I was thinking back about that customer I mentioned and how they got their problem resolved. As I recall, after the third attempt I jokingly advised my customer to send a note to Tim Cook. We had no idea what his email address was, so I jokingly said, "tim@apple.com". That sounded too easy so we googled it and found
tcook@apple.com. My customer did fire off an email, and a week later Apple got back to him and replaced his computer.
So, that in mind, if the situation does not get resolved just send Tim Cook an email.
But!
Do not do it the first time around. Seriously, it sounds to me like that method will help
after you have gone through the normal hoops and the problem has not been rectified, where the normal hoops means three repair attempts.