Just to show this is anecdotal, I have been using Apple notebooks for many years and have only ever had one problem. That problem was a defective trackpad. The Apple Store replaced the computer outright with the newer model as they were unable to get the part within seven days due to Christmas holidays. I hear good and bad things about customer service of all sorts of companies, but more often than not I have heard positive things about Apple.
Apple is probably the only company that comes to mind when I try to think of positive customer service experiences. Even when my apple care expired they still helped me.
My MBP is now 6 years old, still trying to get my employer to replace it. The only problems I had were the HDD going bad (I replaced it with SSD) and the trackpad no longer works (i spilled a drink on it once or twice). I also dropped is in the street a couple times which could have contributed to the HDD failure.
Overall I've never owned any other devices this long with continuous use. With all that being said they are going to need to change their approach on this issue or they risk damaging that support reputation.
I've had very good experiences with Dell both in Japan and Poland.
[Japan] One day the fan of my Latitude started making a clicking noise so I called the service, scheduled a visit for the next Saturday and got the fan replaced, even though the noise didn't occur when the serviceman was testing it. In the process of replacing the fan he noticed my case is missing two rubber feet and promised to send me a replacement. A week later I got a whole bottom part of the case in mail.
[Poland] My dad had some problems with BSODs on his Vostro and after a bit of back and forth with the service they replaced the whole motherboard for him. Almost 3 years into warranty, 1 month before it expired.
If I ever decide to go back to Windows or Linux I'm going with Dell and their NBD warranty.
I've had pretty great repair service from Lenovo in January of this year, and with Acer in 2013. Both are for devices I purchased as a private consumer, not as a big contract corporate client.
I've had some terrible experience with Lenovo around 2010, so this may be hit or miss, but Apple is certainly not the only company that can provide decent service.
I don't think the defect is the problem but rather the communication on Apple's part. Problems happen, people in IT are most probably used to that. But a company should just admit the error and move on.
I personally had the same experience as GP (but ages ago): Bought an iBook G3 that had multiple main board faults every few months (that was a problem of the whole series). In Germany you can get your money back if a product has the same fault multiple times (i.e. the manufacturer is unable to fix the issue). Both Apple and Gravis, the retailer, acted so horribly despite the perfectly clear law and a clear paper trail of the multiple defects that I had to hire a lawyer to get my money back. Of course I'll never buy anything Apple again - not because of the defects (as said, that can happen to every manufacturer) but rather because of the awful response.
At my company we all use Apple hardware besides screens and one surface and we have a failure rate of around 70% over two years for our MacBook Pros. We had 2 with the graphics problem and 7 had disk failures. 2 others had failing keyboards and trackpads. But since it was always in the 2 year span we didn't had any problems to get them repaired.
The difference, I think, is that Apple KNOWS about certain problems, e.g. Trackpad. If there's no water damage, then it's clearly a manufacturing defect. In OPs case, they thought he was lying because they'd never seen that issue happen without accidental damage.
A similar thing happened with an HP laptop I owned. They had problems with hinges breaking for no reason other than poor design. I searched online and found a bunch of people had the problem and some got it replaced as a manufacturing defect. I tried for months to get HP to do something about it. Finally I went to my boss who at the time was connected with some HP big shot. Using that leverage is the only way I've ever gotten HP to fix a single thing.
We're blessed with lots of old and failing HP kit which is slowly being swapped out for Supermicro stuff so every time something goes pop, they get on the phone and screw the warranty as hard as possible then sell the warranty bits as new on ebay and scrap the chassis.
This is our operations team's way of issuing karma for years of pain if that's any consolation :)
