Here in Alaska, Apple’s “genius” model for repairs is broken for two reasons. First because we’re not just rural, we’re expansive and rural. We don’t have simple mountain ranges, we have mountain fields. When you get to the top you don’t look down into the valley, you look across to the next mountain, and the ones behind it.
There are two Apple Stores in Alaska. The Mac Haus and the Alaska Mac Store. Both have shops in Anchorage and Fairbanks. If you don’t live in the big city, you can’t drive your broken Mac into an Apple Store. You have to ship it. In our case, the nearest qualified Apple repair center is, as the crow flies, 600 miles away.
The second problem with the Genius Model is this whole notion of a “genius”. I’ve been to Apple stores in Seattle, London, San Franciso and I’ve talked with the staff. Many of them are truly well versed in Apple’s products and troubleshooting. In Alaska? Not so much. In fact the most knowledgeable Apple experts I’ve met in Alaska work in schools.
In mid-August of this year one of our six month old Apple 24″ LED displays up and died. It simply wouldn’t power on.
Over the years we’ve sent in plenty of Apple laptops for repair. This is generally a painless process. You call them up, they do some troubleshooting over the phone, when they deem it needs repair they send you a box. Shipping is prepaid. You slap the laptop in the box, put it in the mail, and a couple weeks later it comes back fixed. No muss, no fuss, no extra cost to the consumer.
With anything other than laptops, this is not the case.
It took me two hours on the phone with Apple just to get to the point where I knew where the monitor needed to go. At first they gave me the address of a local store. So I called the store and they told me they didn’t service Apple products. I called Apple back and they told me that no, in fact that local store was indeed a service center. I called the local store back, and they reassured me in terse terms that they did not fix Apple stuff, only sold it. So, back on the phone with Apple, they gave me a list of the nearest service centers. Coincidentally, this was the same list I found when I searched Google. The Apple rep on the phone couldn’t give me much more help, so I selected one service center at random.
We didn’t have the original box the monitor came in, so I asked Apple to send us out a box for it. 
They couldn’t do this. I called foul and stamped my feet, reminding them how much business our agency’s recommendations drive their way. They claimed it was impossible to send out a box, something about China, production, and blah blah. I gave up and packaged the monitor myself, carefully.
The Apple tech on the phone wasn’t able to set up any sort of RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) with the repair center, or pave the way for me at all. It was up to me to make all arrangements. Once I got them on the phone, the Alaska Mac Store gave me their shipping address and told me to leave a note in the box so they would know who sent it. With most RMA’s, there’s a form you print out, with an assigned number on it for tracking the repair. In this case, nothing of the sort, just the pink Post-It note I affixed to the monitor.
So I shipped it out, with insurance, to the tune of $60. Since I’m a busy guy, it was easily forgotten. Three weeks later I had a voicemail from the Alaska Mac Store. They had a monitor with our name on it, and wanted to know what to do with it. Apparently my original phone call with them wasn’t logged or shared with their repair staff. So I called them back and answered their question: “please fix it”. A couple weeks later I received a call that it needed a new logic board, which Apple was sending up. A couple weeks after that they left me another voicemail, the monitor was fixed, and how did I want to pay for return shipping. I returned the call and gave them a credit card number over the phone to pay $42 for return shipping. Another week later the monitor arrived, in perfect working order.
Leaving the coordination in the hands of the customer is a disappointing contrast to other warranty repair options with other companies I’ve worked with. In this day and age, I’ve just come to expect more, especially from a company like Apple whose brand tends to set the bar higher.
My advice if you’re in rural Alaska? Don’t buy Apple iMacs or big Apple monitors unless you’re comfortable with the idea of shipping them out for repair yourself. Instead stick with MacBooks, or the Mac Mini which can be easily shipped. For monitors go with standard flat screen options from “normal” vendors. Or, if you really want that Apple Cinema display, remember to keep the box and packing materials for at least as long as the warranty.
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