And all was for an Apple .......

I sent a letter to Apple today - the final act, I hope, in my latest internet saga. It accompanied the Airport which arrived yesterday to replace the one I have which turned out not to need replaced. I post it here to make me feel better.
Case Number : ********

I am returning the new Airport Base Station which you sent in response to a phone call in the week before Christmas. Please note that this is the new Base Station rather than the one which I have been using for the past two and a half years. It has not even been removed from its packaging. The reasons for this are as follows:

Three weeks ago my printer stopped responding to “print” commands, despite the fact that it was still operating as a printer and had new ink cartridges. As I had neither the time nor the expertise to work out what had gone wrong, I called in a so-called local “expert”. After some time he pronounced that the printer was faulty. However, a new printer fared no better and we managed to return it. At this point I was still connected to the Internet through the Base Station.

Our “expert” now phoned your help line, as I have a Protection Plan. After several hours on the phone, and conversations with, I understand, two of your experts, it was decided that the Airport was faulty and should be replaced. By this time I no longer had any internet connection on my laptop, as the Apple advice had been to change all the settings and these settings were left in such a state that I could make no sense of what had happened. (I should point out that I am not entirely witless in this department, and had set up the entire system myself on purchase.)

And so it was that on the Wednesday before Christmas I was awaiting a replacement Airport, had no internet connection and could not print. The next day my son arrived for a few days and within half an hour had fixed the entire network so that everything was once more working perfectly. Hence the return of the replacement Airport.

Your telephone help in this case turned out to be telephone hindrance, I’m afraid, and left us considerably worse off than we had been. Perhaps the routine questions they ask in this kind of case should be reviewed – or are they on rails like all other call centre operatives?

I should add, perhaps, that I spoke to a very sensible young man at Apple this morning - I suspect that their customer service bods are better than their hapless helpline ones.