset, when I realized what I had done as the Apple TOS says that you are entitled to download your purchases from the iTunes store exactly once and I thought I was out of luck (note, this is one thing that does annoy me about the iTunes store - I legally bought the rights to my downloads at 99 cents per song, as such it is my assertion that I should have access to that file for as long as I want and should not be limited to one single download as I PAID for it).

Anywho, my rant about their content policy aside, I decided to email Apple and see if they could do anything to help me as I really didn't want to shell out another $20+ to get the exact same thing again.

Well, I sent my email to them around 6 pm yesterday and figured that I'd hopefully get a response by the first part of this next week - boy was I wrong!

I had an email sitting in my inbox today at 11:00 am with the instructions on how to download my purchases again! I was helped by a man named Rajdeep who was nothing but courteous and helpful and didn't give me a lecture about backing up my music or anything. I was shocked that I had found technology related customer service that was both friendly and helpful!

After reading the email I went to iTunes and was able to re-download my files in a matter of minutes (and immediately backed up my purchases). After that I sent an email back to Rajdeep thanking him for his help and he told me that if I needed anything else to simply email him and he'd see what he could do to help me - heck he even gave me his work schedule!

I did some looking into this and although not advertised, Apple allows you a one time only re-download of your purchases from the iTunes store if they somehow become lost, damaged, or unrecoverable. However, from what I understand it truly is just a one time offer for the entire lifetime of the content that you have.

Anywho, long story short, I am very impressed with both Apple's products (my iPod at least) and their customer service - I fear that I might end up cheating on Microsoft in the future with Apple...I just hope Bill understands....
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"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." Psalms 46:10

Defend the weak, protect both young and old, never desert your friends. Give justice to all, be fearless in battle and always ready to defend the right. Show welcome and good cheer to all of true heart.

Live with no excuses. Love with no regrets.

Buy when you're scared to death, sell when you're happy as hell!

[weaver]

Glad that worked out for you.

[Manny]

Those sneaky so & so's, how DARE they show up the PC world with the cheesy gimmick of superior customer service!!!!

Seriously though, you can see why us non-techies love our Apple products, the things just plain work for the most part, day in and day out, and if you do have the odd problem now & again you get quick, courteous service. My Mac laptop is 5+ years old and still works good (knock on wood) and I've never needed to get a anti-virus program or anything, no drama, it just works. It needs a new battery as the life on a charge isn't too great anymore, but thats hardly unique to Apple. Two full generations of newer units have been introduced since I got old Bessie, but she still keeps chugging along. I'd like to get a newer unit for the better graphics ability with the newer more powerful chips, but until she craps out thats low on the priority list.

Oh, and as far as backup goes, I've got full back up of my entire iTunes in my iPhone automatically every time I plug into the Mac to charge the phone. I guess I could go for one more level of backup with a separate storage device.... might have to look into that.
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"Adversity breeds toughness, and the tough succeed. And survive."
D.Koontz in "Lightning"

[Mahachippy]

[weaver]

I have an Apple laptop I bought in 1995 that still runs. It's a bit slow compared to my new quad core intel Mac desktop, but it's not unbearable.