8 ms·

My biggest complaint about the Apple Store is the long wait times when your computer breaks. You often have to wait for a few days to even get an appointment.

by atonse 8y ago

My biggest complaint about the Apple Store is the long wait times when your computer breaks. You often have to wait for a few days to even get an appointment. But the award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things. So people just wander around wanting to buy something and not knowing where to pay for it. And they end up wasting a lot more time that way.

zitterbewegung 8y ago
I was able to get an appointment next day at an apple store to fix my keyboard . After I arrived I got it done within 15 min
- nihonde 8y ago
  Me too. Same day, even. This is in NYC and I live within five minutes’ walk from the nearest store. Compared to phone support from PC makers (even including the glorious no-questions-asked IBM hardware days), it’s a vast improvement for me.
  - atonse 8y ago
    Yea just to clarify, I'm not trying to compare it to owning a PC. It's still leaps and bounds better. But still the quality in my experience has gone down. My two local stores are in Bethesda, MD.
- matwood 8y ago
  I think it depends on the area. I live near an Apple store, but it is the only one for a very large area that includes a college. It's literally packed from open to close. I haven't had bad experiences, but definitely not as smooth as yours. People have been saying that Apple has not grown its store count along with the numbers of device users they have added. I think it shows in areas like mine.
- rosseloh 8y ago
  Just for curiosity's sake what was the issue with the keyboard? Because I work at a repair shop. Not an apple one (we're way too small for that, they want something ridiculous like $100,000 a year in used apple sales before they even consider letting you apply to be a reseller/repair store). People bring apple stuff here because there's nowhere else to take them except a three hour drive to the nearest big city. The only issues I've seen on MacBook keyboards in my 8 years working here, required a full keyboard replacement. And I just did one a couple weeks ago. That's a good hour or two's work, just getting the thing disassembled far enough to get to the keyboard in the first place, then pulling all of the hundred or so screws for the keyboard, replacing it, and rebuilding everything.
  - zitterbewegung 8y ago
    There was dust underneath a key and they used a can of air to remove it .
jtr_47 8y ago
The stores are more sterile and the employees and service is more "clinical" and less "hands on." I miss the original stores' refurbished/discount tables/bin they used to have. You could find great deals on those tables.. Oh.. one other thing that annoys the hell out of me about the stores an service. I bought a new iphone8, I asked if they could transfer the iphone5 data+ apps to my new phone. They said no, do it yourself.. I was pissed. A damn tech company, that sells a portable cpu for $700+ dollars and they won't perform a data transfer? peace
- jeromegv 8y ago
  Beside entering your iCloud user/password, is there anything else you need to do to transfer data to a new iPhone?
  - mrunkel 8y ago
    no. And they probably won't do it for that very reason, as they don't want to know your iCloud password. Without it what service can they provide?
- xvector 8y ago
  You can’t be serious? You think it would be reasonable from a security perspective if Apple was capable of transferring your data?
  - jdsully 8y ago
    They used to do that a long time ago. You would sit there with them as they transferred it off your old machine.
    - xvector 8y ago
      > They used to do that a long time ago. Pretty happy they don't do that anymore, then. It sounds terrible for security.
GeekyBear 8y ago
>The award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things. For small ticket items, you can scan, pay and leave without needing to interact with the staff. >Thanks to the Apple Store app, you can use your iPhone to scan the barcode of an accessory off the shelf and use Apple Pay to pay for it. From there, you can just walk out of the store with your new Apple accessory in hand. https://www.howtogeek.com/338754/how-to-buy-stuff-at-the-apple-store-without-a-cashier/ https://www.howtogeek.com/338754/how-to-buy-stuff-at-the-app...
- village-idiot 8y ago
  The fact that there's a "how to" article for buying things at a store is a sign that the UX is a complete and miserable failure.
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  Well, yeah, thank you+) very much, I guess. So same as with self scanning tills at supermarkets I'm now expected to do the work for one of the most profitable companies in the world, since they can't be bothered to have a proper checkout or hire enough people. +) Not you, personally, obviously. edit: reformat
  - dorfsmay 8y ago
    "same as with self scanning tills at supermarkets" Worse! You have to first buy the device and use their own payment apps. That's an expensive way to just feel cool/modern!
  - tikkabhuna 8y ago
    Huh? Self checkouts are great! Rather than having 1 or 2 tills you can have many times that manned by the same number of people. If you don't have any alcohol you can use it without interacting with anyone at all and its much faster. That coupled with contactless payments make it super quick to buy just a few items. A "proper" checkout is still king for large shops but for people I know (late 20s), that is becoming less common for more frequent, smaller shopping trips. Edit: I should say this is for someone based in London.
tuxone 8y ago
I know it's just my experience, but it looks like this thread (as the article) is all about personal experiences. I had four time the same issue with a MBP 2011, the HDD cable was failing again ad again. First time they replaced it, next time they replaced the cable plus the HDD, third time they replaced cable plus logicboard, fourth I got a new MBP 2013. All for free, without Apple Care. Every time I got my laptop back in less than 4 business days (also the replacement unit, I received it at home even before they had picked the old one). This is true heaven if compared to my nightmarish experiences with DELL, ASUS or ACER (as a private customer, not business). About the repeated MBP issue, I blamed my way of carrying it around (with a passport bag) and the fact that the cable was directly in close contact with the unibody shell.
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  I had great experiences with their device support. Replacements, repairs, their folks seem to err on the side of cover the claim rather than deny the claim when the cause of the problem seems ambiguous. I don't have a complaint about support yet, but I can tell my keyboard on my current-gen macbook pro is going to start failing soon (the semicolon key no longer clicks when pressed, the tab key is inconsistent) and from what I've heard from others is that it will require turning my laptop in and waiting days or weeks until it gets fixed. This is a company machine and I can't simply "not work" for 3+ days because I'm waiting on Apple HQ to blow dust out of my keyboard. Instead of taking it in, I'm looking at usb-c adapters so that I can plug in my external kb and use that instead. The _vast_ majority of engineers at my company uses some kind of external keyboard on these machines.
  - brewdad 8y ago
    Your company doesn't have a backup machine you can work on for a few days? Even if you are a one person shop, you should have some sort of plan for hardware failure.
    - ilikehurdles 8y ago
      The majority of our company, especially on the engineering side, is remote employees. Honestly not a bad idea to ensure there is an employee hardware failure plan in place.
madeofpalk 8y ago
> You often have to wait for a few days to even get an appointment. Here's the thing that got me - last year the laptop broke on my MacBook Pro. Very common and typical problem. Whenever I tried to book an appointment there was literally no appointments in the entirety of London. It was actually impossible to book an appointment. I ended up just walking into a store on my Tuesday lunch break and they told me all their walk ins for the day have been taken up, and I should line up in the morning and wait for the store to open.
- xerosis 8y ago
  I live in a smaller country, there are frequently no appointments in the whole country for the entire booking window.
  - akvadrako 8y ago
    The trick is to book it right after the new day opens up. Truly a terrible design. Even by calling support they won’t be able to make an exception.
ModernMech 8y ago
You call it wasting time, Apple calls it "increased product exposure". It's the same reason Target staggers their registers and makes their checkout process slow as hell; they found that the more time you spend waiting in line, the more likely you are to remember something you wanted to buy and return to the store to get it. They don't care how quickly you leave the store, they only care about how much you leave with.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tomp 8y ago
> But the award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things Interesting, that's my favourite things about Apple Stores! I wish more stores adopted this model.

by atonse 8y ago

zitterbewegung 8y ago

I was able to get an appointment next day at an apple store to fix my keyboard . After I arrived I got it done within 15 min

nihonde 8y ago
Me too. Same day, even. This is in NYC and I live within five minutes’ walk from the nearest store. Compared to phone support from PC makers (even including the glorious no-questions-asked IBM hardware days), it’s a vast improvement for me.
- atonse 8y ago
  Yea just to clarify, I'm not trying to compare it to owning a PC. It's still leaps and bounds better. But still the quality in my experience has gone down. My two local stores are in Bethesda, MD.
matwood 8y ago
I think it depends on the area. I live near an Apple store, but it is the only one for a very large area that includes a college. It's literally packed from open to close. I haven't had bad experiences, but definitely not as smooth as yours. People have been saying that Apple has not grown its store count along with the numbers of device users they have added. I think it shows in areas like mine.
rosseloh 8y ago
Just for curiosity's sake what was the issue with the keyboard? Because I work at a repair shop. Not an apple one (we're way too small for that, they want something ridiculous like $100,000 a year in used apple sales before they even consider letting you apply to be a reseller/repair store). People bring apple stuff here because there's nowhere else to take them except a three hour drive to the nearest big city. The only issues I've seen on MacBook keyboards in my 8 years working here, required a full keyboard replacement. And I just did one a couple weeks ago. That's a good hour or two's work, just getting the thing disassembled far enough to get to the keyboard in the first place, then pulling all of the hundred or so screws for the keyboard, replacing it, and rebuilding everything.
- zitterbewegung 8y ago
  There was dust underneath a key and they used a can of air to remove it .

jtr_47 8y ago

The stores are more sterile and the employees and service is more "clinical" and less "hands on." I miss the original stores' refurbished/discount tables/bin they used to have. You could find great deals on those tables.. Oh.. one other thing that annoys the hell out of me about the stores an service. I bought a new iphone8, I asked if they could transfer the iphone5 data+ apps to my new phone. They said no, do it yourself.. I was pissed. A damn tech company, that sells a portable cpu for $700+ dollars and they won't perform a data transfer? peace

jeromegv 8y ago
Beside entering your iCloud user/password, is there anything else you need to do to transfer data to a new iPhone?
- mrunkel 8y ago
  no. And they probably won't do it for that very reason, as they don't want to know your iCloud password. Without it what service can they provide?
xvector 8y ago
You can’t be serious? You think it would be reasonable from a security perspective if Apple was capable of transferring your data?
- jdsully 8y ago
  They used to do that a long time ago. You would sit there with them as they transferred it off your old machine.
  - xvector 8y ago
    > They used to do that a long time ago. Pretty happy they don't do that anymore, then. It sounds terrible for security.

GeekyBear 8y ago

>The award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things. For small ticket items, you can scan, pay and leave without needing to interact with the staff. >Thanks to the Apple Store app, you can use your iPhone to scan the barcode of an accessory off the shelf and use Apple Pay to pay for it. From there, you can just walk out of the store with your new Apple accessory in hand. https://www.howtogeek.com/338754/how-to-buy-stuff-at-the-apple-store-without-a-cashier/ https://www.howtogeek.com/338754/how-to-buy-stuff-at-the-app...

village-idiot 8y ago
The fact that there's a "how to" article for buying things at a store is a sign that the UX is a complete and miserable failure.
CaptainZapp 8y ago
Well, yeah, thank you+) very much, I guess. So same as with self scanning tills at supermarkets I'm now expected to do the work for one of the most profitable companies in the world, since they can't be bothered to have a proper checkout or hire enough people. +) Not you, personally, obviously. edit: reformat
- dorfsmay 8y ago
  "same as with self scanning tills at supermarkets" Worse! You have to first buy the device and use their own payment apps. That's an expensive way to just feel cool/modern!
- tikkabhuna 8y ago
  Huh? Self checkouts are great! Rather than having 1 or 2 tills you can have many times that manned by the same number of people. If you don't have any alcohol you can use it without interacting with anyone at all and its much faster. That coupled with contactless payments make it super quick to buy just a few items. A "proper" checkout is still king for large shops but for people I know (late 20s), that is becoming less common for more frequent, smaller shopping trips. Edit: I should say this is for someone based in London.

tuxone 8y ago

I know it's just my experience, but it looks like this thread (as the article) is all about personal experiences. I had four time the same issue with a MBP 2011, the HDD cable was failing again ad again. First time they replaced it, next time they replaced the cable plus the HDD, third time they replaced cable plus logicboard, fourth I got a new MBP 2013. All for free, without Apple Care. Every time I got my laptop back in less than 4 business days (also the replacement unit, I received it at home even before they had picked the old one). This is true heaven if compared to my nightmarish experiences with DELL, ASUS or ACER (as a private customer, not business). About the repeated MBP issue, I blamed my way of carrying it around (with a passport bag) and the fact that the cable was directly in close contact with the unibody shell.

ilikehurdles 8y ago
I had great experiences with their device support. Replacements, repairs, their folks seem to err on the side of cover the claim rather than deny the claim when the cause of the problem seems ambiguous. I don't have a complaint about support yet, but I can tell my keyboard on my current-gen macbook pro is going to start failing soon (the semicolon key no longer clicks when pressed, the tab key is inconsistent) and from what I've heard from others is that it will require turning my laptop in and waiting days or weeks until it gets fixed. This is a company machine and I can't simply "not work" for 3+ days because I'm waiting on Apple HQ to blow dust out of my keyboard. Instead of taking it in, I'm looking at usb-c adapters so that I can plug in my external kb and use that instead. The _vast_ majority of engineers at my company uses some kind of external keyboard on these machines.
- brewdad 8y ago
  Your company doesn't have a backup machine you can work on for a few days? Even if you are a one person shop, you should have some sort of plan for hardware failure.
  - ilikehurdles 8y ago
    The majority of our company, especially on the engineering side, is remote employees. Honestly not a bad idea to ensure there is an employee hardware failure plan in place.

madeofpalk 8y ago

> You often have to wait for a few days to even get an appointment. Here's the thing that got me - last year the laptop broke on my MacBook Pro. Very common and typical problem. Whenever I tried to book an appointment there was literally no appointments in the entirety of London. It was actually impossible to book an appointment. I ended up just walking into a store on my Tuesday lunch break and they told me all their walk ins for the day have been taken up, and I should line up in the morning and wait for the store to open.

xerosis 8y ago
I live in a smaller country, there are frequently no appointments in the whole country for the entire booking window.
- akvadrako 8y ago
  The trick is to book it right after the new day opens up. Truly a terrible design. Even by calling support they won’t be able to make an exception.

ModernMech 8y ago

You call it wasting time, Apple calls it "increased product exposure". It's the same reason Target staggers their registers and makes their checkout process slow as hell; they found that the more time you spend waiting in line, the more likely you are to remember something you wanted to buy and return to the store to get it. They don't care how quickly you leave the store, they only care about how much you leave with.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

tomp 8y ago

> But the award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things Interesting, that's my favourite things about Apple Stores! I wish more stores adopted this model.