How to lose a customer in seven minutes

Posted on | July 1, 2009 | No Comments

So I bought the new iPhone 3GS the day it came out.  As a long time Verizon subscriber I can say their network is superior.  I converted everyone I know to Verizon and ditched them all for the lure of iPhone goodness, and is it good!  Verizon has made a lot of poor choices in the way they cripple their phones and passing on the iPhone was huge.  I have nothing against Verizon, and if they had the iPhone I’d take it on their network any day.  So needless to say, I’m high on Apple’s iPhone awesomeness and then the worst thing that could happen did happen.  My touch screen, specifically a band about a third of the way up, stopped working.  It rendered my phone unusable since it was right over the “dismiss” button and I couldn’t clear the message that popped up.

Now I understand manufacturing defects happen particularly when you overcharge for something and maximize those profits by making your products in a Chinese sweat shop.  Customer service isn’t about how you treat the customer before the sale, it’s how you treat them when something goes wrong.  Using that as our measuring stick Apple failed miserably.  I first went to the AT&T store in Lone Tree at Lincoln and Yosemite by Target.  I bought the phone here and this would be my third visit.  The sales associate took one look at it and said it was broken and that he’d happily replace it but they had none in stock.  Understandable, it is rather popular.  I decided to try the Apple store at Park Meadows Mall.

When you get the the Apple store on a Sunday it’s packed.  You would think Apple were the biggest retailer of computers and gadgets on the planet judging by the number of people here.  They’re not, not even close but they do make some cool stuff and some horribly over hyped crap.  So I speak with someone at Apple and she looks at the phone.  She inspects it like a doctor using the same thing he’d use to look up my nose.  She takes it into the back and confirms two things; there is no water damage and it is broken.  Great, let’s swap it out and I’ll be on my way!  She then proceeds to tell me I’ll need a “genius” appointment and gets me set up on the iMac behind me to schedule one.

I’m starting to fume.  It’s a simple replacement, take one off the shelf, put my sim in it, and send me packing.  No, I have to make an appointment and the earliest is two days away on Tuesday.  At 6 foot 7 inches and about 250 pounds I can be a very intimidating person but rarely do I get angry.  I’m very understanding almost to a fault.  My wife doesn’t like how much it takes to get me actually mad.  I was ready to toss people through walls.  All I wanted was a working phone.  Two days I’d have to wait without my iPhone which in a week, had become the single most important device I owned.

So Tuesday finally rolls around.  I can only describe it as the longest wait since Christmas when I was a kid.  It didn’t seem like it would ever get here.  I get to the store they’re running 5-10 minutes late which just adds to my frustration.  Once I finally get to the “genius” he takes one look at it and says it’s broken.  He said they don’t have replacement screens so he’ll just replace it.  Between his “analysis”, the paperwork and print out, signing things, and swapping it the process was about seven minutes.  Seven minutes is all it took to make me happy but at the same time it’s all it took to prove that overpaying for your computer and gadgets to Apple may not be all it’s cracked up to me.

I get the sex appeal of Apple, it’s undeniable.  There is an outrageous price premium that comes with that though even though Apple has lowered their prices to more modest levels.  Apple should have the best customer service in the industry, after all what are you paying for?  It’s the same cheap Chinese parts in their computers as in Dell regardless of what Mac fans will have you believe.  As a software developer I find the Unix underpinnings appealing but I can get a Dell and Ubuntu and have Linux under the hood and I find it more usable than the very dated Mac OS X.  If this is their customer service why not go cheap.  At least if it were a Dell I could have called up and had them send me a replacement and sent the defective item back.  The process would have been about the same and I would have felt like the wheels were moving.  Instead Apple messed up and made such a simple task infinitely more complicated.

For the record I own an iMac, a Dell machine with Ubuntu, a Windows Dell laptop, an Asus netbook with Windows and Ubuntu (always in Ubuntu), and a smattering of other laptops and desktops.  I’ll say this, the iMac is nice but it’s not much different from Windows and Ubuntu.  It’s another tool at my disposal to solving problems.

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