Apple customer service *not* the apple-of-my-eye

In between meetings today I called two different Apple customer support lines with a general question. Neither department knew the answer (one support member transferred me to sales who then wanted to transfer me elsewhere).

And the second customer/sales agent said I needed my computer’s serial number to avoid being charged for the call. Yikes(!) + odd(!).

I just cut a 7-minute short & needed to burn two dvd discs on Mac’s intel core duo machine. The question was thus:

Which dvd format e.g. plus or minus is most conducive to this type of Mac?

Time was pinched so at the office supply store I bought both formats. After reading more later, I learned the system should accept both types.

This was the first time to utilize Apple’s customer support teams (non-web). Ugh.

What’s been your experience?