My first mac was a 12 in. 867mhz powerbook g4. A month before warranty going out, I decided to take it in @ the genius bar. The reason? The display hinge made a very loud cracking noise when you would move the display. The genius told me that it was a normal thing, with normal use the mechanism within the hinge will stiffen up a bit, hence the cracking sound. More than likely , Apple would not pay attention to it and send it back to me untouched. Taking my chances, I decided to send it for repair, and left it at the Genius bar. Couple of days later, I checked the status online and they said they couldn’t reproduce “the fault” and it was been sent back to me via DHL.
Now this was the DHL around the time it was recently acquired by the shady Airborne Express. Long story short, DHL “lost” my powerbook, and thats when Apple got involved. I spoke with a guy, that took care of things like this and he spoke with DHL directly. After DHL confessed their screw up, Apple went right ahead and sent me the, back then current model 12 in. a spiffy 1.33 Ghz with 768 Ram and a 64Mb vid card. To say the least I was more than pleased with Apple, not just because of the replacement, but because even the low-level employee took interest in my powerbook-dilemma and the poor girl called DHL several times, called me with updates, and then eventually sent me to the guy “up” in the ladder of power, and he took care of things, and when it was deemed as “lost” I got sent a replacement.