Apple.
The problem I had was an unusual one: I could send emails from my computer, but not receive any. And I could receive emails on my iPhone, but not send any. Very frustrating … I tried to have the problem fixed at various times with calls to the service departments at Quadra Hosting as well as Apple, to no avail.
Then I had the most amazing experience on Monday 16 April 2018. I spent 2 hours in the morning trying once again to sort my email problem with my service provider. The outcome was that they confirmed the password was correctly entered where needed and all the settings were correct too.
Then at midday, I called Apple. The first service attendant went away and did some reading of notes, without being able to resolve the issue over about an hour. I had to go away and attend to another task and then called Apple back. Following I spoke for an hour to (and shared the screen with) a very friendly female attendant (they are all very friendly), who gave up and connected me to her supervisor. We spent another hour … with no results; the next attendant also gave up and put me on to her (senior) supervisor, Niam in Brisbane. By then it was 4:00pm.
After one hour he said “I have never seen a problem like this, this is amazing; great, I love problems."!!! We then worked on the issue until 7:52. For nearly four hours. He often went away to read up on stuff, and he went right through my computer; he moved files around; he removed files and apps (the virus protection I had was useless, he said, like most commercial virus protectors you can buy for $4.99 … it was just slowing my computer down); he then installed Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (it found 4 dodgy file, which we removed).
It took him quite a while to find a version that was compatible with my old OS 10.9.5 (and to his credit, he never twisted my arm to upgrade my OS ... which is something nearly every support person at Apple want to do first of all; the point being that I have about half a dozen programs I would not be able to use with a new OS).
After he had finished cleaning up my computer, suddenly everything was working ... he also fixed the problem on the iPhone. He said he couldn’t be 100% sure what exactly had caused the problems, but most likely it was the corrupted key chain (whatever that is).
Frankly, I have had Apple computers for more than 30 years (I started in 1988 with a Mac SE). Over the years I spent more than $70k on Apple computers. I have often used support, I always buy Apple Care extended warranty. But this computer is 6 years old! I am blown away by the dedication and the commitment of this man. And I am sooo grateful I have a Mac. Thanks.