There and Back Again: AppleCare Importance and The Apple Service and Support Experience

Ok, here I am after I started having problems with my email in the Mail application, it started as something funny but slowly turned into a huge issue since I couldn't find an 'easy' way to solve it. You can read the full stories of what happened at the Apple Computers Blog but here is a summary:

My Mail program allowed me to download only two messages at a time, no matter how many emails I've got, so If I choose to skip downloading a couple of messages I was done for. So I started looking everywhere for a possible solution but couldn't find anything.

After that, it got worse! Instead of two, now I was able to download only one mail at a time, and then it was that I decided to call the quits and go for professional help. So I called Apple Service and Support and here is the full account of what at the beginning looked like a small issue but turned out to be an extremely complex problem that I simply couldn't have solved without Stephen's help -from the Apple Service and Support team-:

First, we checked the Mail Preferences to verify that all my email account info and settings were ok. Almost everything was at it's default option since the only thing I did was to configure my mail account and set the skip-message-download function to alert me every time a message over 2000 Kb arrived at my mailbox. You can check and select your own preferences in Mail just by following the menu shown below:

Everything was fine with the Preferences so the next step was to log into my Gmail account and check that the POP settings were in order -which they were-, and after that Stephen told me to erase any spam messages -of which I had a lot- that I had in my inbox but to no effect.

*As a side-note, having too much spam mail can be a cause of Apple's Mail not working properly -it happened to me once- so consider deleting all your spam first if you are having a problem of this kind*

After that I restarted my Apple Macbook Pro and tried again but to no effect, the problem remained.

Then we tried something different: I was told to create a new account and to configure my mail in that one to see if the problem happened there also, so I did and my mail started downloading normally, so Stephen told me to stop it and logout from that account and to log in to my main one, so I stopped downloading email when about 3% had already been downloaded and logged into my main account again now knowing that the problem was with my account and not from an external source -well, at least it was something-

The next step was were it started to get a bit scary since I didn't understood almost anything, he made me change the SSL port in the advanced Preferences tab and after that he made me change some files in the Mail folder located in the Library -which I know is a place a regular users must never go unless you totally know what you are doing, so be warned- and finally he made me move the inbox.mbox and other similar files from the Mailboxes folder, since he realized that these files might have been damaged or corrupted, but he asked me first if I had a backup of my Mac and was extremely happy to hear that I had one since I backup on a daily basis using SuperDuper!.

The purpose of all these was to 'rebuild my library'. So he made me replace the previously moved files with the ones in my backup, and after restarting Mail I was able to download all my messages again!

Finally, he sent me an email to test the correct incoming of any external mail and everything went fine.

Final Thoughts and Advice

So that was it, what a ride! -for me at least- you have no idea how grateful I am towards Stephen and the whole Apple Service and Support team, he endured my non-stop questioning for the almost 2 hours that the call lasted and was not only patient but extremely polite and understanding.

So my advice is this: If you own an Apple Computer, any of them, an iMac, a Mac mini or any of the Macbooks, consider an AppleCare Protection Plan , this plan will extend your warranty to a total of 3 years and give you full support and service coverage -like the ones I got in this situation- for that time.

You see, problems like these happen, you never know and you can never be totally safe, you might think that you don't need it, maybe you have a friend that knows a lot about Macs -I have many- who can help you, but trusting your Apple Laptop or Apple desktop Computer to anyone who is not qualified enough to do the job is a risk you have to consider before you take that jump.

I mean, I was totally in this guy's hands half of the process, and even though I had a backup of my mail, very sensitive information could have been lost, and something surely would have gone wrong had I tried to mess with my system on such a technical level.

And before I finish, one last advice: Always backup. And make sure you have a decent and reliable backup program that supports incremental backups like SuperDuper! that I recommend along with some other nice Mac Safety Software here.

Ah!, I almost forgot, for stories, advice and recommendations like the ones above, just check my Apple Computers Blog page, it will keep you up to date not only with that kind of stuff but also with any addition or update to the site. See you there!