5 ms·

My visit to the Apple Store

21 points by acangiano 18y ago

Tichy 18y ago
How Dell visited me This was two years ago. Unfortunately since then I did not have any troubles with my Notebook, so I had no opportunity to call in the Dell support. Actually back then I did not have a problem either, but I was not sure about that. My notebook's hard drive would emit a faint clicking sound occasionally - only noticeable because being fanless, this was the only noise the notebook would create at all. Apparently it is normal, but when I called Dell about it, they insisted on exchanging the drive just in case. Because I was contracting at the time, they offered to come around to the office at the company where I worked. When the Dell technician arrived the next day, I went into an empty room with him and he exchanged the hard drive within minutes. Then he left. My notebook has worked without any problems ever since. I didn't tell my girl-friend about it, because she doesn't care, but whenever I see a chance to recommend a Dell product, I wholeheartedly do so. Hm, this would have made a great blog post, but now I wasted the story on HN already. Ah well...
- acangiano 18y ago
  It's not a zero-sum game. :)
- andr 18y ago
  +1. My Dell fan was full of dust, so the notebook started overheating. I asked Dell (over their online chat) if it can be replaced and two days later a technician knocked on my door and took care of it. Total time wasted: 10 minutes. PS I didn't even have to pay for the warranty, as you can usually get a 3-year at-home warranty from Dell for free.
- woodsier 18y ago
  When my XPS M1530 arrived the screen was grainy. They came out the next day and replaced it in 10 minutes. I asked if they could come later at night (around 7pm) which is outside the scope of their free care, however because the order arrived 2 days later than their website estimate they did it for free. Also an additional thing with Dell - when ordering something always ring up and talk to a rep before completing the order. Mention you're interested in purchasing in future if all goes well, but the price concerns you, and if they have any upgrades available - they will usually throw in a free processor/ram/warranty upgrade as these things are relatively cheap for them depending on the time of year. I'm about to buy my girlfriend a Dell Mini 12 for Christmas (she only uses laptops for Office, Web, Messenger and Skype) and see what deals are available. While my Dell relationship has been great there have been moments where I had unsatisfactory customer service. I got industrious and tracked down the email addresses of CTO and head of Australia (I'm an Aussie) and shot them an email expressing my frustration. I was promptly contacted by a top level Sales assistant (who was Aussie, not outsourced - apparently there's only a few of these dudes) who sorted things out very quickly and threw in some stuff to boot. I would recommend them to anyone as long as it's understood that they are out there to make money like any other company, and you have to approach them looking for a bargain that's not advertised. This works best if you have a history of purchases, are placing a large order, or mention that you're a "decision maker" regarding hardware purchases in a technology company (if that's the case).
evdawg 18y ago
Hey, I've been casually following your blog but didn't know you lived here in Toronto. Good stuff!
dchest 18y ago
Good for him. I own three Macs (iBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air) and two of them broke a few times. I live in Russia and Apple's service is terrible here. I have waited more than 50 days for a replacement part (battery) for my Air to arrive, and -- since it didn't arrive -- thanks to the local law, got a replacement Air. It broke two months later (sound card) -- it's been in service for three weeks now. My MacBook Pro's hard drive failed -- it took two weeks to replace it, and I paid for it even though I had a warranty (they said it was my fault that the HDD failed). The next week after warranty expired the battery broke, and I had to buy a new one. Even though they had a recall program for batteries that broke with the same symptoms, my battery was not eligible for recall because of a different serial number. My girlfriend waited 5 (!) months for a replacement battery for her MacBook to arrive. (Local laws that require no more than 45 days for repair didn't work in that case, because she bought her MacBook in Scotland.) Ask me why I still love Apple products. I don't know. Ask me why I have three Macs. It's because one of them is always being repaired.
jyothi 18y ago
What is also important about the recently numerous gaga stories about how great apple treated them at their service centers is - "Why is that there are so many complaints?", first place. I own a Mac and I am definitely pleased by their support. My hard disk crashed, top case chipped away due to a bad design in this version, Apple happily replaced this all in a day, in India. And as I write this my RAM is beeping indicating some hardware problem yet again and it has been just around a year. Now am I happy, definitely "No". You can't be making 10 trips to the apple store and still feel good just about how they treat you. For the same money I could have bought a Dell or a HP, threw it away when i was not happy and bought another one. I would have still saved some money.
andr 18y ago
I don't mean to be rude, but every day thousands of people around the world visit their local Genius bar. And as much as you want to think that your Genius was just awfully nice, they ARE following strict guidelines about what they can and can't do. Not exactly news.
- potatolicious 18y ago
  I think the point here is how they stack up with the competition. I had a unique experience a while back as my roommate had to fix his Dell at the same time I had to fix my Apple. He spent... well, almost a full work day (!) on the phone, arguing with one rep or another, convincing them that something had broken, before they sent a tech out (to their credit, it was fixed then). I spent... 10 minutes. I called, told them about the problems I was having, asked for a repair-via-mail, was promptly granted it, gave them my address, and was on my way. Yeah, it took 4 days longer than his method, but I saved myself some pretty major aggravation.
  - woodsier 18y ago
    "May I please speak to a supervisor" - magic words! From my experience you can also ask to speak with the Gold tech support guys who are local to your country (that's the case in Australia anyway). This is regarding Dell support, btw.
somabc 18y ago
Two things make me think Apple are not giving such great service - 1) A simple firmware update rendered your screen unusuable 2) They only replaced your battery because they had sold you a faulty battery in the first place. They are not being nice they are fixing mistakes that should never have been made in the first place.
- potatolicious 18y ago
  But the truth of the matter is that these mistakes will be made, regardless, by everyone, not just Apple. Laptops in general have a failure rate that is actually pretty high. Given that no matter where I go I can't avoid things being potentially broken, I'd rather be well taken care of, instead of not.
  - somabc 18y ago
    Yes but I am saying we should not accept these mistakes, they are not inevitable but down to flaws in manufacturing and quality control. As a premium product these mistakes should not have occurred. Apple make a choice to allow a certain failure rate or to skip testing of updates as getting it right 1st time is not as profitable as allowing mistakes which may or may not be cleared up at the Apple Store.
    - potatolicious 18y ago
      To think that these mistakes can be eliminated entirely is somewhat delusional. Yes, Apple could be doing more to increase the quality of their products, more rigorous testing, etc etc, but in the end there is an engineering limitation to how far they can take this. Things breaking down, or manufacturing defects, can be reduced, but never eliminated. So there are currently two choices in the market: - Things that break down often, with no customer support. - Things that break down often, with great customer support. I think it's pretty clear which one I'd choose :)
- GHFigs 18y ago
  Those are quality assurance issues, not customer service. Both factor into your satisfaction with a product, but they are not the same thing. Even though the ideal is both, it's entirely possible to have great QA but shitty CS, or shitty QA and great CS, and still have happy and loyal customers. It's impossible (or at least extremely impractical) to have perfection in either. This story is about a positive customer service experience, where 1) the service person lacked a prescribed solution to the original (firmware/screen) problem, but the customer left satisfied and 2) the service person was attentive enough to solve a second problem (out of warranty, at company expense) that the customer hadn't even expressed as a complaint. If you can't see why that's uncommonly good service, you're not paying attention. Of course it's not that way all the time, at every location, for every customer, but it indicates Apple's atypical strategy of having their own retail stores with that kind of one-on-one support is one that can have atypically big pay off in customer satisfaction. For comparison, Best Buy's GeekSquad would have charged the customer a minimum of $50 to even look at the problem, and on the off chance they even knew about the recalled battery, would not have been able to replace the it on the spot for free. Local shops are mostly the same story. In short, the author could not have had had the same loyalty-generating positive experience with any other brand of computer.
yef 18y ago
You're happy that you got a new battery for a laptop you can't use? I don't get it. I have gotten good service at Apple stores, and (as in life) it pays to be nice to the person you're dealing with. Overall, however, I find them fairly confusing; hard to find stuff, don't know where to pay, etc.
unalone 18y ago
The store near where I live in New Jersey extended its hours to help me when my computer melted. I had a pretty severe problem and I was panicking - didn't have time to make an appointment - and they stayed open an extra half hour to make sure everything went okay. It was incredibly kind of them. An undercover retail article said that Apple Store employees are given an incredible amount of freedom in the store: they're allowed to roam around and talk to customers however they see fit. The idea is that if you hire a Mac fan, train him only minimally, and free him from any sort of store restraint, then he'll be much more responsive to customers. It's a really smart idea and in my experience, it works.
psyklic 18y ago
"My laptop stopped displaying anything on its LCD." I had a Gateway (acquired by MPC), same thing happened three months ago. I sent it in after an on-site repairman couldn't fix it. Two months later, MPC doesn't answer their phone and doesn't reply to emails. In fact, MPC filed bankruptcy earlier this month, so it looks like my laptop is in limbo.

21 points by acangiano 18y ago

Tichy 18y ago

How Dell visited me This was two years ago. Unfortunately since then I did not have any troubles with my Notebook, so I had no opportunity to call in the Dell support. Actually back then I did not have a problem either, but I was not sure about that. My notebook's hard drive would emit a faint clicking sound occasionally - only noticeable because being fanless, this was the only noise the notebook would create at all. Apparently it is normal, but when I called Dell about it, they insisted on exchanging the drive just in case. Because I was contracting at the time, they offered to come around to the office at the company where I worked. When the Dell technician arrived the next day, I went into an empty room with him and he exchanged the hard drive within minutes. Then he left. My notebook has worked without any problems ever since. I didn't tell my girl-friend about it, because she doesn't care, but whenever I see a chance to recommend a Dell product, I wholeheartedly do so. Hm, this would have made a great blog post, but now I wasted the story on HN already. Ah well...

acangiano 18y ago
It's not a zero-sum game. :)
andr 18y ago
+1. My Dell fan was full of dust, so the notebook started overheating. I asked Dell (over their online chat) if it can be replaced and two days later a technician knocked on my door and took care of it. Total time wasted: 10 minutes. PS I didn't even have to pay for the warranty, as you can usually get a 3-year at-home warranty from Dell for free.
woodsier 18y ago
When my XPS M1530 arrived the screen was grainy. They came out the next day and replaced it in 10 minutes. I asked if they could come later at night (around 7pm) which is outside the scope of their free care, however because the order arrived 2 days later than their website estimate they did it for free. Also an additional thing with Dell - when ordering something always ring up and talk to a rep before completing the order. Mention you're interested in purchasing in future if all goes well, but the price concerns you, and if they have any upgrades available - they will usually throw in a free processor/ram/warranty upgrade as these things are relatively cheap for them depending on the time of year. I'm about to buy my girlfriend a Dell Mini 12 for Christmas (she only uses laptops for Office, Web, Messenger and Skype) and see what deals are available. While my Dell relationship has been great there have been moments where I had unsatisfactory customer service. I got industrious and tracked down the email addresses of CTO and head of Australia (I'm an Aussie) and shot them an email expressing my frustration. I was promptly contacted by a top level Sales assistant (who was Aussie, not outsourced - apparently there's only a few of these dudes) who sorted things out very quickly and threw in some stuff to boot. I would recommend them to anyone as long as it's understood that they are out there to make money like any other company, and you have to approach them looking for a bargain that's not advertised. This works best if you have a history of purchases, are placing a large order, or mention that you're a "decision maker" regarding hardware purchases in a technology company (if that's the case).

evdawg 18y ago

Hey, I've been casually following your blog but didn't know you lived here in Toronto. Good stuff!

dchest 18y ago

Good for him. I own three Macs (iBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air) and two of them broke a few times. I live in Russia and Apple's service is terrible here. I have waited more than 50 days for a replacement part (battery) for my Air to arrive, and -- since it didn't arrive -- thanks to the local law, got a replacement Air. It broke two months later (sound card) -- it's been in service for three weeks now. My MacBook Pro's hard drive failed -- it took two weeks to replace it, and I paid for it even though I had a warranty (they said it was my fault that the HDD failed). The next week after warranty expired the battery broke, and I had to buy a new one. Even though they had a recall program for batteries that broke with the same symptoms, my battery was not eligible for recall because of a different serial number. My girlfriend waited 5 (!) months for a replacement battery for her MacBook to arrive. (Local laws that require no more than 45 days for repair didn't work in that case, because she bought her MacBook in Scotland.) Ask me why I still love Apple products. I don't know. Ask me why I have three Macs. It's because one of them is always being repaired.

jyothi 18y ago

What is also important about the recently numerous gaga stories about how great apple treated them at their service centers is - "Why is that there are so many complaints?", first place. I own a Mac and I am definitely pleased by their support. My hard disk crashed, top case chipped away due to a bad design in this version, Apple happily replaced this all in a day, in India. And as I write this my RAM is beeping indicating some hardware problem yet again and it has been just around a year. Now am I happy, definitely "No". You can't be making 10 trips to the apple store and still feel good just about how they treat you. For the same money I could have bought a Dell or a HP, threw it away when i was not happy and bought another one. I would have still saved some money.

andr 18y ago

I don't mean to be rude, but every day thousands of people around the world visit their local Genius bar. And as much as you want to think that your Genius was just awfully nice, they ARE following strict guidelines about what they can and can't do. Not exactly news.

potatolicious 18y ago
I think the point here is how they stack up with the competition. I had a unique experience a while back as my roommate had to fix his Dell at the same time I had to fix my Apple. He spent... well, almost a full work day (!) on the phone, arguing with one rep or another, convincing them that something had broken, before they sent a tech out (to their credit, it was fixed then). I spent... 10 minutes. I called, told them about the problems I was having, asked for a repair-via-mail, was promptly granted it, gave them my address, and was on my way. Yeah, it took 4 days longer than his method, but I saved myself some pretty major aggravation.
- woodsier 18y ago
  "May I please speak to a supervisor" - magic words! From my experience you can also ask to speak with the Gold tech support guys who are local to your country (that's the case in Australia anyway). This is regarding Dell support, btw.

somabc 18y ago

Two things make me think Apple are not giving such great service - 1) A simple firmware update rendered your screen unusuable 2) They only replaced your battery because they had sold you a faulty battery in the first place. They are not being nice they are fixing mistakes that should never have been made in the first place.

potatolicious 18y ago
But the truth of the matter is that these mistakes will be made, regardless, by everyone, not just Apple. Laptops in general have a failure rate that is actually pretty high. Given that no matter where I go I can't avoid things being potentially broken, I'd rather be well taken care of, instead of not.
- somabc 18y ago
  Yes but I am saying we should not accept these mistakes, they are not inevitable but down to flaws in manufacturing and quality control. As a premium product these mistakes should not have occurred. Apple make a choice to allow a certain failure rate or to skip testing of updates as getting it right 1st time is not as profitable as allowing mistakes which may or may not be cleared up at the Apple Store.
  - potatolicious 18y ago
    To think that these mistakes can be eliminated entirely is somewhat delusional. Yes, Apple could be doing more to increase the quality of their products, more rigorous testing, etc etc, but in the end there is an engineering limitation to how far they can take this. Things breaking down, or manufacturing defects, can be reduced, but never eliminated. So there are currently two choices in the market: - Things that break down often, with no customer support. - Things that break down often, with great customer support. I think it's pretty clear which one I'd choose :)
GHFigs 18y ago
Those are quality assurance issues, not customer service. Both factor into your satisfaction with a product, but they are not the same thing. Even though the ideal is both, it's entirely possible to have great QA but shitty CS, or shitty QA and great CS, and still have happy and loyal customers. It's impossible (or at least extremely impractical) to have perfection in either. This story is about a positive customer service experience, where 1) the service person lacked a prescribed solution to the original (firmware/screen) problem, but the customer left satisfied and 2) the service person was attentive enough to solve a second problem (out of warranty, at company expense) that the customer hadn't even expressed as a complaint. If you can't see why that's uncommonly good service, you're not paying attention. Of course it's not that way all the time, at every location, for every customer, but it indicates Apple's atypical strategy of having their own retail stores with that kind of one-on-one support is one that can have atypically big pay off in customer satisfaction. For comparison, Best Buy's GeekSquad would have charged the customer a minimum of $50 to even look at the problem, and on the off chance they even knew about the recalled battery, would not have been able to replace the it on the spot for free. Local shops are mostly the same story. In short, the author could not have had had the same loyalty-generating positive experience with any other brand of computer.

yef 18y ago

You're happy that you got a new battery for a laptop you can't use? I don't get it. I have gotten good service at Apple stores, and (as in life) it pays to be nice to the person you're dealing with. Overall, however, I find them fairly confusing; hard to find stuff, don't know where to pay, etc.

unalone 18y ago

The store near where I live in New Jersey extended its hours to help me when my computer melted. I had a pretty severe problem and I was panicking - didn't have time to make an appointment - and they stayed open an extra half hour to make sure everything went okay. It was incredibly kind of them. An undercover retail article said that Apple Store employees are given an incredible amount of freedom in the store: they're allowed to roam around and talk to customers however they see fit. The idea is that if you hire a Mac fan, train him only minimally, and free him from any sort of store restraint, then he'll be much more responsive to customers. It's a really smart idea and in my experience, it works.

psyklic 18y ago

"My laptop stopped displaying anything on its LCD." I had a Gateway (acquired by MPC), same thing happened three months ago. I sent it in after an on-site repairman couldn't fix it. Two months later, MPC doesn't answer their phone and doesn't reply to emails. In fact, MPC filed bankruptcy earlier this month, so it looks like my laptop is in limbo.