I apologize if this isn't quite the right place, I couldn't really figure out where this discussion should be placed.
I would love to hear about the experiences of those of you who live in countries or regions without any reasonable access to an Apple store. How do you find the follow on support and customer service experience? I figure that I cannot be the only one who is growing more and more frustrated by the apparent inequality of service between those that can walk into a store and those that cannot.
On another forum that I frequent, there is an iPad group, and pretty much every week someone will post about how their iPad dropped and got broken, or their battery doesn't seem to be holding as much charge. This is the cue for others to pipe up and chant "take it to the apple store" and then they each give their experience of when they dropped their iPhone/ipod/ipad and it was totally their own fault but the lovely man replaced it with a brand new one!
I've also seen mention of the same kind of thing here a lot, and that the apple store policy is pretty much to just replace anything and everything to keep the customer happy. My own experience with living in a country that doesn't have an apple store isn't so great.
My iMac HD died on me a few years ago, less than a year into ownership. I took it in to the resellers store for repair and it was sent away to some third party service provider. It came back with a new? HD installed and my old HD with a note that I could spend $500nz to have the information from my old HD transferred onto my new one. uh no thanks? (I had no backups sadly, and lost many photographs and some software purchases) When I got the iMac home I had to install the OS myself, not a major issue, but it was time fluffing around when really shouldn't I have just got a computer with everything ready to go? and did they even test this before sending it back? After that it was always noisier than it had been. The HD was louder, I didn't actually check on what kind it was, but it was definitely louder and seemed slower to me. I do still wonder if it wasn't just some cheap HD.
From what I understand, the Apple store experience would have had me taking my iMac in for a look see, and walking out of there with a brand new replacement.
Second experience with repairs was on my 2009 MBP. The charger was playing up, the connection wasn't holding and the charge was going on and off before finally not spitting out any charge at all. It was close to christmas (two weeks) when this happened. I was thinking holidays, without second computer??? nooooo so I took it into the apple resellers. I told them it was the charger, they insisted that we send everything away. I said can't we just try with another charger here? I'll be happy to just buy it so we can have the computer at home. Nope, couldn't do that because it might be a computer fault. And they had no chargers they could try it on.
I asked, what about the display machines? how do you charge those. Was told they were a different charger and wouldn't work on mine (face palm) mine was the white sticky out magsafe, the ones in store were the newer model toothbrush shaped ones. So fine, I surrender my laptop and don't see it again for FIVE weeks because of the holidays. They tested it, declared it was the charger and replaced it. When I got it back I asked if the battery had been checked over and if it was ok, I was worried that with a faulty charger that the battery might have been affected, I was told it was fine because it turned on when they took a look. Never mind that fact that it had done three times the number of cycles a battery of that age should have done.
As far as I know, apple store would check the charger right then and there, and replace it. And would throw in a new laptop battery too if you expressed concern that the faulty charging and compromised its lifespan.
Where we live, if your iPod stops working, it's simply better to go buy a new one. If you did attempt to take it back to the resellers, they would laugh at you and say buy a new one. They can't even offer a deal for you to replace a broken apple item at a cheaper rate. My latest Apple purchases have all been through the online Apple store, because I am so fed up with the third party service. But from what I have read, getting any kind of satisfaction via the online stores, seems not assured.
So has anyone got a positive story to tell about getting great service for apple products when a genius bar isn't involved? And Apple if you're out there, dudes step the game up. If you don't want to open retail stores all over the world, at least set up an official Apple service depot and stop tendering it out to third party agencies who don't give a **** about customer experience and only care about their bottom $
I would love to hear about the experiences of those of you who live in countries or regions without any reasonable access to an Apple store. How do you find the follow on support and customer service experience? I figure that I cannot be the only one who is growing more and more frustrated by the apparent inequality of service between those that can walk into a store and those that cannot.
On another forum that I frequent, there is an iPad group, and pretty much every week someone will post about how their iPad dropped and got broken, or their battery doesn't seem to be holding as much charge. This is the cue for others to pipe up and chant "take it to the apple store" and then they each give their experience of when they dropped their iPhone/ipod/ipad and it was totally their own fault but the lovely man replaced it with a brand new one!
I've also seen mention of the same kind of thing here a lot, and that the apple store policy is pretty much to just replace anything and everything to keep the customer happy. My own experience with living in a country that doesn't have an apple store isn't so great.
My iMac HD died on me a few years ago, less than a year into ownership. I took it in to the resellers store for repair and it was sent away to some third party service provider. It came back with a new? HD installed and my old HD with a note that I could spend $500nz to have the information from my old HD transferred onto my new one. uh no thanks? (I had no backups sadly, and lost many photographs and some software purchases) When I got the iMac home I had to install the OS myself, not a major issue, but it was time fluffing around when really shouldn't I have just got a computer with everything ready to go? and did they even test this before sending it back? After that it was always noisier than it had been. The HD was louder, I didn't actually check on what kind it was, but it was definitely louder and seemed slower to me. I do still wonder if it wasn't just some cheap HD.
From what I understand, the Apple store experience would have had me taking my iMac in for a look see, and walking out of there with a brand new replacement.
Second experience with repairs was on my 2009 MBP. The charger was playing up, the connection wasn't holding and the charge was going on and off before finally not spitting out any charge at all. It was close to christmas (two weeks) when this happened. I was thinking holidays, without second computer??? nooooo so I took it into the apple resellers. I told them it was the charger, they insisted that we send everything away. I said can't we just try with another charger here? I'll be happy to just buy it so we can have the computer at home. Nope, couldn't do that because it might be a computer fault. And they had no chargers they could try it on.
I asked, what about the display machines? how do you charge those. Was told they were a different charger and wouldn't work on mine (face palm) mine was the white sticky out magsafe, the ones in store were the newer model toothbrush shaped ones. So fine, I surrender my laptop and don't see it again for FIVE weeks because of the holidays. They tested it, declared it was the charger and replaced it. When I got it back I asked if the battery had been checked over and if it was ok, I was worried that with a faulty charger that the battery might have been affected, I was told it was fine because it turned on when they took a look. Never mind that fact that it had done three times the number of cycles a battery of that age should have done.
As far as I know, apple store would check the charger right then and there, and replace it. And would throw in a new laptop battery too if you expressed concern that the faulty charging and compromised its lifespan.
Where we live, if your iPod stops working, it's simply better to go buy a new one. If you did attempt to take it back to the resellers, they would laugh at you and say buy a new one. They can't even offer a deal for you to replace a broken apple item at a cheaper rate. My latest Apple purchases have all been through the online Apple store, because I am so fed up with the third party service. But from what I have read, getting any kind of satisfaction via the online stores, seems not assured.
So has anyone got a positive story to tell about getting great service for apple products when a genius bar isn't involved? And Apple if you're out there, dudes step the game up. If you don't want to open retail stores all over the world, at least set up an official Apple service depot and stop tendering it out to third party agencies who don't give a **** about customer experience and only care about their bottom $
). We also got the head tech guy to come and fix anything that went wrong at home on site rather than taking it in, which was awesome. 
