Trillion dollar company uses exploitative company's (Uber) labor, leaves customer with the bill when poorly vetted and paid labor steals the goods. Customer is afraid to issue chargeback because they might get kicked out of the digital feudal state...
> Customer is afraid to issue chargeback because they might get kicked out of the digital feudal state.
It's wild to me that the credit card companies (and the law in general) actually allow this.
The chargeback procedure was created exactly for situations like this, and designed to be maximally friendly to customers at the expense of vendors. One would think that "you cannot exact revenge on customers when a transaction goes wrong" would be credit card rules 101.
I issued over the years a few chargebacks and never had any issues about it, they asked a couple decent questions and solved it was. But I'm also not living in the USA fwiw.
canada has great consumer protection laws. in this case the sale of goods act would say that the contract of sale was invalid as the product was not supplied. ianal
The first time I had to agree to a card processing merchant agreement, it contained a very clearly stated and strict provision requiring the signer to agree that they wouldn’t take any adverse action against customers on the basis of chargeback requests or the outcomes of those chargebacks.
> Once I do the chargeback Apple blocks the card from being used with them and can lock my iCloud account.
That is a very significant part of the problem. The hold cloud service providers have on customers.
I am pretty sure this would be illegal. In the UK I would be going to the small claims court, or trading standards (a government agency) or the card company (which has joint liability for anything bought with a credit card here - not true for debit cards).
It's long past time for people to wake up and realize how dependent they are on these cloud services, and make the choice to de-cloudify themselves. Losing your MegaCorpAccount should not ruin your life. Yet here we are with people hanging all their precious online assets (including their primary E-mail address!!) onto these tenuous free accounts, where they have no recourse if the company just stops doing business with them. People really need to understand how much of a Faustian bargain it is to enjoy and become so dependent on cloud services.
Make it a 2025 goal to get your life off these accounts. By 31-Dec-2025, you should be in the situation where you are not even inconvenienced if Google or Apple or Meta were to suddenly ban your account.
As someone who has been on and off the Degoogle train (I ran full LineageOS without Google Play at one point) and is now pretty deep in iOS territory, I'd say the main thing for me has been email.
I've used https://www.fastmail.com for a great deal of years now, which is also home to my calendar as well so there's nothing much of value tied to my Google account.
YouTube subscriptions would be annoying to lose but I subscribe to channels via RSS. At the moment, I'm using http://newsblur.com for that but sometimes I jump around RSS clients. Newsblur recently added backfilling of channel content from YouTube's API beyond what RSS feeds normally surface though which is great.
For plain text notes, everything is in https://obsidian.md compared to say; Apple Notes
One thing I would miss is photos which I currently have in Apple Photos stored in the cloud so I recently set up https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do... which runs nightly on a mac mini at my house and archives everything in a Backblaze B2 bucket. https://ente.io/ seems like a promising alternative in this space.
I don't actually have a good alternative to Apple Health now that I think of it. You can export backups but not automatically. I'm not entirely sure what format a lot of that data is even in.
Realistically, I don't look at it a lot, I just use some of the correlations when they rarely pop up. Something like https://exist.io/ is probably the closest that I actually used to (aspire to) get value out of but don't currently use.
The reality is that convenience is king and it's hard work staying independent from any centralised service, not to mention social pressures.
The middle ground I've accepted is still using it all but making sure you have a good escape hatch you periodically test + backups where you're solely reliant on large businesses who heavily lean on automated account banning.
I'd say I have little enough stored in the cloud now to be OK with losing my accounts. The only thing that would still sting is losing access to the Apple app store, since it's the only way to effectively use their phones. Next phone will likely be non-Apple, but our household still has iDevices.
Most important was taking back my own E-mail and not relying on someone else for it. This took three steps: 1. Get my own domain (this I did over a decade ago), 2. point the MX record to my own VPS and start by simply forwarding to/from Gmail, 3. Actually hosting delivery and serving myself (I use exim4 for delivery and dovecot for IMAP, but there are many other ways to self-host). This can be easily moved to a different host if my VPS provider decides to get rid of me. In theory I can host it on bare metal at home, although I admit I have not actually tried it to verify I can. I'm only dependent on my DNS registrar, which is a bummer but AFAIK unavoidable.
For social media, that was incredibly easy: I last used Facebook over 10 years ago, LinkedIn over 5 years ago, and don't have any other accounts, so I've been off S.M. pretty much forever.
For photos and media, I moved everything to a NAS on my LAN, backed up twice (one stored at home, another stored elsewhere).
Docs, obviously just store locally in a format readable by your own PC. Anything you simply have to have in Google Docs, have a backup locally.
For IoT / Home Automation stuff, I carefully make sure that the ecosystem I buy into is self-hosted and does not require the Internet. Security cameras, thermostats, switches and lights and so on must all be usable and controllable locally. I'm not quite there yet on all of these either, but they are easily swapped out if some manufacturer's lame cloud goes down.
If they didn't have trouble getting a card at all in the first place. Credit scores aren't always accurate (I didn't even know Europe had such a thing before moving to Germany and starting with a blank slate that defaulted to "and so we can't guarantee anything so: no") and you need one of these numbers to do normal things in life like getting a hotel room on occasion. "Just get another one" isn't a choice one can necessarily make. Generating another number isn't an option my bank has either (eventually got a card after finding some else to be co-guarantor which this bank accepted — I don't even want to buy on credit, I just want to be able to fairly pay for things up front, and that's how this card seems to function in the first place)
In the UK we have credit reports, but each lender will calculate their own score so the "scores" you get credit reference agencies are rarely important.
Apples only delivery choice in Sweden is UPS which is notorious for messing up deliveries here. I ordered a MacBook and the delivery is supposed to be hand over with signature required. The UPS guy left it outside my apartment door in the stairwell in the morning. I was lucky it was still there when I got home from work. Apparently I signed that delivery (the UPS guy probably signed it himself...)
Delivery drivers in the UK regularly do this. They get to 11am, realise they won’t meet the delivery slots for the afternoon deliveries, so bulk mark everything as delivered and sign themselves, then take their time and deliver after the slot later that day.
This is illegal. Signatures are legally protected in the UK (and elsewhere I’m sure) and forging a signature is a crime. I got like 3 Hello Fresh deliveries in a row when I complained of their repeated forgeries before I cancelled.
They generally just scribble the name. Generally when I speak to support representatives and say that I got a delivery confirmation with a signature on it pretending to be mine they get extremely apologetic.
I don't know if it needs to state the name next to it, that's a good question, and may also depend on jurisdiction, but I would suggest that if a delivery signature was just writing a name then it wouldn't carry the necessary weight for proving receipt.
The nice thing about drivers providing proof of your package being delivered somewhere that is not your home, is that you have proof that your package was not delivered to your home.
Them not taking the photo taking seriously works in your favour.
And UPS is probalby to blame for that. AFAIK most delivery companies nowadays work their shifts with delivery quotas. I.e. the courier needs to deliver everything on the truck (which is typically more than you could deliver in a time-based shift) before calling it a day.
Essentially, courier companies have found out that rather than scaling their workforce to the deliveries workload, it is more profitable to squeeze out a fixed number of employees to save wages, and occasionally apologize for the mixups caused by this situation.
> which is typically more than you could deliver in a time-based shift
I think this compounds the issue: if people are committing fraud/lying (taking a picture of a random house as proof of 'sorry you were not in' or forging signatures themselves) because their slots are too full to deliver all packages they're supposed to then whomever is working in logistics won't see it. They will think all packages were at least attempted within that slot and as such not too onerous.
I believe the results of this policy should have a measurable effect on the number of complaints/customer support cases and they are definitely taking notice of that.
But it's not that anyone will take action. This is exactly the expected outcome: Pay less for courier wages in USA/Europe, and keep the much cheaper (and probably outsourced) customer support hotline busy.
On the contrary, it would be more likely to take action if the complaints are not high enough. This means that they could squeeze the schedule of their couriers a bit more.
I recently got my entire shipping costs refunded because I paid for next day delivery and the driver said they "missed me" and the proof was a photograph of a different address. I was surprised it was that easy to get the money back from the seller. I was incensed as I had spent the entire day waiting.
I paid for next day before a long holiday weekend and got my (time sensitive) item five days later. I was unable to get a refund. Maybe I should have called again to speak to a different rep. This was UPS.
Wonder if they are fooling themselves in the end though. It might look good on the KPI, but if it's based on fake data, the leaders are navigating blind.
They always require signature, and disallow “pre-signature.” I get a $30 cable; signature required. I get a $50 iPhone case; signature required. I get a $120 peripheral; signature required.
They left the $2,600 computer sitting on the doorstep (no signature required). Luckily, my daughter was paying attention, and immediately grabbed it, but we have had a problem, hereabouts, with highly aggressive porch pirates, that will actually go right into the house, to grab new deliveries.
I'm sure similar stories can be told for any country, but I've got to say that when I lived in Germany, I never had any trouble with deliveries. Maybe I just got lucky.
I did feel bad though for the people doing the deliveries, independent of what company they worked for. You can tell it's an awful job and they're working their butts off, sometimes delivering a package way after hours, like say after 9pm or so. I'm afraid it's like that pretty much in any country, though.
I think it’s highly dependent on both what kind of place you live and who the delivery driver is. At my place, I live in the Hinterhaus (which, annoyingly is where my buzzer is) up several flights of stairs with no elevator. Additionally, until recently the delivery driver for my street seemed to have some kind of agreement with someone about 10 houses away on the ground floor that would accept all the parcels for the entire street. They even had the gall to ask for donations for their “service” (all of the parcels I picked up from them reeked of smoke).
At my partner’s place, the delivery people are excellent, and we never miss a parcel. She has an elevator, in a different part of town, and there’s no Hinterhof. It’s very hit or miss.
Same in South Africa. Delivery services (like Courier Guy, Fedex, DHL, Fastway, RAM) are very good. They are fast, phone you if nobody opens up, and I have had zero issues in over a decade.
The country went a bit delivery crazy after COVID, so the competition is healthy.
Might it also be that deliverers in SA expect it to get nicked if they just leave it at someone's front door? As compared to the deliverer in Sweden mentioned above
Also it's so complicated to have UPS leave your parcel at a place of your choice (carport, deck, porch, etc.) in case you aren't home.
They have their MyChoice service which you have to sign up for and wait for a confirmation that is sent to you by mail which might take several days. However even if you take these steps it turns out that they will only match your parcels if the sender uses exactly the same address as the one you provided them. One character off and you lose any ability to set how your parcel should be delivered.
Any other delivery service does that easily, without postal confirmation for a specific parcel or any upcoming shipments.
Since I'm at the office during the day I had situations were I simply couldn't receive a UPS parcel for several days because their MyChoice service is useless once the address matching fails.
Interesting, my user experience with them is top notch (Prague). MacBooks, iPads, musical instruments, mountain bikes, really expensive stuff generally. The delivery slot is kinda long ("in the afternoon"), but the tracking info is spot on, they always call and so far I have never lost anything with them.
> The delivery slot is kinda long ("in the afternoon")
At least they tell you the day, not like in Germany. Gets put on the post today, then usually it either gets sorted overnight and delivered the next day, or there's another working day in between. The tracker used to say which it's gonna be after that overnight sorting (so if you check at 2am), but in the last year or so they've switched to telling you it's e.g. after the weekend some day and then surprise show up on Friday for example when you hadn't planned for anyone to be home, wasting the deliverer's time if you didn't decide to work from home that day spontaneously
In the UK the law is clear (IANAL). The seller is responsible for delivering the goods to you (or otherwise as per your instructions). I stress, to /you/. If they don't, they have failed in their contract. You can take them to the small claims court. I believe it's the same in most of the EU. Make them call you a liar in court.
Remedy is not dependent on the good graces of the credit card companies but of course if that's open to you can start there.
A lot have people have been brainwashed in to believing the customer is required to deal with the delivery company or that the seller has no responsibility once the item has been collected by the courier.
Also, I find it wild that Apple use Uber. Apple exclusively use UPS in the UK I believe (including service collections and deliveries), who I've never had a problem with, and if they stopped that I would only ever purchase from a store
I can't understand how Apple can possibly get away with this. Is there any chance for them to win if the case were brought to court?
One year ago, I had to contact Apple support because the FindMy feature wouldn't work on my Airpods Pro, which still were under warranty. It looked like they were already associated with another account, which wasn't mine. That made no sense as I bought them myself at the Apple store and only have a single iCloud account.
I went to the store and they acknowledged the issue, and immediately got a replacement which turned out to have the exact same issue. I then had to spend hours on the phone with their customer support. After trying everything without success, the person on the phone told me I'd get a call back in one week to either issue a refund or find a different solution.
That phone call never came. All my following messages to that person were ignored. I finally gave up, but found out I was far from being the only one they had ghosted like that. Reading these stories reinforces my belief that Apple is terrible in terms of accountability when something goes wrong.
Took me a couple reads to put this one together. Based on that you mention being able to see they're associated with someone else's account, you mean that you got a unit that was not factory reset before being given to you right? (And you can't do it yourself because they're Apple-locked for theft reasons.) Not that it got stolen and now you can't find it?
Then you say you went to the store, were given a replacement, and it turned out the same. You didn't try out in the store whether these ones are functional? Which makes sense because why wouldn't they be, but could have saved the trouble. You haven't tried going back to that store, perhaps even at the same time and day of week so that you are likely to get the employee who remembers that they provided support in this situation (by handing out a replacement unit, in this case)? Then you could immediately try out, before taking it out of the store, whether this unit is functional
Either way, they have an obligation to meet the claims put out in marketing statements, including features like FindMy since they say on the website it can do that. If you've exhausted the easy options, you can always take it to something like small claims and get at least a refund that way. Often, a letter saying you intend to suffices
> Based on that you mention being able to see they're associated with someone else's account, you mean that you got a unit that was not factory reset before being given to you right? (And you can't do it yourself because they're Apple-locked for theft reasons.) Not that it got stolen and now you can't find it?
The unit was brand new, however it got somehow linked to some other iCloud account the second I connected it to my phone (which is not an iPhone). Well, the message I got indicated "You cannot use FindMy because the Airpods are linked to another iCloud account" or something like that.
I discussed with the same employee who helped me initially. They called a couple of their colleagues, and because nobody there could do anything to solve the issue, they gave me a phone number telling me this was the only option left.
It was clear to Apple there was an issue on their side, and that they needed to provide a solution. This has never been disputed.
> Either way, they have an obligation to meet the claims put out in marketing statements, including features like FindMy since they say on the website it can do that.
Absolutely, and I made sure to remind them this.
> If you've exhausted the easy options, you can always take it to something like small claims and get at least a refund that way.
Indeed, that could be an option. I just gave up as I was exhausted from spending over 10 hours just for this. At some point, it wasn't worth the effort anymore. But maybe this is what they are expecting us to do.
> I can't understand how Apple can possibly get away with this. Is there any chance for them to win if the case were brought to court?
My naive understanding would be that you entered into a contract with them to supply a MacBook in exchange for a sum of money. The money was paid, but the MacBook was not delivered to the customer, so Apple are in breach of contract. I would imagine that a credit card company charge back would be the easiest solution if it was paid for by one.
We recently had a similar problem with BestBuy. We had a launch day order of a Google Pixel 9 XL but we got the base non-Pro model inside the box. Tracking showed it as delivered, obviously. Chat told me to go to store. I went to store and they told me they would be able to take it back but not exchange it, which would make me lose the trade-in promotional value and suggested us to call and have BestBuy online store folks ship a replacement. Some agent was good and did it, but it tripped some fraud detection thing (apparently because the original IMEI showed as activated, which probably did because they switched ours with someone else who is happily and quietly enjoying a better phone than they ordered).
That saga took a couple months to get resolved and only after the threat of legal action and sending them scary letters (thanks ChatGPT).
I’m about to buy a Mac and it will be in the physical store, but for a different reason. In Switzerland if you buy online, you cannot make a return in store. Got a DoA Mac last November. Four people spent a total double digit number of hours on the phone with Apple, who were incompetent to the point it looked like malice. E.g. after taking about half an hour of my time, the lady decided my claim is legit, but she cannot process it because she’s in the wrong country(I called the Swiss number, they never told me they’re transferring the call abroad). But she’ll transfer me to someone who can just press a button now… After a couple minutes of music the same lady picks up, tells me she cannot find Switzerland in the list of countries, so I need to hang up and start from the scratch. In the end got my money back, but it was processed only in the February cycle.
I had a similar situation earlier this year with an iPad delivery. The delivery company missed the target date, then the following day I got a notification that it had been delivered - it hand't been - despite actively following the tracking of the driver in their app and seeing him not come to my house and drive away after delivering to various properties near me, as well as actively watching out for the driver when he was close enough.
The delivery company themselves were extremely unhelpful. Apple on the other hand was very understanding and helpful. It took a few days for them to go through the necessary process with the delivery company, but once done they sent out a replacement, critically with a different delivery company. Apple was proactive in keeping me updated throughout, and always seemed to side with me over the delivery company.
The only snag after that was the pre-purchased Apple care was tied to the undelivered iPad, so it took about a week for one of their specialist teams to transfer it over to the replacement.
That may result in is icloud account being locked out, apparently.
I'm sure he can take them to court over that, but losing access to your files and services for an indeterminite amount of time is a big deal for most people.
In my case you can find a room full of 20+ Apple machines in my home. The newest is from 2013, and I haven't bought another machine from them since (and never will again). People do in fact put their money where their mouth is. Sometimes it's hard to switch your primary computing platform and isn't just a momentary decision. For me it has taken years but I'm completely migrated to open source OSes and will never install another proprietary OS if I can help it.
Some are quite absurd. I worked with a guy who visited Apple store every month or so to fix some issue and he was still queueing for the new iPhone releases (I think it was around v.3). He was actually really happy to book the repairs at the store and excited to go there. I never understood him.
That's so subjective. I've wasted hours in Apple forums, writing bug reports just to get ignored, and had so much pain using Mac for over a year as developing machine ... Things I would have solved with Linux with a single IRC visit or by examining the relevant code.
Ex. I've lost a complete day because I didn't know you need to open xcode to confirm the policy of an update I did in the console. I never used xcode before that day.
Compared to Mac? It's a better development platform, better digital audio system, better game platform, and probably a few others I haven't experienced. Let the old memes die, there's lots of people happily using Linux without wasting time.
Possibly true, dependant on what you're trying to develop.
> better digital audio system
ProTools Linux?
Cubase Linux?
Ableton Live Linux?
The vast majority of plugins for above DAWs?
If you're talking about purely the system, then it's all moot without having some software for audio professionals to run on it.
> better game platform
Now I know you're trolling. edit: sorry I forgot the "Compared to Mac?" part at the beginning, this is probably true, but I have zero experience gaming on Mac or Linux.
Basic system tools have been broken on macs for a few major releases now. And I'm familiar with fixing up lots of Darwin-specific issues in software packaging by now. There's seriously a number of downsides here unless you have to use Xcode.
I wrote digital audio system for a reason. Pipewire is currently the best implementation out of the 3 major systems. Whether you want to use it with a DAW or in a different way that requires a Mac-only application is orthogonal here. For a lot of DAW work, you don't even need a fancy sound system to begin with. But also there are DAWs which do work on Linux and there are people preferring them.
> The vast majority of plugins
Yabridge is there for embedding windows VSTs. It's not that bad.
I actually was surprised that most DAWs I see recommended for newbies actually work natively on Linux like Reaper or Bitwig. (I am newbie in this topic, I just found that argument funny, times change)
Apple developer tools are miles away from Microsoft's tools. Microsoft sold to developers for ages.
Apple sold hardware mostly and software was a bit of an afterthought. Compare XCode to Microsoft Visual Studio for OS level development.
I install Linux on families computers for years now. And maintaining is zero at this point. The majority of computer usage of a normal user is within their browser and maybe office programs and some gaming. All perfectly fine with Linux.
I suppose your smiley at the end means you're not seriously suggesting Linux is a better OS choice for the average potential Apple customer with a straight face?
I think it's quite normal for people to smile when happy about something, such as free software being an actually decent alternative currently, as I can also attest to
(Of course, whether a given person is capable of installing an OS manually (be it macOS or Linux Mint), is going to vary. You may have to ask a friend if what you want isn't pre-installed)
Like confirming the update process every few months? But seriously, I don't get that point. I install Linux on all my families machines and setup auto updates.
Either they all turned to tech pros because of their Linux usage or they don't have the maintaining issues that were common 10 years ago anymore.
I am a programmer that in 1996 installed my first Linux - a Debian 2.0. It's true that the current state is way better than before. However I don't want to remember the 3 days I lost trying to fix an issue with printer drivers and by going to the source the "driver" worked by parsing the web interface of the network printer. (don't let me start on laptops & battery usage)
It's a good idea, but not for consumer grade computing and even me sitting for 14 hours/day in front of one - still don't want to spend the time to fight my laptop to work properly. I won't allow anything other than linux on my servers, but desktop computer or phones are better left without it.
Specifically for printers, since you mention it, my experience since about 2017 or so has been that my Debian just finds them and can immediately print out of the box (both network and USB), whereas on Windows e.g. my dad has to re-add it in the configuration panel every couple days and drives him mad, but also in a normal case you're expected to configure it on first use
I have come across one unsupported printer where you were advised to pick a driver for a similar model number, and even that didn't work for me, but I'll trade that outlier for all the other times where it was so much easier than Windows ever was. One can check the model before purchasing if it's about your own printer (I don't own one anymore, cartridges aren't worth it at the 5 pages per year that I need for outdated transport companies nowadays; copyshops exist)
I'm not into printers and their drivers so I've got no idea what changed or who made this happen, but whoever did this for printers on Linux is a real hero
"Sadly", I recently helped my dad get set up on a new Windows 11 and that seems to have this behaviour now, too, so Windows does seem to be catching up in usability
> (don't let me start on laptops & battery usage)
That one is a real trade-off indeed. It's not all sunshine and roses
Another one is GPU drivers and WiFi chips, but it's a one-time hardware check and setup thing, so for those issues you could ask someone else to install your system to a functional state and anyone can use it from there with the same learning curve as when they'd use macOS for the first time (Cinnamon looks a whole lot like XP, if that's what they're coming from like I was)
I recently set up a new Debian install. Just went into the Printer Settings, and my printer is there. I did nothing, it just worked on its own. Printer issues are almost always the fault of the manufacturer -- if you're using Linux/BSD, check support before making hardware purchases and you'll be golden :)
You’re burying the lede here: you installed Linux. That’s what people always work real hard to pretend isn’t a problem on here about Linux: that you have to install it.
But the reality is that most everyone, including very experienced users, have never and never will install an OS. It’s not a question of difficulty, they just cannot wrap their heads around it.
But now you've also changed the requirements - it's no longer "All the maintenance a Linux box needs" (which you claimed was the biggest impediment up-thread), now it's the initial hump of getting it installed
Subtitling for those of us not speaking Latin over here: it seems to mean prerequisite
As for the "but the installation is so difficult" point, perhaps, but would you trust them to install Windows or macOS onto an otherwise empty SSD? I've had more trouble getting Windows onto systems without needing a CD-RW and corresponding CD drive than I ever did installing Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Crunchbang, and perhaps more I forgot. Only Arch was more difficult, but then it's meant/advertised to be that way so no surprise there. I've also tried installing macOS and succeeded eventually, but the system was quite dysfunctional. I'd not be surprised if you do a study with 60 random people and it turns out most of them actually get it done for Linux distributions with lower success rates for the OSes that expect to be pre-installed by commercial deals with the hardware vendor
And all this only applies if you didn't buy a laptop that comes with a FOSS distribution out of the box. I see it as an advantage that you can pick nearly any hardware and run on it what you want, but if you want to limit it to pre-installed systems then there's that option, too
> but would you trust them to install Windows or macOS onto an otherwise empty SSD?
It's not a question of trust. It's a question of commerce. People buy computers, and they use the OS on it. If the Linux community really wants to drive adoption by normies, the focus shouldn't be on ease of use, or ease of installation. They should fight to break Microsoft's monopoly and demand to be an optional selection during every purchase.
I ran into a similar situation, but it was with UPS. UPS "lost" my package and it went back and forth between several locations. It was never marked as delivered, just forever in transit. I even got a call from someone claiming to be UPS to see if my package was delivered. I contacted Apple and the same thing happened, they couldn't do anything. Talk to UPS. UPS said talk to Apple. Both parties kept blaming the other party. UPS said internal investigation yielded nothing. I was telling them it clearly still said in transit and it's bounced around for several weeks. They said maybe it'll get there eventually.
I contacted Tim Cook's email and someone from the team responded and worked with me through the situation. Fortunately, we had a lucky outcome, and we got our payment refunded, but the entire ordeal took around a month and lots of calls to the CS/live chat support.
Chargebacks in Canada are more often decided in favour of the merchant instead of the consumer, as I've found out the hard way.
By the way, good luck with arbitration, courts, or the police in Canada. They can't even stop brazen car thefts, even if you track down your vehicle and are able to locate it at a rail yard [1]. 28,550 vehicles were stolen in Canada in the first half of 2024. Even rape cases and murder are being dismissed because courts don't have the resources [2]. The legal system is collapsing in that country. I say that as a Canadian who recently left the country for good.
Curious where you went? Indeed, there are some pretty noteworthy issues here. Though, the one chargeback I've ever done was accepted, but you can always sense just how fragile every interaction is with nearly all systems we deal with every day. It can go badly for you and you typically have zero recourse. I mean, ToS of basically all services says you can be banned for any reason and without explanation, so that's cool (though not specific to Canada of course).
Go to the store people! You cannot buy things safely online in this day and age. An UBER driver is not going to be a person you can trust, they're often financially desperate people, and the customers are all too well off for them to care much about. Brick and morter retail solves a lot of security problems.
Currently have such a case open with Amazon. Support has said I will be reimbursed, but it has been a few weeks already. I will give them a few days until I will cancel the transaction, which might get my account locked.
In my case I got a wooden toy instead of a GPU. Reordered the same thing from the same shop and got the right product. But the other case was probably a logistic member stealing the contents. Perhaps an honest mistake, but big tech has the tendency to hire low quality third party services to save a few dollars.
I would immediately fire the managers responsible, because this way you do significant damage to the brand that is way beyond paying delivery services a fair amount.
It already is established that Amazon deliveries have a statistically significant amount of fraud.
I've started recording videos when I open packages (when the package contains something of greater-than-trivial value), because I've heard stories like yours. Maybe not bulletproof, but at least it's something…
I had the same thing happen with an iPhone ordered from AT&T. I have Ring video of the delivery guy placing the empty box near my gate. You can see from the way he waves the box around that it has very low inertia, and could not possibly have had a phone in it. Fortunately, I had no trouble with my claim.
I had a similar case only with the local courier. Courier company couldn’t provide proof of my signature (cause I never gave it).
I don’t know what happened at the courier end but Apple shipped me another MacBook and told me to forget about the other one and to leave it with them.
- Couriers make more errors (or are more inclined to outright steal) because working conditions are crap.
- Courier companies save big $ on courier wages because of how much they squeeze out their delivery personel.
- Apple saves big $ on their courier deal because of how much the courier companies squeeze their employees.
In the end, a laptop may be lost from time to time and a customer will be left in distress for a fair amount of time until the issue is sorted out. Someone will need to pay for the laptop, but that has now become part of the cost of doing business.
You wouldn’t be. That is hyperbolic. This happened like a week ago. The police is investigating a crime. These things take time to be resolved.
It is sad that it happened and it could have been handled better by Apple but the poster whose laptops were not delivered should take several deep breaths, accept that this will take time and politely but insistently apply the tools at their disposal for a resolution.
Since I had some trouble getting my credit card accepted at the apple store I always order my apple products by phone and pay with cash on delivery. When the delivery person comes with the box and leaves with the cash it feels good.
When I have had items delivered from Apple using a private courier (probably reusing Deliveroo/Uber/whomever) I have separately got a text/message from Apple directly to ask/confirm if it was delivered.
This is crazy, what a mess. Definitely convincing me to not buy expensive items via delivery, if I can avoid it. I hope the person who had their shipment stolen (OP) gets "made right" in the end!
