I purchased, upon its launch, a first generation iPhone for my wife back in 2007. I later upgraded it to a 3GS following its launch. That’s when I personally began to use an iPhone, the wife’s original iPhone. What a revelation. My old iPaq, though tactile, just couldn’t compare. Unfortunately, the phone fell out of my pocket and dived straight into our loo less than three months later. I therefore decided to purchase a 3GS of my own.
Seeing as it was a company phone I opted for an AppleCare support contract (ACS), which not only extended by a year my phone’s warrantee, but also provided me with the ability to obtain, if required, a replacement phone prior to returning the original faulty device. The standard exchange method means you could be without a phone for up to five days.
A few months later I began to notice erratic battery life. So I called ACS, applied the recommended procedures and remedied the situation.
A few months after that, while in the Rotterdam, I noticed that my phone’s 3G performance was rather poor, compared to that of my wife’s 3GS iPhone. I called ACS on several occasions with regards to this issue, and happily followed the recommended remedial steps. When I realized that matters weren’t improving I expressed my desire to have the phone replaced. Incidentally, I also requested the replacement of my earphones.
Twenty four hours later, my new earphones arrived; wow, that was fast. Ok, but that was all, no iPhone. As days passed by my patience began to wither. The following week after checking with ACS I was told that the phone was on its way. A week after that I obtained the same answer.
During my third call I was rudely told that Apple wasn’t responsible for the actual deliveries, and that I should contact their partner (UPS) directly. Visibly, no one had a clue of my phone’s whereabouts. I did make an attempt to call UPS and was told that deliveries had been delayed due to the ash clouds caused by the Eyjafjallajoekullx eruptions; finally, a precise and plausible explanation.
Be that as it may, in terms of quality of service and all, should the customer really be responsible for chasing Apple’s partners to obtain a situation update ?
To cut straight to the chase so to speak, after several more calls my ticket was transferred to a customer support executive. A couple of days later, nearly a month after the original replacement request, I was told that UPS had in fact lost my phone in the Netherlands, and that a new one was being shipped to me. Apparently the volcano had simply been a lame excuse for a job poorly done.
Meanwhile time passed and a new Apple device hit the market, and consequently entered our home, the iPad 64GB 3G.
Soon I began investigating why so many of my customers were complaining about the sound quality of my iPhone 3GS. I went so far as to purchase a Bluetooth adapter from Plantronics, but little did it help. I therefore turned again to ACS for help; followed the usual required procedures, and unfortunately, saw no improvement. Upon asking around, and googling about, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one suffering from such sound quality woes. Since the iPhone 4 had been available for a few months by then, I decided to upgrade, rather than continue to hope for a fix. Before proceeding I contacted ACS and was assured that my current support contract would be carried over to my futur phone; all I needed to do was call ACS up to register the new device.
I was obviously disappointed, when the time came to register my new phone, at being assured quite the opposite by another AppleCare agent. Regardless and without hesitation I signed up for a new contract to cover my iPhone 4 but made a point of expressing my discontent. I obviously mentioned the earlier incident involving my phone replacement. AppleCare customer services apologized for these mishaps and offered me a rebate on the next purchase that I would make of an Apple product. All I had to do was call them up prior to the actual purchase.
Well, recently my wife’s phone was stolen. As you may realize, iPhone users get rather upset and cranky when you take their toy away from them. Here however was a perfectly good opportunity to call up ACS and put that rebate to good use.
You might have already guessed that no one had a clue about this promise – there wasn’t even a trace of my previous call, the one I had made to express my earlier discontent; how convenient.
Since using that first iPhone, I have never looked back. I am a happy iPhone user. I would be a lot happier though if the support contract I have subscribed to was as efficient and reliant as my iPhone.
How much does Apple care about you ?
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