I've ran into a similar issue with some Lenovo desktops I supported. I found the same thing with their support. Back then I didn't have the power to cancel vendors, but in this company I called the shots. If a vendor treated me well they got my business. I wasn't out for any special deal, but what I did was expect the vendor I dealt with to treat us fairly. At this company, we had three approved vendors. Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba. We once used HP, but because the late Mark Hurd was fired from there and was the CEO of the company I worked for, HP was dropped as a vendor. This messed us up with printers because we could no longer get supplies and had to switch to another printer provider.
As a corporate customer, we got direct support from Lenovo's US repair center located in Atlanta. If there was a glitch with anything, they were there to help, well sort of. In this particular case, it was the usual dead hard disk. These disks died if you looked at them the wrong way, and in many cases, the error code was Error 00, which meant the drive wouldn't start. I called up support one day and read off the code. The cocky SOB on the other end called me a liar then accused me of requesting an "extra" hard disk. I told him to bugger off and to speak to his manager and he hung up. I did speak to his manager then called the company sales representative and canceled an order for 360 laptops. The laptops went for $1100 apiece with matching docking stations and laptop bags so in all total the order was more than the $360,000. We didn't do this as a one-time order and normally ordered 2 to 3 times a year. That's a big hunk of change to throw away, and it wasn't just my division that I supported and ordered inventory for. After I canceled the order, the sales rep begged me to reconsider, and I told her to take a hike and I ordered exclusively from Dell afterwards.
the first time i ever had to use apple help other than in the apple shop was when i had a dodgy dvd burner in my 2006 G5 tower, it made grating sounds from the off , but as i had an external burner it didn't bother me , i figured i would wait a while as i was busy and had a three year warranty anyway.
so eventually rang up apple, told the guy i was experienced in using computers, had tried many different media ,had done loads of tests , tried different types of discs, had my IT department techs check it out and we knew it was dodgy. He said he had to get me to run a few different tests and i told him I'd already done so, he responded that i might have dropped a paper clip into the drive and that was what was making the noise, i told him that the only way that could have happened was if i stood the tower on end and dropped it in from above as the g5 tower has an open drive that extends outward , not one of those standard mac drives where you push in the disc , where you could indeed push items into the slot ( although a paper clip would have had to be pushed inside forcibly ) . He then got a supervisor and they proceeded to tell me that as i wasn't cooperating they would not take this further and I should bring the unit into the nearest mac dealer to get it checked, I blew up at them and told them I was entitled to home service as stated on the apple care plan, I demanded home service and told them if I was wrong I would pay , when i rang off after about 40 minutes of arguing I was under the impression that I would be contacted by them to arrange a visit to get the drive inspected.
Many weeks went by,no call, the warranty was running out, but after that experience which left me severely frazzled, I was reluctant to ring up again, but psyched myself up to do so, got a charming irishman who agreed that yes, this was the most likely scenario, he looked up what was the delay, the goons had noted that I was going to contact apple and to arrange a date for the tech guy to come. that was NOT what we had arranged, they were supposed to call me.
Anyway the apple tech guy called a few days later,fitted a new drive , confirmed the old one was stuffed and that was that, but I've never bought a new Mac since, I buy used Mac Pro workstations for a fraction of the price and apple can go jump in the lake as far as me putting any more money in their coffers , that experience soured me on their backup for good. I still have that g5 tower and the last time i fired it up it worked perfectly , I keep it in case I ever need to use the legacy apps I have on there, but somehow i doubt I ever will....