Apple does Care

On Christmas Eve I suffered a massive hard drive crash in which I lost pretty much everything that I've either written, designed, photographed, or listened to over the past two years. Two years of creative work gone in a flash. That damn blue screen of death struck again.

Miserable, I called my friend to share the news and then dove into my bed in a fit of tears where I remained for most of the day until my parents forced me to shower, get dressed, and join them for Christmas Eve dinner. Massive amounts of tequila were consumed and helped ease the pain--if only temporarily--but on Christmas morning I was once again faced with the reality of my lost work.

Before you ask, no, I didn't back up. Stupid and cocky, I know. I of all people should know better. Especially since I suffered a similar crash about 4 or 5 years ago. Dell wasn't very sympathetic. "It's gone," the tech support guy told me. "We'll send you a new one. Did you have important files on it?" "Um yes, of course..." I replied. He suggested that I keep the old drive and take it to a local technician in order to recover some of the data.

I spent most of the holiday season cursing Dell and their lousy computers. In two years I've gone through two adaptors, three motherboards, two keyboards, and now two hard drives. Oh, and my cd/dvd drive is starting to make weird clicking noises and smells a little bit like a Fourth of July hotdog when I try to run programs. The irony is that this computer is pretty fantastic--when it works. But it rarely works. And I am also the first to admit that Dell has spectacular technical support. I just wish their products didn't force me to keep the support number on speed dial.

I'll be ordering a new laptop for work soon. I had the choice of anything that I want and I decided to go with a Mac. A MacBook Pro to be exact. As the office "tech expert" (their words, not mine) I've also been charged with the task of purchasing computers for several other members of our staff. They need PCs, but needless to say, they will not be getting Dells.

The point of this post, however, isn't about my crappy Dell laptop. It's about my amazing customer service experience with Apple. Naturally, when my drive crashed I lost my entire iTunes library. Thousands of songs, gone in an instant, including several hundred that I purchased and not...ahem, "shared." I was trying to figure out if there was a way to recover some of these songs so I spent some time Googling and discovered a few Mac forum posts from users who had e-mailed AppleCare and gotten permission to redownload their purchase history free of charge. Intrigued, I went to the iTunes customer service website and filled out the e-mail form with the following query:

Hello,

My hard drive crashed a few days ago and I lost my entire iTunes library (along with pretty much everything I've written over the past two years--ugh). I didn't back up and so I have no way to recover my files. I was looking around online and saw that Apple has allowed other customers to redownload their purchase history when they suffer a crash like this. It would be so great if you could allow me the same concession. I'd love it if I could at least have some of my music back...Thanks so much for your help and attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Alejandra

Within hours, I received an e-mail back:

Dear Alejandra,

I understand that you recently lost all the music in your iTunes library due to hard drive failure. I'm sorry to hear the titles you purchased (along with your writings) from the iTunes Store with account "XXXX" were lost. I know how frustrating that can be, fortunately however, I have reposted your entire purchase order history back to your account for your and Apple will let you re-download (at no charge) all the titles you purchased on this account that are still available.

Please note that you may download your iTunes Store purchases only once, so this is a one-time exception and this option will no longer be available to you in the future.) Your purchases are now available in your account. Check out the steps below to initiate the download:

This was followed with steps to download, along with explanations of how to back up my songs (Ok, I get it. I will back up this year.) There were quite a few songs and it took a while to download, but now I'm back up and running. I figured it would be good to share in case some of you out there suffer (or have suffered) similar crashes.

I'm now tackling the task of hard drive data recovery. Stay tuned for details.