Proof That I'm A Total Moron, And So Is MacOfAllTrades

[Ormond]

Welcome to the Net's most boring thread! In this exciting discussion we will examine the scientific evidence which proves that my IQ is lower than that of your dog. Ok, so you knew that already, but you didn't have the proof. Now you do!

So our story starts a few years ago when I bought a used laptop from MacOfAllTrades. It arrived with a jammed space bar, which revealed to me that the machine hadn't been inspected before it was shipped, as even my dead grandma could diagnose a jammed space bar. So I contacted MacOfAllTrades and they said I should take it somewhere and get it fixed. Not very helpful, but I figured, ok this is just one of those things that sometimes happen. I went on the net and learned how to redirect the space function to another key. Feeling quite the little apple fan boy genius, I was a good sport and forgot about the problem.

A few years later my low IQ kicked in, and I decided to buy another used Mac, again from MacOfAllTrades. But ah-ha! my moron brain said proudly to itself, this time I'll be smart! So I contacted MacOfAllTrades and politely requested that they check the machine out before shipping it to me. They said of course, no problem. Going one step better, they said if I'd attach a little note to my order, they'd check the machine twice. "Fantastic, this is great!" my moron brain gloated.

A few days later the new (used) iMac arrived. With the wrong operating system, a lower one than promised on the sales page. So I contact support, whine a little bit, and they send me the promised operating system. And so I do their job for them at my own expense and remove the old OS and install the better one. Ok, problem solved, order transaction complete, happy days are here again.

Oops, not quite. Then I discovered that my iMac was still under the control of the IT department of a community college in another state. They could erase my Mac, freeze the screen etc, and there's nothing I can do to stop them. So I own the hardware, but don't have control over the software or my data.

So I contact MacOfAllTrades again, whining quite a bit louder now. They say they will email their contact at the college who they purchased the mac from and get them to remove me from their list of managed Macs, should only take a few days. Ok, great, this should fix everything and we'll finally be done, that's good news.

Two weeks and a number of promises later, nothing has happened. So I contact MacOfAllTrades for the 93rd time and ask for their contact at the community college so I can try to resolve this myself. And then...

The first MacOfAllTrades support guy vanishes, and hands me off to another support guy. The new guy is honest enough to admit that they didn't buy the machines from the college, and thus don't have a contact at the college at all. Ah, now I understand why the first support dude is in hiding.

The second MacOfAllTrades support guy seems cool and wants to resolve the issue. He agrees my order has been unacceptable so far, and offers to send me a replacement machine which is better than my original machine. He swears they will test the machine to the 99th degree before they ship. I agree to mail the first machine back upon receipt of the replacement. "Wonderful!", my moron brain cheers, "I finally found someone who can deliver what I paid for two months ago!"

The machine comes overnight. Very impressive. It's packed perfectly. Nice job! I'm delighted, my moron brain is whistling a happy little tune of joy. Due to my amazingly low IQ, I still don't see what's coming next.

I put the replacement machine on my desk and boot it up.

I hear the boot up chime.

And I wait.

And wait.

And nothing happens.

Nada, zilch, zero.

Yup, it's unbelievable but true, the monitor is dead. Stone cold dead.

And in that moment I was transported far beyond outrage to zen like state of deep inner acceptance. I finally get it. I finally totally get it. I am a complete idiot moron, and MacOfAllTrades is too. We are brothers!

I very calmly contact my MacOfAllTrades moron brothers to inform them the monitor on the replacement Mac is dead. They reply, "Darn, that's too bad" and tell me to mail it back. And I reply...

"Sure, ok, no problem. For $200. You may purchase my time and labor to repack the Mac and take it to the UPS for $200. Just paypal me the labor fee, and I'll ship it out immediately, today."

They are shocked beyond speech. After over two months of me working for free to fix their many mistakes, it never occurred to them that someday I might charge for that service. After decades of pulling this kind of crap and getting away with it, they can't believe someone is pushing back.

That's where it stands today. They refuse to pay for my time, and thus I decline to ship their latest mistake back to them.

Now I told you this was going to be the most boring thread on the Net, and unlike MacOfAllTrades, I deliver on my promises!! If you are not thoroughly totally bored from reading someone's long winded tail of woe, I will make good on your order, and type it all again. I'll post as many times as it takes for you to slump over and fall dead asleep!

I have to go now though. I just saw they're running a great sale on MacOfAllTrades today, and I want to make sure to get my order in.

 

[honestone]

All of that makes for a good laugh! Also, why order from MacOfAllTrades again. Didn't you learn your lesson the first time?

And as for "Sure, ok, no problem. For $200. You may purchase my time and labor to repack the Mac and take it to the UPS for $200. Just paypal me the labor fee, and I'll ship it out immediately, today.", as has been stated to you before, that's like living in a dream world! The ONLY company I am aware that provides a monetary "payment" (actually a credit) is Comcast, with their appointment window guarantee. Try getting money from an automotive mechanic for all the diagnosis you do about an issue prior to bringing the vehicle to that individual.

Finally, this is an excellent example of why I have never, nor will I ever, purchase a used piece of equipment, including automobiles. One is definitely risking inheriting prior issues. No thank you!

 

[Ormond]

Also, why order from MacOfAllTrades again. Didn't you learn your lesson the first time?

I told you already, I have a very low single digit IQ. Or perhaps a brain tumor. It could be the onset of senility. My wife can confirm all this for you.

The ONLY company I am aware that provides a monetary "payment" (actually a credit) is Comcast, with their appointment window guarantee. Try getting money from an automotive mechanic for all the diagnosis you do about an issue prior to bringing the vehicle to that individual.

I'm not demanding anybody give me money. It's ok with me if MacOfAllTrades chooses to never pay me. It's their choice, they are under no obligation to purchase my labor. If they never pay me, at some point I'll install their dead mac in a dumpster and wash my hands of it.

Finally, this is an excellent example of why I have never, nor will I ever, purchase a used piece of equipment, including automobiles. One is definitely risking inheriting prior issues. No thank you!

You make a good point of course, but um, so far MacOfAllTrades has not yet screwed me to the same degree as Apple has. Imho, buying any computer from anybody new or used is a crapshoot. That said, I can surely understand why anyone would avoid used anything.

So anyway, on to the breathtaking exciting news!!

After laying low a few weeks, the MacOfAllTrades team has sprung back in to action. The first support guy and the second support guy have thrown in the towel and given up and we're now on to the 3rd support guy to work on this issue.

He's trying the tough guy approach, threatening me with court, arrest, felony conviction, jail etc. My reply is...

1) I've sent them the link to this thread so they can try to make their case here, which would help me make this a more public issue.

2) Here's the email address for the county Sheriff in my jurisdiction, whom I worked with for over a year as a public safety activist on a successful campaign to change a major law in our state. She's a public servant, so of course MacOfAllTrades would be fully within their rights to contact Sheriff Darnell to press any complaint against me. I'm sure she will respond in a professional manner as she always does.

(e-mail address removed)

3) I've decided to no longer communicate with anybody at MacOfAllTrades except the owner, who so far has been in perpetual hiding. Explaining the situation again and again to an ever changing support team has become unreasonable.

4) Should the case go legal, it will also go as public as I can make it, including as many people as possible. If MacOfAllTrades actually attacks me, that will make this a much more compelling story as each reader will be led to imagine coming under the same attack should they too be a moron who shops at MacOfAllTrades.

The philosophical question here is, should we bend over and take abuse from someone just because they are part of a company? If I'm a company, can I sell you as many broken widgets as I want, and require you to help me fix each of my mistakes at your own expense?

 

[honestone]

I told you already, I have a very low single digit IQ. Or perhaps a brain tumor. It could be the onset of senility. My wife can confirm all this for you.

No, your posts are proof enough!

I'm not demanding anybody give me money. It's ok with me if MacOfAllTrades chooses to never pay me. It's their choice, they are under no obligation to purchase my labor. If they never pay me, at some point I'll install their dead mac in a dumpster and wash my hands of it.

Here is what you said in your original post:

"Sure, ok, no problem. For $200. You may purchase my time and labor to repack the Mac and take it to the UPS for $200. Just paypal me the labor fee, and I'll ship it out immediately, today."

Definitely sounds like you expect them to pay for your time, effort, labor, etc.

So anyway, on to the breathtaking exciting news!!

After laying low a few weeks, the MacOfAllTrades team has sprung back in to action. The first support guy and the second support guy have thrown in the towel and given up and we're now on to the 3rd support guy to work on this issue.

He's trying the tough guy approach, threatening me with court, arrest, felony conviction, jail etc. My reply is...

1) I've sent them the link to this thread so they can try to make their case here, which would help me make this a more public issue.

2) Here's the email address for the county Sheriff in my jurisdiction, whom I worked with for over a year as a public safety activist on a successful campaign to change a major law in our state. She's a public servant, so of course MacOfAllTrades would be fully within their rights to contact Sheriff Darnell to press any complaint against me. I'm sure she will respond in a professional manner as she always does.

(e-mail address removed)

3) I've decided to no longer communicate with anybody at MacOfAllTrades except the owner, who so far has been in perpetual hiding. Explaining the situation again and again to an ever changing support team has become unreasonable.

4) Should the case go legal, it will also go as public as I can make it, including as many people as possible. If MacOfAllTrades actually attacks me, that will make this a much more compelling story as each reader will be led to imagine coming under the same attack should they too be a moron who shops at MacOfAllTrades.

The philosophical question here is, should we bend over and take abuse from someone just because they are part of a company? If I'm a company, can I sell you as many broken widgets as I want, and require you to help me fix each of my mistakes at your own expense?

Good luck with all that. Given that you know that Sheriff, you don't need any help.

 

[Ormond]

Here is what you said in your original post: Definitely sounds like you expect them to pay for your time, effort, labor, etc.

Note the word "may" in the comment of mine you quoted. "You may purchase my time and labor etc..." I'm alerting them to an option that is available.

I don't expect them to pay, because so far they show no interest in doing so. They're apparently still hoping they can bully me in to working for them for free.

Here's how such problems could be solved, at no cost to MacOfAllTrades.

But first, let's define the problem. Check out the customer reviews of MacOfAllTrades at resellerratings.com. They earned a 3.23 rating on a scale of ten, which means that most reviewers did not have a satisfying experience. So that's the problem, and here's the solution.

SOLUTION: Have a tech spend an hour examing each machine prior to shipment, and pass this cost on to buyers. This cost can be presented as an option, or built in to the price.

Every problem I've had with MacOfAllTrades could have been avoided with just a few minutes of inspection prior to shipping. I would have happily paid a $25 fee for a thorough inspection. Anybody who will pay $900 for a used Mac will pay $925.

What happens instead is that MacOfAllTrades claims to be testing what they sell, but really they are outsourcing quality control to their customers. This isn't just blatant lying, it's most definitely not in their own interest, because it needlessly creates just the kind of brand damaging issues you see documented here. There's no point to these self inflicted wounds, because they can be easily avoided at no cost to MacOfAllTrades. This whole controversy is entirely pointless.

I've attempted to explain this to them repeatedly, but they are simply too dense to get it. It's upon this basis I am labeling them morons, and me a moron as well, for not realizing this sooner.

 

[honestone]

Note the word "may" in the comment of mine you quoted. "You may purchase my time and labor etc..." I'm alerting them to an option that is available.

I don't expect them to pay, because so far they show no interest in doing so. They're apparently still hoping they can bully me in to working for them for free.

Then why even mention it? As it is, this is the second thread you've mentioned about being compensated for your time and effort. Again, that is dream world mentality. One would think you would have learned that by now!

But first, let's define the problem. Check out the customer reviews of MacOfAllTrades at resellerratings.com. They earned a 3.23 rating on a scale of ten, which means that most reviewers did not have a satisfying experience. So that's the problem, and here's the solution.

Then why would you order from them again, with such a poor rating?

SOLUTION: Have a tech spend an hour examing each machine prior to shipment, and pass this cost on to buyers. This cost can be presented as an option, or built in to the price.

Every problem I've had with MacOfAllTrades could have been avoided with just a few minutes of inspection prior to shipping. I would have happily paid a $25 fee for a thorough inspection. Anybody who will pay $900 for a used Mac will pay $925.

What happens instead is that MacOfAllTrades claims to be testing what they sell, but really they are outsourcing quality control to their customers. This isn't just blatant lying, it's most definitely not in their own interest, because it needlessly creates just the kind of brand damaging issues you see documented here. There's no point to these self inflicted wounds, because they can be easily avoided at no cost to MacOfAllTrades. This whole controversy is entirely pointless.

I've attempted to explain this to them repeatedly, but they are simply too dense to get it. It's upon this basis I am labeling them morons, and me a moron as well, for not realizing this sooner.

Most likely, even with their poor rating, they get folks like yourself to continue dealing with them. As expected, they are out to make money. So, why would they do what you suggest? Again, dream world mentality!

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

MacOfAllTrades, MasterOfNone.

 

[Ormond]

Good one Dooley! To be fair, here's another....

CustomerOrmond, ProvedToBeDumb

Feel free to continue with this game if it pleases you. If the MastersOfNone launch a legal war, I'm going to reply with a public relations war, and I'll need lots of clever catchy phrases to populate slogans, videos and the like.

If you'd like to participate, I'll reward all contributions with a $25 gift certificate to MacOfAllKnaves!!!

(FINE PRINT: Offer good only for contributors with really low IQs)

 

[honestone]

MacOfAllTrades, MasterOfNone.

Another one: ReelInSuckers

 

[Ormond]

It appears this encounter between the dumb and even dumber has concluded.

As reported above the third support guy, who declares himself to be part of "senior management", tried the bad cop approach by threatening to call the cops etc. I told him to shove all that up his you know what. He replied with a kiss and make up email offering to split the difference and pay me $100 for my labor to ship the latest of his 3 broken Macs back to him. I accepted the compromise, he paid me, and I shipped the Mac. Remarkably, they so far have not mistakenly shipped it back to me.

I have no evidence any of them learned anything from this experience, and I thus assume they will continue in the same pattern of outsourcing quality control to their customers, while responding to the inevitable pointless problems with a pattern of lies and slippery sales talk jabber blabber.

It's sad, both for them, and for all the innocent net shoppers who will wander in to their store, but then it's also very very sad that this, the most interesting thread of all time, is now over.

 

[honestone]

1. Where did he kiss you?

2. Did you FINALLY learn your lesson?

3. No, not the most interesting thread. But, it was good for laughs, and another example of "a sucker being born every day".

 

[iMav]

Why not simply do a clean install of the OS on the working iMac?

 

[Ormond]

Why not simply do a clean install of the OS on the working iMac?

That's a good point, and what I tried to do at first. Regrettably, as I came to discover, one can not remove MDM (mobile device management) profiles in this manner.

What happens is that during the setup process your Mac calls home to Apple and your Mac's serial number is checked against a database kept by Apple. If your number is on that list the MDM profiles are automatically installed, like it or not. And then whoever owns the MDM profiles has control of your Mac.

This checking happens every time anybody sets up any Mac, but you don't notice it happening unless you are on the MDM list.

 

[iMav]

Ahhh. Didn't realize it was an MDM-managed profile. (thought maybe it was just some sort of remote desktop support software)

Did you ever track down a good contact at the college to try and rectify the issue?

 

[Ormond]

Did you ever track down a good contact at the college to try and rectify the issue?

I did the research and found a list of the relevant people but didn't have to use it, as they finally removed me from the list without me having to contact them. I'm guessing they sold a number of Macs without removing them from Apple's MDM database, and I'm wasn't the only person affected. That is, somebody even whinier than me got to them first.

All of this could have been solved by PackOfAllKnaves (MacOfAllTrades) if they tested machines before reselling them as promised all over their website, but as we now know that's all just a big lie.

 

[iMav]

I thought maybe someone stole it from the university and then sold it to MacOfAllTrades.

 

[Ormond]

I thought maybe someone stole it from the university and then sold it to MacOfAllTrades.

That could have happened, yes. Actually in this particular case there was a middle man vendor between the MDM owner and the PackOfAllKnaves, which seems to have delayed a resolution.

None of this MDM business is an issue if one buys their Mac directly from Apple as most people do.

People generally assume this is the safest option, but the shopping equation seems more complicated than such a simplistic formula.

When we buy a used Mac we can benefit from researching the experience of many others, so if the model in question suffered from some issue, we can learn about that problem in advance, typically in great detail from multiple sources.

When we buy a new Mac we are essentially beta testing new technologies. Apple is constantly changing things around in an effort to innovate, and sometimes the changes are for the better, and sometimes not. You never know what the case is, and just like with buying used, buying new is a roll of the dice.

In both cases, new and used, you can purchase an extended warranty.

Finally, used machines are of course far cheaper than Apple's aggressive pricing. Given that most Mac owners probably only use their machines for simple tasks like email and web surfing, it seems questionable to pay $1500 just for that. For that price, one could buy 5 used machine that would do email and web surfing just fine, virtually ensuring a trouble free experience.

The problem in the particular case described in this thread was that expert pre-shipment testing was aggressively promised, but then blatantly and repeatedly not delivered. That's not really a problem with used machines per se, but rather with an inability of the PackOfAllKnaves to understand their own self interest.

 

[iMav]

I would also add that great deals can be had on used Macs theses days.

Look at my intro thread and you'll see I am quite comfortable with buying used.

 

[honestone]

Buying new versus used, or used versus new, is, for the most part, a toss up. Yes, one of biggest differences is initial coat. Another, of course, is buying used includes rolling the dice as to whether issues will arise. All of this also exists when purchasing an automobile. For automobiles, and for most makes of cars, the introduction of a new model, with no history, is typically risky, But after a few years of refinements, that model gets better and better (in terms of less and less issues).

I equate Apple and Toyota as excellent examples of reliable, trouble-free machines. As having owned numerous new Apple machines, and having owned two Toyota Camrys purchased new (I have one of them now), I can attest to that reputation. However, I take the time and effort to take care of both with TLC. (I have also taken care of any automobile we have own). I firmly believe that if one makes the effort and takes care of such stuff (also applies to other items one owns), the amount of trouble one has will be significantly decreased. Again, I can firmly attest to that.

The issue for me regarding used items is that I could be inheriting the issues a prior owner was having. Yes, there are both certified Macs and cars, but I still don't necessarily buy that. And again, it has been my experience that buying new, and making the effort to take care of such stuff, leads to a long, trouble-free life of such machines, and thus the actual cost of ownership is quite inexpensive.

Yeah, if one mostly uses their Macs for EMail and web surfing, and similarly only drives their car to the mall and to visit grandma, used might seem to be OK. But, if one wants to use such machines for a long time, and without trouble, then buying new, along with TLC, is the way to go.

 

[Ormond]

Look at my intro thread and you'll see I am quite comfortable with buying used.

What is your source? It, um, appears a certain Mac moron needs a new one.