The worst Mac store in all of creation
UPDATE: Mac Enthusiasts had their lawyer threaten me to edit my review. So I’m revising it, removing the parts they deemed libelous. I think it goes to prove that the store is so bad they’re willing to THREATEN TO SUE anyone who says something bad about them. Items removed are marked “redacted”. Mac Enthusiasts REDACTED should be avoided at all costs. A few years ago I purchased two DIMMs from Mac Enthusiasts. Shortly after I bought the DIMMs, they failed (redraw errors, application crashes and system freezes, culminating in a frozen startup process). Removal of the RAM instantly cured the problems and my system passed all hardware tests. I brought them back and they gave me two new DIMMs. They gave me two new *wrong* DIMMs. I brought my Mac to them and asked them to install the RAM since I did not have time to constantly fix their mistakes. They did, and a week later my computer showed major RAM failure again. I brought the machine back to Mac Enthusiasts and explained the history to a man named Mark REDACTED. Mark’s first comment was “more RAM magnifies existing problems”. I told him I had never, in over a decade of working on Macs, heard this and that was not an acceptable answer. He agreed to take my machine and remove the memory to see if the problem persisted. 45 minutes later a technician told me that they removed the RAM and my computer was still broken. I asked if they had booted from a CD-ROM, since having to reboot my computer 20 times due to bad RAM may have corrupted the boot software on the drive. The technician said he was not authorized to do this and handed the phone to Mark. Mark then proceeded to inform me that their RAM was fine and the problem must have been with my installation or otherwise my fault (based on my computer not booting after the removal of their RAM). I said that was impossible, and none of the evidence supported this. My machine worked fine for years until their RAM went in, at which point it started having catastrophic failure. In fact, the slots were not in question as I had replaced two 16mb DIMMs with their 64mb DIMMS. So far, consistently, when I removed their RAM, the machine hummed along. Mark again told me that I was blaming their RAM when there were lots of factors involved. I said that he was being evasive and difficult and the problem could be determined if he booted from the CD to determine if the issue was in the hardware. He refused to do this. He again attributed the problem to my lack of knowledge or other “unknown” factors. I explained that I worked Macintosh technical support in a retail computer store for five years, worked as a Macintosh systems administrator at a biotechnology company that was the sixteenth largest Macintosh company in the world, and then supervised system administrators in a predominantly Mac environment at a visual effects company. I’ve worked on thousands of computers, installed thousands of RAM modules, and diagnosed about every sort of Mac problem in hardware and software. This is also my personal machine, a computer I know inside and out. I know, for a fact, the problem is their RAM. I found it strange he was being defensive REDACTED. He could have simply tested my hardware by booting off a CD, finding that the machine booted he could then determine that he had sold me bad RAM again, and installed new RAM. I would have been a happy customer, he would have gained a tremendous amount of new business, and it would have cost him 1 hour of labor in the name of customer service. He refused. It got very heated the more he tried to deflect responsibility for selling bad RAM. We finally agreed for him to refund my money. I decided to give Mark one more chance. I said “what would you do in my situation? With all of the evidence pointing to the bad memory, what would you do?” Mark’s response was “I’d take the computer home and try and pinpoint the real problem.” This was too much. As Mark was typing up the return on the computer I couldn’t help but read his customer credo above him. “The customer is always right… It takes hundreds of hours to gain a customer and only a minute to lose one…Our customers are the reason we are in business…” I thought this was remarkably ironic. Mark requested that I not return to his store. I said that was fine with me, REDACTED. Ultimately, I got my money back and my computer returned to me. – although blood pressure and time high and gone. I took my machine home and connected it (with their RAM now removed). I inserted a bootable CD and my machine came up fine. It passed all hardware tests. I reinstalled my OS (because the constant reboots of a crashed computer damaged my OS) and then my computer worked flawlessly. I have been a Macintosh consultant for 13 years and would never, ever use Mac Enthusiasts. Go somewhere else, for your own sake.
10600 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA