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Melted

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Melted
Originally uploaded by pdxsurreal

“You cursed brat! Look what you've done! I'm melting! melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? Oooooh, look out! I'm going! Oooooh! Ooooooh!” ~Wicked Witch of the West

Apple MacBook Pro power adapter woes

A while back, I noticed the cord coming out of my power adapter had cracked a bit. I wrapped some electrical tape around it for support, and went on with my business. I have heard that the cords for these laptops are susceptible to damage, so I never wrap it around the cord hooks, or tweak it in any way. A couple of days ago, I noticed that I had to tweak the cord a bit to get the damned thing to actually charge my laptop. A pain in the ass, but still--I’ve had PC’s that had the same thing happen to their power bricks, so no biggie. I made a mental note to get permission from the powers that be to get a new power adapter.

Then yesterday morning, I noticed my laptop was almost dead, in spite of being plugged in all night. So I unwrapped the electrical tape, and found the wire all melted and smelling like electrical arcs (any arc welders will know what that smells like... Not that I’m an arc welder--in fact, I suck at welding. But I was around it quite a bit as a kid.)

I went into the Portland Mac store to see if they would exchange it--obviously it was a flaw in the product itself. My laptop was out of warranty, so the guy at the service desk couldn’t really help me. He tried--he actually took some time to research it and see what he could do. The end result was, “Call Apple support and see if they’ll exchange it for you.”

So I called Apple Support and talked to Lori. She was extremely helpful. Just asked me several questions about whether or not anything catastrophic happened (house burn down, personal injury, etc.,) and said she’d have a new adapter sent immediately. She said I could expect it in 24 to 48 hours. Took my credit card info just in case I neglected to send the old adapter back to Apple, and that was that. About 20 minutes later I got an email with her contact information just in case I had any questions.

Last night I got an email from DHL saying that my adapter had shipped, and this morning at around 11am, it arrived at the office.

At any rate--it’s always easy to write up a big long bitch-session when something goes wrong. So I thought I’d write about something gone right. Granted, if the power adapter had torched my apartment, fried my laptop, or killed my cat, all the customer service in the world wouldn’t have made me write something nice. But since things didn’t go that way, I thought I’d give a nod to Apple’s customer support.

“Why, anybody can have a brain. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma.” ~Wizard of Oz