Five weeks ago I wrote: Apple Rant: AppleCare = Shoddy Service - Apple Arrogance?. At the time it quickly attracted a bunch of comments, many of them sharing bad experiences with Apple's AppleCare.

What was interesting was that there was no response from Apple. And five weeks later, that post continues to be discovered and continues to attract comments -- sometimes in large batches as it gets picked up by services such as StumbleUpon.

Yet there is still nothing from Apple, which is surprising because by not leaving a comment, Apple comes across as arrogant, and that it doesn't care that there is a conversation going on about its warranty service.

This flies in the face of "proper" behavior by corporations on the social web. There are a gazillion social media consultants that advise the largest of corporations to listen out for such conversations and to become involved pretty damn quick. In fact, they should be monitoring the web in real-time.

Yet it seems Apple can be successful without being involved in the social web in any manner at all. I have never seen an Apple representative leave a comment anywhere! Granted, I haven't gone out of my way to look for Apple branded comments, but whenever I've seen Apple discussions I've never seen any Apple representatives.

This means that either Apple is arrogant and doesn't care or it has a policy of not allowing its representatives to be involved in online discussions.

This is a mistake because my post will continue to be surfaced by search engines and sharing services, time and again. My post will continue to gather stories about Apple that are not beneficial to its brand.

And these are stories that are thoughtful, and well written, these are not the rambling nonsense of trolls.

You would think Apple would want to take part, even just something along the lines of: "Thanks for sharing but unfortunately there is nothing we can do, we have to stick to our policies. But we value your custom etc." At least it would show that someone is listening -- that can go a long way in helping to defuse bad feelings.

How about it Apple? Anyone out there?