Well, my thread was
mostly a vent, but also a rant that initially, I was looking at a week+ turnaround time to get a working unit. I was not so much upset that the laptop arrived damaged, life happens. I was not so much upset that Apple would want the original laptop back before sending out a replacement, scams happen. I
was a bit upset that Apple wanted me to return the laptop via ground shipment, which MAY arrive in as little as two days but often takes up to five days, and in fact did take four (business) days to get to me and is showing an estimated delivery of five (business) days to get back to them.
As you pointed out in your post, when you received a DOA product, Apple had you back up in running in a day or two. I was looking at a wait time of potentially over a week. Notwithstanding whether others may or may not react the same way as I did, I don't think I had so much a "want it now" mentality as a "would like it resolved in an expedient manner" mentality, which I think is a reasonable expectation when one receives a damaged product. On the one hand, the situation was addressed promptly; however, the variables that would affect the overall response time were negatively impacted in the interest of cost effectiveness.
I do understand the difference in prices; I in fact am responsible for our office shipments, and we use FedEx for those. In the instances where I have screwed up and sent a wrong document or what have you, we have to eat the cost of an overnight shipment. Depending on the client's availability, it might have to be a priority overnight shipment, to get there in the morning for them. Sometimes the problem is not really something that I could have controlled, for instance a detail might change after the first shipment has gone out, and corrected docs have to be re-mailed. Granted, papers are not as heavy and therefore do not cost as much to ship as a laptop, but the analogy still remains, sometimes there is expense associated with good customer service.
As I said in my first post, I was pleased with the customer service I received insofar as friendliness and helpfulness, and was bothered only by the potential turnaround time of having a working product in hand. As I said in my second post, with some inquiry, a happy resolution to that concern was reached.
The statistics speak for themselves, and Apple products are generally the most reliable. My dead iBook G3 that this Powerbook is replacing gave exemplary service for over four years.