[IP] Re: a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

________________________________________
From: mark seiden-via mac [mis@seiden.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 4:10 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] a personal rant on Apple and their customer nasty behavior

yes, the whole thing is annoyingly dysfunctional, particularly given
that i'm a current
cingular customer with a windows mobile phone i'm ready to throw at
the wall.

last night i had a similar experience at the burlingame, ca apple store.

a woman walking out said she only waited half an hour ("not bad").
there wasn't a long line.  but i hungrily decided to go to dinner first.

wrong.

when i got back, there was no line, and nobody was making eye contact.

when i finally got someone's attention, they said they were sold out
for the day.
there wasn't a sign or anything.   "if there isn't a line that means
we don't have any".

of course, there's no way to pay for one and come back the next day
and activate and
pick it up.  you need to make n trips, for an unknown and possibly
large value of n.

at apple.com, they have a way to check ("after 9pm") if your store
will have stock the
next day, but it's useless.

so i decided to try the att store instead.   the web site says "phone
first" to make sure about availability.
but when you call everyone is busy serving customers, so there's no
way to talk with anybody
at the store.   unless maybe they are sold out.

On Jul 16, 2008, at 9:57 AM, David Farber wrote:

> I went to my local apple store to see about getting a new iPhone
> (and giving my old one to my son). Last week was a zoo and so today
> the line was short-- maybe 15 people. So I asked about coming back
> latter. They said that even now the line would talke 2 hrs !!! and
> that even if I was on the line they could not assure me that there
> would be a unit available at the end of 2 hours.
>
> Maybe that leads to good PR with newspapers and photos but I am
> pissed . They make computers and online systems  don't they. Even
> the museums  know how to handle  crowd -- assigned times and
> "inventory control or just handing out tickets for "seats".
>
> Why oh why do I deal with these people. As soon as there is real
> competition I don't intend to .
>
> By the way, the people in the store are GREAT and friendly, they are
> doing what they were told to do not what they would do if left alone.
>
> Dave
>
>
> -------------------------------------------
>




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