I thought I'd get off of the Soapbox for awhile. I just had a great experience with support from Apple. I'll try to keep this short. A while back I took my 42 month old MBP to the local Apple store and asked the young man behind the Genius Bar to troubleshoot it for me. The MBP had begun to lock up, crash, etc. He ran some diagnostics and told me my HDD was about to give out. My MBP had a 5400 RPM HDD that he indicated was running around 3000 RPM.
I immediately cloned my HDD to a portable HDD just to be safe.
I then took it to another Apple authorized service shop and told them the same story about the difficulties I was having. I agreed to pay them $130 to troubleshoot it for me. It turned out to be some problem with the logic board. They could find no indication of any problem with my HDD. What blew me away was that Apple agreed to pick up the full cost of the parts and labor to replace the logic board. My MBP was 6 months out of warranty! I decided to upgrade the HDD anyway since the machine would be dis-assembled anyway to replace the logic board. All I paid for was the cost of the new HDD.
So I now have a practically brand new MBP courtesy of Apple Inc. Thank you Apple!

I have similar stories..
Apple kicks some serious butt sometimes.
They have, on 2 different occasions, replaced a whole tower. They have fixed a laptop out of warranty...replaced the mobo.
Replaced the bottom pan on my 12" G4 laptop..
And so on...
I guess this is why they are rated tops in customer satisfaction surveys.

Ya know this is actually the first time I've ever had a problem with any of the Macs I've owned. I bought my first Mac in 1988 or 89, a Mac IIcx. Of course I've owned quite a few since then. I've never owned a pc of any variety. Just lucky I guess!

Not lucky. The things just keep working.

I wouldn't call that great service from the young man behind the Genius Bar. Suppose one had that misdiagnosis and didn't have a secondary source to check with.

I need to return my iMac for a problem and I'm not looking forward to it.

You're absolutely right about the "Genius". I meant to mention that as well. I am however willing to cut them some slack on that. I recognize that they are very busy at the Genius Bar and their time per customer is limited. What made me go to the second source was the fact that I could not find any diagnostic software anywhere that indicated it could provide me with the actual RPM my HDD was operating at. I know, a HDD operates at different speeds depending on its current chore.

I still have never seen better customer service by anyone. I remember when Apple opened it's first store in Palo Alto. It was like Christmas! From day on I've always appreciated the assistance I normally receive at the Genius Bar.

Good luck with your iMac. I need to replace my 7-8 eight year old iMac myself soon.

That is true. I've had minor software glitches, but this is my first and hopefully last hardware issue.

Apple has excellent customer relationship in the US.Unfortunately where I reside in the Philippines it stinks.Singapore is the only base to really get any results what ever problem you are encountering and this is a call center which sometimes is helpful and sometimes not.You are fortunate you live in the states.

Bummer, Jerry.

I to have had really no problems with Apple. Pretty outstanding as a matter of fact.

It could be with the call centers you deal with? ? I remember Apple tried using an (india) base call center and was faced with HUGE complaints - later switched to a Canadian base call center.

I presume where you live there are good apple providers there and have knowledge of their products.Here forget it one technician told me you cannot use a SSD in the MBP 13 inch i own which is the late 2010 model. Imagine that one?