1. Apple should react exactly like he described until he provides the proof he did indeed ship it and was in the carrier’s hands when the returned item went missing. Otherwise, like i wrote in the original post, how can you fault Apple because every Tom, Dick, and Harry out there will claim the same thing and get a free ”replacement”.
2. It’s funny...OP and you want Apple to allow customers to use their own shipping company......i wonder how many threads we will have on this forum complaining about Apple’s mistreatment of them and how cheap they are!
3. Your anedote is wrong. The cheques were sent out from telecom company, not you. It left the hands of a telecom employee and onto the hands of the carrier. The problem resides with the telecom company (the one who physically walked into mail office and handed off the cheques) and carrier (the one trusted to deliver their goods to you), not you.
That anecdote has nothing to do with THIS thread’s issue. The OP is the one that physically walked into mail office to hand off the item. Did Tim Cook personally get OP’s broken phone and handed it to the mail office to be sent back to Apple? You see the flaw in your anecdote?
4. The issue here is that the fault ALWAYS lies in the person in charge of handling off the product and the carrier. It is NEVER with the the person receiving the product. Now, if the person receiving the product paid for the postage, then that does not always mean the fault shifts to the receiver...the point of origin HAS to show proof that he handed the package off to the carrier. Without this proof, the fault still resides in the “shipper”.
1. Business is not conducted with ego and who is right and who is wrong. Business is conducted with the attitude of trying to figure out the best way for mutual furtherance.
This is not about reactions. This is about processes. Apple would have asked the OP to provide proof that he did indeed ship. I never thought this was ever in question. What is a question though is why must you consistently think that everyone out here is against Apple?
2. I cannot vouch for OP, but I never said I want Apple to allow customers to use their own shipping company. My words were:
"The customer would have used a service they trusted, and then the onus would have vested in the customer. Any problem would then have been between customer and the service they used, not Apple."
How can this possibly translate to I want Apple to allow customers to use their own shipping company?
3. The anecdote is about business partnership and how that changes the equation, it was never about who the shipper and receiver are. As a business, we are there for our customers, even if the fault is not ours. If the customer packs something shoddily, and we receive it damaged, the customer is never going to admit they packed it badly. If we value our customers, we will have to work with them and offer them something - if we want their custom. If it is their fault, we calmly tell them what happened, never blaming them, and helping them with
a way out. It is about helping them. If the customer was not at fault but we were, we admit and do whatever we can to salvage the relationship. If it was the fault of a third party that we paid for, we do what is right by the customer and take it up with our business partner (who we pay). The moment we pay for return postage, we become involved even if we were never at fault, because, for our customer, that return postage is a convenience
we (and not the shipping company) offer to our customers, they never asked for it. Who will they contact if something goes wrong? The shipping company or us?
4. If you ever used return postage on anything, would you accept a company (XYZ) telling you they won't help you with something they paid for you to use and that you should contact the shipping company instead? Would you accept people on the internet telling you to stop blaming XYZ company who prepaid for your postage and that you should contact the shipping company instead and fight with them about why your shipment did not get delivered? As a customer of XYZ, that is not your headache! That is between XYZ who paid for the postage and the shipping company who gets XYZ's money to collect shipments from XYZ's customers and deliver the shipments safely to XYZ! You are a customer of XYZ, not the shipping company! And, XYZ is the customer of the shipping company, XYZ will take it with the shipping company that XYZ paid for a return shipment and shipping company lost it. Is this becoming clearer now?
I remember magazines often times came with prepaid return envelopes, and sometimes they had offers running where we had to send our consent or entry back to them in those envelopes within a stipulated time. They would tell to send our entries so many days in advance so that they receive them in time. Now, would you rather the magazine fights with the customer if a customer's envelope reaches after the due date in order to disburse a judgement on who is right and who is wrong, who to blame and who not, or just welcome the custom from the customer instead?
I will say this again:
This is business. This is about customers and maintaining relationships.
It is not about fault. It was never about fault and who to pin the blame on. It is simply about how to keep the customer happy. For Apple, whose customer is OP, this would be giving the customer a new device (to retain the customer). For the shipping company, whose customer is Apple, this would be offering them a better deal, a better assurance, or, financially, free shipping on x number of units to compensate for the cumulative losses that transpired while in shipping, so as to retain the customer (Apple).
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