Apple ships MacBook back to customer - but with someone else

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=280045

Let me summarize it for you.  Guy has a problem with his MacBook and, since it's covered by AppleCare, he takes it to CompUSA (an authorized service center) for repair.  CompUSA passes the MacBook on to Apple repair.  When the guy gets the MacBook back he finds that the hard drive is smaller than the one that was in his MacBook (originally his MacBook had an 80GB hard drive but now it contains a 60GB drive), and worse still he finds that the hard drive contains data belonging to someone else.

But the story doesn't end there.  Later on he gets a call from the persons who has his hard drive, and she's eager to have her data back too.  While talking, they also discover that Apple swapped the cases on the MacBooks too.

Now mistakes happen, but this is a pretty serious series of mistakes, and what's worse is that Apple's not interested in helping the two customers be reunited with their hard drives.  While Apple shouldn't be responsible for user's data, the idea that they swap drives with other PCs in for repair and send data to other people is unacceptable.  What's worse is that CompUSA and Apple really don't seem to care about the mistake and just expect the affected parties to delete the data and get on with their lives.  While mistakes are inevitable, what really counts is how a company deals with the mistake and how far they are willing to go to put things right.  The fact that Apple doesn't seem to think that there's anything wrong with sending users one another's data.  That tells me that rot has started to set in at Apple's tech support departments.  I've seen this kind of rot before â€¦

Apple really needs to take a history lesson and look at how stories of shoddy support combined with a don't care attitude harmed Dell.

Any remote chance some Apple tech simply put the wrong parts in the wrong machine? Because if this wasn't what happened then what it implies about Apple's support practices is pretty bad...

If you want yet another Apple Support horror story, then here's one: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5963

I have a Dell laptop, and while I've had to have both cosmetic and serious work done on it Dell never gave me a moments trouble about it. Infact I got a free GPU upgrade out of it. I'll grant that no one is immune to these problems especially Apple or Dell, but if product quality and warranty/support is the top priority then I'd point towards IBM. Even after Lenovo bought their computer division the quality is still there.

Why don't companies want to take responsibility for their screw-ups? I mean it just makes sense from the customer service stand-point to just take care of it. Apple has gotten stingy and greedy...

*coughs* Apple, greedy?

Was the ~50% gross margins on half their products a small hint?