My Mac Studio Order: Five Months and a Refund Offer

The receipt for my ₹1,00,000 Mac Studio advance said iPhone 17 Pro Max.

I asked iPlanet about it. “This is how we place CTO orders, sir, while taking the advance. Your order is safe,” they said.

That was in March. I had bought from them before without trouble, and I accepted the explanation. Five months later, the Mac Studio I had ordered was discontinued, my order had been cancelled, and the store was offering my money back.

I still needed the computer. Buying the replacement configuration I had checked would cost ₹2,43,000 more.

The shorter wait

My 16GB Mac mini was struggling with the coding agents, containers, databases and browsers I used for personal work. It was already using about 16.7GB of swap. I wanted room to run local AI models and experiment without watching a cloud meter throughout setup and debugging.

A Mac Studio with 128GB of memory was the practical choice for my budget. I settled on an M4 Max with a 16-core CPU, 40-core GPU and 1TB SSD, a configure-to-order machine rather than one I could pick up from a shelf.

Apple’s website was quoting a wait of months. During a trip to Madurai for my wife’s medical check-up, I noticed an iPlanet store near the hospital and went in to ask about availability.

The Sathamangalam store said it could get the machine within 45 days. That was enough for me to place the order on 23 March. On 27 March, I paid ₹1,00,000 against an agreed total of ₹3,84,900.

Looking back, I should have asked how the store could deliver so much sooner than Apple. The receipt gave me another reason to ask questions. Their reassurance, and my previous experience with them, were enough at the time.

Forty-five days passed. My monthly follow-ups kept returning the same answer: the order was pending.

The delay seemed believable. My configuration was frequently unavailable on Apple’s website, and by April, 128GB Mac Studio configurations could no longer be ordered from Apple’s US online store. I continued waiting.

A refund would leave me starting again

By 20 August, contacts had helped me escalate the delay within iPlanet. The store manager was still talking about a supply-chain bottleneck in late August.

Then, shortly before September, I was told the order had been cancelled because the M4 model had reached end of life. Apple had announced the M5 Max Mac Studio on 25 August.

On 1 September, iPlanet put its explanation in an email and attached a portal extract with the upstream order references. It said Apple had cancelled the order and offered to return my advance.

The closest M5 Max configuration I checked was ₹6,27,900. Against my agreed price of ₹3,84,900, that meant ₹2,43,000 more if I accepted the refund and bought that machine.

Nothing about my need had changed during the wait. I had never asked to cancel. After trusting the store’s estimate for months, accepting the refund meant beginning the purchase again at a much higher price.

I also trusted Apple enough to believe there might be another answer. Before accepting anything, I wanted to know what had happened to the order.

Following the order beyond the store

Apple India Support could not verify the references through its consumer-support system. It could look up purchases made directly on Apple’s website; mine had come through a reseller. The order numbers iPlanet had supplied still left me unable to check its history with Apple Support.

Reddit discussions and other forums helped me understand the route: iPlanet placed the order through Redington, which placed it with Apple. Until then, I had never dealt with Redington.

My wife happened to hold a tiny number of Redington shares through a Smallcase portfolio. That gave me a reason to approach Investor Relations. I mentioned the small holding and asked how a customer could pay an advance, wait five months and still have no clear account of what had happened.

While researching, I also found accounts of customers reaching Apple’s Executive Relations team after writing to senior leaders. On the evening of 7 September, I sent the chronology to Apple, copying Tim Cook, John Ternus, Executive Escalations, Apple India, iPlanet and Redington.

The email set out the configuration, payment, order references and replies I had received. My request was to supply the successor at the original price, with my advance credited.

Redington replied on 8 September with the history I had been trying to obtain. According to its email, the order had entered Apple’s portal on 24 March, the day after I placed it. As late as 25 August, it showed an estimated delivery date of 30 September.

Redington said Apple removed the order on 26 August following the model’s end of life. “No action was pending from the distributor’s side,” it added.

So the order had reached Apple’s system in March and remained there until August. I finally had an account of those missing months. At that point, though, neither iPlanet nor Redington had offered the replacement I was asking for.

Apple takes up the case

On 10 September, someone from Apple Executive Relations in Ireland tried to call and followed up by email. When we spoke, they explained that Apple could not treat this as a direct Apple Store purchase. They would still look at what could be done.

A week later, the representative called again. Apple had reached an arrangement with iPlanet to supply the new product at my original price.

At 3:26 PM IST on 18 September, the confirmation arrived:

As discussed, I wish to confirm that the new product will be ready within the next three weeks and the seller will honor the original cost.

It had been 179 days since I placed the order. There was now a written commitment to the outcome I had asked for.

The intended replacement was an M5 Max Mac Studio with an 18-core CPU, 40-core GPU, 128GB memory and 1TB SSD. The email itself said “new product”; it did not repeat those specifications. Handover and the correct crediting of my advance were still pending when I wrote this account.

This is the response I had hoped for from Apple. Executive Relations had spoken to the parties and arranged a way forward on a purchase Apple had neither invoiced nor taken my advance for. For me, that is Apple being Apple.

I am grateful they took it up. A customer should also be able to buy one computer without having to research distributors, write as a small shareholder and contact executive teams to get it supplied.

My next custom Mac purchase would be directly from Apple. I want the company handling my support request to be able to see my order from the start. If I use a retailer again, I will ask for confirmation that the order reached the manufacturer’s system and keep the configuration, receipt and promised date in writing.

Back in March, I accepted “Your order is safe” while holding a receipt for the wrong product. This time, I have Apple’s commitment in writing. I will consider the matter finished when the Mac Studio arrives and the invoice correctly accounts for the advance I paid.

Update, 15 October: The Mac Studio finally reached my desk on 12 October, 203 days after I placed the order.