AppleApple Customer Service Woes
It has been 5 months (and 2 days) anniversary that I have started the the ticket with Apple…
I have uploaded GB’s and GB’s of data showing my computer has an issue but they are not answering.
The latest stint was extra funny. They asked me to test the system (fresh install of MacOS BigSur) with just built in apps to see if they had a problem corresponding to my ticket that my GPU has a big issue. 😂
When I asked what built in apps relied on GPU to show my problem — they said “Photos” app for testing as I am professional photographer so I must be using the Photos app.
Anyway, today using Safari, Spotify and Terminal the temperatures were ranging from 70–100C which must be normal as it is a very intense workload for a 16in MBP.
So I ‘ll start publishing little by little all that is happening on Medium.
This so far — from an email sent to tcook@apple.com — I know it is a wall, will send a shorter one soon.
“On November 2, 2020 at 11:03:00 PM, Martin Štokić (maax.net@gmail.com) wrote:
Good day Mr. Cook,
Greetings to everyone included in the email as well as to the potential team members overlooking these mailboxes.
I do appreciate the time you will have invested on your end to dive into the deep end with me on this. I would assume everyone has a lot on their plate so I will try to keep this as short as possible. (spoiler no TL;DR)
I have been dealing with the issue for over 5 months in total and more than 4.5 months with customer service and advisors number that I’ve lost count of.
I have attempted to source potential points of contact sourced from the leadership webpage according to areas that may be overlapping with my issue. The applicability of my thoughts may be far from reality but I am certain — if my search was successful and any of you is reading my email — you will know where who needs to see it better than I. Your help and time will be held in regard.
It is very unlikely that I would be typing this email if regularly available channels were even close to yielding results. We are here because I could not see any other option. I have been pushed into this situation and I needed to raise your awareness to a plea that may not be the only one.
The decision to speak to the leadership team stems from my personal perspective that something in the system seems broken. I am betting on the off-chance that I am shedding light onto something that can perhaps be improved so the consumers and company can benefit. I reckon if the process and experience that happened to me do not happen to others everyone will win. Preventing dedicated consumers like myself from losing confidence and faith in the brand is what I would isolate as important. Also avoiding impact on your daily workflow with something that should have been solved at a point of contact and in less time can be a desirable side effect.
I have read the descriptions on the leadership page and to me, it has seemed that partial ownership may exist within your roles for a colorful myriad of challenges experienced. I excuse myself from any mistakes made on my selection criteria but hopefully, we can conclude this little saga.
This has been the most time-consuming type of customer service experience that I generally prefer to avoid by buying into big brands. It has been so long that Apple Watch achievement should exist for it. Thankfully this has been an isolated negative experience of this magnitude to date in my 10 years as a consumer. In lieu of this, I have been cutting everyone some slack for the well-established track record and in relation to the global situation.
I will try to outline the issues encountered in a step by step manner to establish a timeline and resolve the problem that has cost me money and time. I was planning to open an email of this kind but the update shared with me today tipped me into motion.
NOV, 1, 2020 — Advisor appointed reached out and informed me that Apple engineering team IS aware of the existence of the issue that was negated before but that there is no clear path forward, no time frame for resolution and that I have to patiently wait for future SW updates as they may or may not address the issue at hand. I am not sure if you see this as unacceptable as I do. Especially after everything that has been done so far.
My case number that I am referring to is 101166371099. It dates to June 16, 2020. The issue has started before I have reached out to customer service. I have started the trip down the rabbit hole once it became so apparent that it could not be ignored how the computer failed to perform on the same level as when it was new.
The device was bought in the U.S. by my family member in DEC, 2019. I have collected it and am using it in China where I am currently situated due to a number of global limiting factors. This computer has been registered only for me.
Initial timeline — the computer was working fine from January to estimated mid-May — and I was happy as I got the best of both worlds. I could work and I could play on the level that is suitable for me. During the lockdown in China, I have spent extensive time using the device — as well as understanding how it performs. Thus when it started to struggle to deliver on a level I was accustomed to — it was very noticeable but I had problems pinpointing it.
It has become apparent that there may be an issue with throttling while the computer was under heavy load working in Adobe LR, Photoshop with sizeable layered files, or working on demanding video projects in various apps, as well as exporting it. The issue was only confirmed by the performance in games that used to run 40–50fps and now could only perform to the point of 10–20FPS on the same settings. Everything would start normally but then it would quickly degrade.
Initially, I blamed the potential issue on SW installations and updates as my first culprit. Started by removing the bootcamp partition and reinstalling multiple versions of Windows that ran initially. Was resetting SMC, PRAM, and even reinstalling the macOS on my own and running the tests well before consulting with Apple trying to be sure the issues were there in the first place.
I wanted to produce a more measurable and quantifiable performance degradation depiction based on numbers and not on my pure hunch. This was only managed through 3rd party software running on both macOS and Windows. macOS is particularly challenging to query from my personal experience.
The SW used is as follows:
Unigine Heaven — many online reviewers used this suite so I could compare the performance of my laptop Vs the tested sample.
On Windows, I used MSI afterburner to have the ability to display the performance statistics in realtime.
Under macOS, I could only use iStat menus as the offering is slim, but that has proven to be enough to establish a correlation between potential cause and effect.
The effect:
1) GPU throttling issue. Timeline — computer heats up, fans kick in, the GPU clocks down to 300MHZ and stays on that level even when the computer cools down. Under macOS, this was visible impacting the performance of the CPU as well — in some instances videos were made and uploaded to Apple showing the CPU perform @1.6GHZ while exporting photos from Lightroom.
2) GPU under heavy load utilization causes general System Instability — even dock animation performs in 2FPS aka the UI is jittery and lagging.
3) Overall system unresponsiveness — beachball was a frequent companion in Safari especially — right-click to open a submenu.
4) Wakeup from sleep — Teal screen happens as well as frequent self restarts. All issues were reported.
List of potential causes:
1) HW failure
2) Thermal issues
3) Official SW updates on the low level
Testing:
Every update iteration was tested and video recorded and submitted to the Apple engineering team for review along with Capture data and screenshots reports.
Testing has been conducted both on a fresh install of MacOS(Clean macOS) done over Internet recovery mode and then afterward from my Live macOS where all the apps and my work lives.
After about 2 months in — I thought maybe I was crazy so I went so far as to buy a NEW MBP16 from an authorized reseller with 10.15.4 OS and tests run on that machine. I have managed to prove that my 1st machine has an issue. I was aiming to get a machine with an “older build” because the T2 machines are unable to be rolled back to stock macOS Catalina even though the Apple staff was requesting repeatedly for this to be done. Both in Apple Store and online support.
Testing sequence:
Consecutive running of Unigine Heaven Benchmark Test in both Live macOS and clean macOS yield the same results:
1st run 47–49FPS, 2nd 35–38FPS, 3rd 28–32 and down to 12–18FPS on the 6th consecutive run.
NEW MBP16 keeps the 51.1FPS final result across the 5 runs and on the 6th run drops down to 48.8FPS keeping the performance all the way. (SN C02CP2FVMD6Q)
Every released patch was installed and tested in the same manner. Every single time yielding the same defeating results with a small increase in performance in 10.15.7 — but even those gains fade out if the heavy work demands-resources.
ALL the materials I have made — have also been shared with Apple through Gigafiles. They contained screen recordings outlining what I was doing step by step so any doubts could be alleviated and maybe the origin pinpointed.
If any of the materials are required I still have all the content on my server and can upload it again for a repeated review.
The file I have uploaded in August I have been asked to send again today and I have done so already.
Online solutions:
The issue seems not to be isolated to my device but mine seems to be stuck in the group of the ones most heavily impacted. People use a variety of 3rd party SW to mitigate the issue — ThrottleSTOP, ProcessLasso, Afterburner, Drivers, GPU BIOS adjustments, Thermal Paste over VRM chips, IntelXTU, and others. Most approaches that yield results made by people seem to void the warranty or may lead to it. I have 3 years of AppleCare+ on the device and I have decided to take it up with Apple because my computer used to work on a certain level setting expectations that were challenged by current reality.
Advisor Staff Perpetual Challenges:
1) Failure to communicate (not all staff)
2) Failure to own up to promises made that turned out to be platitudes
3) Failure to provide clear timelines (still an issue)
4) Failure to return calls or send reply emails (there has been only Mr. Nupur and Mr. Ashok that come clearly to mind that is NOT in this group)
5) Offering snarky comments over the phone — quote on quote “Please do not take this the wrong way but out engineering team suggests you buy an eGPU if you want graphic performance”
6) Random emails informing me of changed Advisor and case takeover — and then silence.
7) Advisors not taking time to review the case and asking repetitive questions that have been extensively covered and answered
8) Apple Store Staff in Chongqing, China — able to visually identify the issue but unable to escalate or elevate the issue further and instead of sending me to online support. (Other than that inability the store staff has been very supportive)
9) Staff knowledge base (example — pushing solutions that do not apply to T2 machines forcing multiple reinstalls of the system trying to restore stock OS)
10) Indicating that I could somehow be responsible for the lengthiness due to not being reachable (every email was replied within 24h. All that was requested was delivered. When on occasion Apple sent an email that I could not be reached — it resulted in an email sent instantly back to the advisor informing me that my phone did not even ring and that I received an email which states there was an attempt to reach me. No replies to those emails in most cases)
11) Attempts of convincing me there is nothing wrong with my device.
12) Advisor replying to the official ticket from noreply@apple.com and other instances I lack clarity so will refrain from adding them.
Conclusion:
The drastic underperformance of the computer can not be attributed to Reddit mantra of — Mac always runs slower for the extra cash you pay because of how they are built. Over the years I have learned to live with certain design limitations preventing the device from performing to the full extent of the HW capabilities. This enabled me to learn the difference between me accepting some throttling I buy into compared to the slowdown and system instability that I have to deal with right now.
If this is an SW issue spread by an update — why hasn’t this been addressed yet? (10.15.4 machine Vs others builds)
If the engineering team is unable to provide solutions and I have provided evidence of the problem — why do I have to deal with their ineptitude over months waiting for as much as a shred of basic communication? Please do a review.
Real-life consequences over time:
1) Incurred costs and penalties for the inability to deliver projects on time when the issue struck (incurred losses were stopped at approximately $7000 and work heavily reorganized — most projects are my own, whereas now I had to rent services I could not deliver and pay for the penalties for not delivering on time)
2) Buying and reselling a NEW MBP16 machine to show the performance issue. Renting the same machine back for work so I could deliver projects that required a dependable device. The reselling was to a close partner so if asked I could get the device back for further tests.
3) Inability to take projects on shorter delivery periods as I do not know whether I can deliver as some days computer would be hanging and freezing requiring restarts.
4) Inability to have peace of mind about the HW I bought for work. My Photo/Video business is being run on the road and is location-based. It has lifted off since the lockdown was lifted in China.
5) Personal time heavily invested in backups, restores, testing, phone calls, emails written, locating the emails of the leadership to be reached, repeated explanations offered
6) Shaken faith in the brand and the promise of customer service on which I based most of my purchases besides what used to be reliable HW. Issues plaguing a range of owned devices. Thank the heavens my 4th gen Time Capsule is still running faithfully.
7) Impacts that can not be directly quantified but can be outlined.
What I wanted initially:
For my machine to perform the same way it did perform for the initial period.
What I expect now:
To discuss how can we remedy the issue at hand. If through review of the company attitude, processes, and handling of my case you can ascertain service failures (as I certainly do feel damaged) I would expect service recovery compensation for the incurred losses. The manner of those would be discussed once the review can be completed. I still want to use the HW/SW and environment that I have enjoyed over the years.
I hope I have kept my approach here concise, objective, and above the line. Hopefully, more can be done with honey Vs vinegar.
Wish you all a great Monday meeting.
Martin S.
Creative Art Director
uniQat CQ LTD
Chongqing
PR China“
