Day: October 10, 2003

G5 Acquisition Adventure

looky

Summary:

  • When a credit is posted to your credit card, it will take until the next day to be updated on your account. This is lame. CitiBank is lame.
  • CitiBank, unlike say a credit union or a local bank, will NOT give you a temporary boost in credit to remedy this problem.
  • Apple manufacturing is a little behind on the G5s.
  • Apple Can Help You.
  • The G5 is a sexy sexy machine.

I bought our G5 yesterday. Or rather I bought the actual tower- I bought the whole system online on Oct 3rd: Dual processor, 1 GB RAM, internal Bluetooth, wireless mouse and keyboard, with a 23″ display. We got the mouse, keyboard, and display immediately.

Yesterday (a week later) I looked at our order, and the estimated ship date- it was listed as the 20th. Whoa, wait a second- we need to be editing by the 24th, and it needs to be completely set up by then- editing software working, importing from miniDV from the deck, and audio from whatever format Tom is using. So if we waited for it to ship, we would be betting that shipping would take 2 days… and then that setting up everything would go off perfectly. Right.

I called Apple Customer Service. They said that it might ship as early as the 15th… but maybe the 20th. Maybe later! And that this delay was across the board; cutting out the custom hardware (the extra RAM or the Bluetooth) would not help us. Oh crap, I think.

Next we called the various Apple Stores around us- we found a store with a dual G5 in the shop. We could have a machine by the end of the day, but no internal Bluetooth, since they only do that at the factory (the expanded graphics card too), which was a minor drag. So Diane reserved a system with the exact configuration, plus an external Bluetooth USB dongle. Then we called Customer Service back and had them cancel the tower part of our order… this was a little dicey because it was already being assembled or something, but they pulled through. Bear in mind every time I call Customer Service the wait is more than 20 minutes on hold. They were very sweet and asked “is there anything Apple can do to keep your order?” which is where I figure any bargaining would have come in… however since my only possible answer was “ship it right now!” that wasn’t going to happen.

Shac and I left work to pick up the machine. At the Apple Store we met “Max” and he was super cool. They did the hard sell on Apple Care and .mac, and in both cases I was convinced by their enthusiasm (.mac is really cool- it’s basically what all those mac BBS’s used to be in the 1980’s- email, a place to store your stuff, and lots of free software that does things you want!).

Lots of money. Bye bye money! Problem: the card was declined. The company card. No problem, I call CitiBank. Boy they are stupid. This business card has a $10k limit- lower than the personal CC accounts almost everyone I know. Bastards. And the refund from Apple hadn’t come through yet- it would take 24 hours. Lame? How are we supposed to get anything done over here? After about 30 minutes on the phone with CitiBank (not including hold times) it’s looking like we have to leave all this stuff at the store. Major major drag.

Max comes to our rescue (and makes more money for Apple)- we can apply for an Apple Loan right here in the store. But it’s kind of a pilot program. Ok, what choice do we have… I fill out a loan application online and submit it, and call MBNA (who incidentally I had previously sworn I’d never deal with again) to see if it went through. They revviewed my credit rating and gave me a reference number. Max plugged it in, called the bank to verify my personal information (just like a normal credit check), and we were done! So, now I’ve got my new machine. And an Apple Loan, which I intend to pay off with a credit card if possible!

When a credit is posted to your credit card, it will take until the next day to be updated on your account. This is lame. CitiBank is lame. CitiBank, unlike say a credit union or a local bank, will NOT give you a temporary boost in credit to remedy this problem. Apple manufacturing is a little behind on the G5s. Apple Can Help You. The G5 is a sexy sexy machine.