CrunchGear

I guess I am the only one that has found that Apple’s service has actually gotten better. I guess people can’t remember past a few years ago.

So what do you do in this situation? If you’re Bill Gates, you sit back and enjoy a private chuckle.

Like Microsoft’s stunningly successful support model is one worth imitating.

Hate sounding like a fanboy here… I really do… but I just had a marvelous (no hyperbole) experience with Apple customer service yesterday. Without dragging everyone through the details, online store purchase has problem with shipping a gift to a faraway friend due to credit card protections. 1st Apple CSR merely quotes policy, which doesn’t help. Request for supervisor opinion not only solves problem, but he offers to pay for free overnight shipping, just for my troubles.

Dunno ’bout you — but I can’t remember the last time a merchant/manufacturer *really* cared about my “troubles” in doing business with them.

In terms of “Just getting my stuff to me in a timely manner,” i can’t fault apple. Luckily I’ve never really had to fight with their customer support staff.

I wasn’t impressed by apple customer support. They told us that they (apple) have no plans to make iTunes compatable with 4G iPods on Vista.

When I ordered my MacBook Pro a few months ago, my credit card approved the actual computer cost - and declined the shipping. It showed up on the order as cancelled, and I called them and they explained the situation to me and went ahead and waived the shipping fee ($50 or so - don’t recall?) and got my computer to me.

Yeah, it is the logical thing to do - send a $3000 computer and waive whatever shipping - but most companies will never cut you a break.

Apple isn’t perfect - but it’s far better in all my experiences.

Apple has a history of dropping support for older hardware and software.
But, I would say this is the norm for the computer industry.
I myself have had good experiences with Apple support. They do seem interested in supporting their products.

I’m also a bit concerned, not about support because I never use it, but I hope Apple not will turn out as all the pc giants (like Dell and Microsoft), stop being intuitive and just focus on marketing worthless crap nobody wants (*cough* vista *cough*).
I also hope Apple don’t change to much focus from making Computers to making phones etc

I have had great service with Apple. I got an ipod touch and the battery life lasted 4.5 hours with video instead of the five they said it would. And I took it in to the store and 10 min later walked out with a brand new one.

the sky isn’t falling chicken little. Problems like these are happy problems. It’s a problem you’d rather have, than never. It means customers are more passionate and demand more, and current systems are not equipped enough to address it.

in other words, its a problem that can easily be pointed out and therefore can be creatively solved.

I recently switched my entire network to Apple and I have nothing but praise for Apple customer service. No other vendor has a free service like the Apple Geniuses. My daughter ran into some issues on her Mac Book Pro and the Mac Geniuses worked with her for 2 hours, showed her how to backup her files and re-install OS-X, for free! For the few times I have contacted AppleCare, the technicians have been US-based, english speaking, well-educated, friendly, and excellent at diagnosing and resolving issues, and willing to spend time helping you. This experience is in stark contrast to my experience with other computer vendors, who use offshore technical support that are poorly trained, read from scripts (”Is your computer plugged in”), are difficult to understand, and are incenitvised to process the largest number of customers, rather than solve customer issues.

Bill Gates may enjoy a private chuckle, especially because his Windows is so ornery to configure to iPods.

Apple has done a great job with making their ‘different’ operating system connected enough to survive. The Safari browser, Mac style, and the media background are all in effect.

Metcalf’s Law must be held high.

I have a powerbook g4, it wouldn’t hold a charge and would shut down. I had changed the battery 3 times already in the past 3 years. and the charger had been changed. I took it to apple and they told me they don’t know what it is. Put in a new battery and it worked perfectly. However, they wouldn’t give me the new battery, unless i showed them proof that I purchased this battery. “do you have a receit?” who keeps those things, and what is the purpose of serial numbers, so you can TRACK IT! So they denied me even though he could have just typed the serial number in there system.

First of all its not fair that apple charges canadians more for products when our dollar is practically worth more or is just about the same now!

When i returned my iPod Touch they never gave me back all my money!!! they only gave me back the american price???????????

That is very bad customer service!! If i am not happy with a product i expect all my money back like EVERYONE ELSE! (by the way, they stole 50 bucks from me)

I WANT MY MONEY APPLE…i think you’v made enough!

I think apple has some of the best customer service in the business, but I have definitely noticed a decrease in the knowledge/quality of phone-based support over the past few months.

For example, one friend told me that when her Mail became corrupted, she spent hours on the phone with tech support, and ultimately was told “It’s all corrupt, you’ve lost it all.”

I asked her: “Aren’t you running Apple’s Backup software?”, “Yes”, “Did you tell them that?”, “Yes.”

They flat out told her that her mail couldn’t be restored from the backup. I walked her through the restore using Backup in about 5 minutes on the phone, and all her mail was back, perfectly.

Another good friend brought me her laptop saying it was super–slow. I checked it out, ran DiskWarrior, found the hard drive was completely shot. I told her it needed to be replaced and that it was eligible under AppleCare.

She waited for hours at the Apple store, “Genuis” told her that it wasn’t hardware, but software causing the problem, and they can’t help.

A week later, many hours on the phone with support, she was issued a mail-in-repair. What a waste!

I recently bought a MacBook Pro, which shipped to me weeks late direct from China, only to have it arrive missing the plastic filter in back of the laptop (I could poke at the exposed motherboard). The LED backlight? Horribly uneven with the bottom much brighter than the top. 4 dead/stuck pixels. And it got so hot I literally couldn’t even touch the bottom for more than 5 seconds without getting burned.

With all these problems, I had to argue with Apple support for 3 days to get my money back. To be fair, I eventually did, but their phone support and store support is a shadow of what it used to be. Apple is just turning into another profit-is-god company and I for one am going with ASUS next time.

Let’s see if I can explain this to you:

Business week on October 22 decides to run a story about a report that came out at the beginning of August — Why?

If you saw the study, which I did, then you saw that Apple even while loosing points in customer support was well above it’s nearest competitor in each category. While Apple’s computer sales have grown by almost 27% (26.8% — 5.21% market share Oct 06, 6.61% Sept 07: which for the record is almost 10 times not 3 times the industry growth rate) over the last year their installed base increased only about 6% — this has not significantly stressed their support channels. What did change over this last year was the transition away from PowerPC chips to Intel chips and while the transition has been much smoother than I ever imagined it has not been without hickups. OS 9 can no longer run on new Macs (and I’m one of the people that got burned by that), There was a battery recall (not Apple’s error BTW) and a few other User experience issues. Perhaps they’ll become chronic, perhaps not. The Business week story could have read: One year after one of the largest hardware transitions in history Apple’s customer satisfaction stays remarkably high, but of course that wasn’t the point.

The point is the iPhone which, if it hasn’t already, is going to easily exceed the boldest projections of 2 million sold by January 08 — Apple’s getting uppity and the entrenched players don’t like it so they start ginning up a backlash movement. Apple’s bricked their iPhones (how many: 10%? 5%? less than 5%? less than 1%? ding ding ding) — Apple is draconian and heavy handed. Apple slashes the price on their iPhone (isn’t this a good thing? NO!!! they screwed those people that were willing to pay more!!! — $100 discount coupon? Bah!). They’re gaining moment up; All the little insecure PC weenies who hate the iPhone because of their own fractured egos and/or out of a false sense of panty-wasted moral relativistic equity (”everyone has their choices none is really better than the other — it just depends”) have jumped on board. Happy iPhone owners have learned to say things like, “I love my iPhone and even though Apple screwed me on the price it was worth it for that month of bragging rights”. The campaign is working, the fires must be stoked, calls are placed to sympathetic journalists appealing to the same character weaknesses that inflame the Mac haters; a suggestion is made, “hey, you know people aren’t happy with Apple any more; There’s a major back lash coming because of their over reaching and heavy handedness: did you happen to see that customer satisfaction report from early August? No. I’ll send it to you — It proves that Apple has lost interest in supporting it’s customers” And the journalist plays along, partly aware he’s being played partly, secretly, wanting to put ole Smarty pants Steve Jobs, in his place, knock Apple down a peg or to. It proves, in his own little mind, that he has power too.

If you see this and know what’s going on you either keep it to yourself of get labeled a flame bating Mac fan boy.

Oh, well, I calls em as I sees em.

A couple of points. Fair warning that I like Apple but also that I don’t necessarily love them blindly. No one and nothing should be blindly loved ever.

I read the BW article twice and didn’t see any substance to their claims. I am typing this on my new, company-supplied iMac but it has parallels and we use Windows XP, Linux and BSD also. We’re switching over to Mac for corporate IT because we’re small and frankly we don’t need an IT empire within the company - we just need smart, fast computers that don’t get in the way of doing our business. Wintel usually does in our experience.

Compared to dealing with Dell or HP, let’s get real on the customer service problem space here. I used to work for HP so I know intimately about the internals of their support structures and their design. On both a percentage of product units sold and product revenue sold, Apple is still doing far better.

Apple has never historically been selling through direct channels until the advent of the Apple store. This is part of why they’ve failed to get into business IT, but that’s another discussion. Dispite this they’ve done surprisingly well in retail. Other companies like HP won’t go retail partly because they sense they would suck even worse if they did.

I think the biggest mistake they’ve made is appologizing for making money on the iPhone by giving a rebate. That’s just silly - all new technologies start off expensive and get cheaper over time. If you don’t want to be paying for that new technology, then don’t; wait until the price comes down and face the fact that you are not an Early Adopter and that you are risk averse. It’s OK. The majority of the population is just like you and that how it is.

What’s really sad is that Apple is the only computer company actually creating new technology (which is not cheap so you have to charge for it) while the rest of the industry isn’t (I left HP shortly after a VP told me that “We’ll let Intel do our hardware R&D and Microsoft do our software R&D while we’ll own the supply chain” - yeah right, that’s sustainable! Not! You’re financials prove it.). If you are an investor in any of these companies you’ll know that all of the companies in PC industry but Apple are making low single digit profits (sometimes positive) while Apple is consistently performing in double digits. So if you’re mutual funds and 401k are investing in Apple (as they should) you are doing better when Apple does better.

That said, if you think you are getting ripped off, look at the comments above and then look in the mirror. Most folks have good experiences. The few that don’t seem to be the cause of their own problems. The older I get the more people I see who claim to be victims actually fall into the latter. I used to feel sorry for these people but I don’t any more.

> This is leading to stress in the customer service area of Apple’s reputation.

Matt, the article you cite as a source contains nothing to back up this claim. Did you even read it? Do you have an actual source or is Crunchgear fine with being no more credible than any other blog out there?

More MS waterboys towing the line: Here’s an interesting read funny how this isn’t splashed all over the internet:

http://rixstep.com/1/1/20071014,00.shtml

More MS waterboys carrying the water: Here’s an interesting read funny how this isn’t splashed all over the internet:

http://rixstep.com/1/1/20071014,00.shtml

@JS

What? an article about microsoft being vulnerable to malware?? yeah, the internet is a bit deficit on articles about that 0.o

Saying whether or not a company cares about their customers is a very difficult claim to make. In order to do so there are a lot of different things to consider.

It all depends upon the individual. Getting an employee geared up to actually *want* to care about a customer is a miracle in and of itself, and considering that Apple has the highest customer service rating in the computer industry, sometimes you just have to roll with the punches. It isn’t as simple as “punching in a serial number”. There are certain warranty conditions to be considered. If you actually took the time to read your warranty then you wouldn’t be so angry about the “lack of customer service”.

And for all of the people complaining about their $600 iPhones… STFU. Please. Do you think Microsoft would have given you back anything for it? Or ANY other company for that matter? Maybe it wasn’t the most strategic of all plans, but I know more than anyone on this board how pissed off early iPhone buyers were about the price drop. You can’t just expect the red carpet to roll out because you got shafted.

The main problem is those high customer satisfaction ratings are in part due to blind allegiance. Apple customers are likely to rate Apple higher than Dell customers will rate Dell when the level of service may be exactly the same.

The question is how much it’s going to take to remove the infatuation users have and whether ratings are dropping due to disillusionment or an actual decrease in service.

“What? an article about microsoft being vulnerable to malware??”

No. It seems to be a comment on the expose of the RBN. Yes it’s the same old story but those Windows frigtards still don’t listen, do they? And besides: it’s about how bad things have become. A situation out of control. Try reading an article next time. It might clarify a few things. That’s why there are more letters and stuff BELOW the headline. ;)

Apple stores make me feel lonely.

I have to say I was impressed by Apple’s customer service that I encountered just last week. After buying a new iPod Nano (3rd gen), returning it due to the fact that is had a crooked screen, and then getting a second one with the same problem, I sent an email to Steve Jobs (friendly yet concerned note, waxing on about concerns over Apples quality lately). Never expecting a response, imagine my surprize when I received a phone call from executive support from apple. The gal was very helpful and I ended up with a perfect ipod with the minimal of fuss.

All this, for $150 unit– the cheapest nano they make.

RE:# Arturo - October 13th, 2007 at 9:59 am

“I recently switched my entire network to Apple and I have nothing but praise for Apple customer service. No other vendor has a free service like the Apple Geniuses. My daughter ran into some issues on her Mac Book Pro and the Mac Geniuses worked with her for 2 hours, showed her how to backup her files and re-install OS-X, for free! For the few times I have contacted AppleCare, the technicians have been US-based, english speaking……”

I hate to burst your bubble there, Arturo, but a big portion of Apple’s Tech Support is based in Canada, where the diversity would probably shock you.

re: itech, “I hate to burst your bubble there, Arturo, but a big portion of Apple’s Tech Support is based in Canada, where the diversity would probably shock you.”

so? Diversity - oh no. Canadians buy our computers as well ya know.. hmmm- let me think - everyone in the world can buy a mac…. so maybe their tech support being diverse isn’t a bad thing - but funny - they have only gotten english speakers - wow - must have pressed 1 for english. Makes sense to me - I owned a dell a few years back for work - when I called support I never once got some one I could totally understand - but I never really cared about that - most of the time they solved my troubles - but apple support has always been faster for me.

Ordered Ipod touch on 12th september stolen on route still waiting for a replacement.WORST COMPANY I HAVE EVER DEALT WITH

Do you have any idea how repugnant you come across?

Do you have any idea how repugnant you are?

I bought a Macbook in May and have loved it. Several weeks ago something went wrong that nobody could figure out so they put a brand-spankin new hard drive in it. I let this guy piddle with it for a week and nothing, but I had it back within 3 days from an actual Apple center in Memphis.

Well, I’ve had the thing back a week and now my computer doesn’t even detect a hard drive.

While I can’t fault Apple in their turnaround for a product, I’m really wondering how worth my investment was if it’s crapped out twice within three weeks, less than six months after getting it.

Hey you know what you should do to really improve the Ipod into something even more mobile and portible also comfortable is that you should make wireless head phones that sync to the Ipod and work on a frquency built into the Ipod wirelessly.