#FF00AA

If I’m going to have to wait until August 16th to see any sort of progress (damn catholics), I might as well avoid lugging my twenty inches of iMac through the whole third arrondissement (which isn’t big, but still) and order a replacement power supply on the web (which I should have done yesterday, but then I still thought I had a hint of a chance of finding a store that would give it to me, which won’t happen not only because I can’t memorize holidays for the life of me, but also because the nice lady who answers the phone while the store is closed told me “oh, no, you’ll have to bring your computer anyway, we’re not allowed to sell Apple parts” — wtf? they just don’t want to skip billing the labor costs, right?), praying that Apple is kind enough not to bill me.

We received your request for a DIY part for your IMAC G5 ALS (20-INCH) […]. The part should be delivered to you soon, along with installation instructions.

Soon… yeah, right… soon.

Our initial diagnostic indicates that, since your DIY repair will probably be covered by warranty, an AppleCare Protection Plan, or another Apple repair program, no expenses should be billed. For any question regarding your repair’s coverage, we will contact you by phone or e-mail.

Probably. Huh. I don’t like this word, having read somewhere that a power supply is billed somewhere around $150 (hell yeah, why don’t we… well, gotta admit it makes some sense, since it’s custom-designed for the iMac and even includes the Ambient Light Sensor I never quite understand the need for). And yes, of course, they have my credit card number, so that they can bill me $70 expenses if I don’t return the replaced part within ten days.

I know I disobeyed technical support by not bringing my machine to a certified Apple agent, but, well, let’s stay optimistic, shall we? I have the Repair Extension Program on my side, plus it’s not like I found the DIY part order page by myself — I was pointed to it by an online support agent. So there.

By the way, it’s great that they have web chat on the Apple support site (you might have to hunt for it a bit, and it’s in English only — but AppleCare is centralized and internationalized enough for them to know exactly where I stand with French support, which is nice). But it would be much more interesting if they acknowledged the fact that online, keyboard-only support is the most efficient tool there is (I spent one hour on the phone with Apple support on Saturday, 55 minutes of which were just heavy breathing, waiting for the OS to not-boot and the Apple Hardware Test to not-complete; with online chat, a well-trained support agent can process many customers at once, and do something else while waiting for test results) and put their best elements in line there; instead, they seem to only be trained to search the knowledge base really fast and point you to the right pages. Which, well, thanks, but I can do it by myself.

Well, okay, I know that most people will use that web chat as a replacement for the search forms, so it should be taken into account. But, with no e-mail address or anything, where are power users supposed to go for support?

I know, that’s a universal question, and it’s anything but new, but I have very seldom had to deal with technical support lines (and thank heavens for that).