Ok, it was nice and the features were pretty spiffy. So we bought one for Kier as well. All well and good. There are accessories for the iPod and it is nice, light, compact, and rugged.
So our birthday comes around and we decide to splurge and get the iPhones as our upgrade phones. They were $99 each, but we wanted the nifty apps and other features. Yeah, they were awesome too.
Except mine stopped being awesome. The speaker would stop working so I wouldn't hear the ringtone of an incoming phone call unless I plugged in the headphones (which would play the sounds), jiggled the plug a bit, pressed a few buttons to get sounds to play, sacrifice small mammals to pagan gods, sell off my first born to the gypsies...
...oh wait. I don't have one of those and my wife's firstborn is too old to be sold to the gypsies. Damnit.
So I call apple care support. They give me some silly rigmarole about putting the plug in and out of the headphone jack while the phone is inverted 10 times. That didn't help.
So they told me to take the phone to the Apple Store and get a Genius Bar appointment. The Genius Bar is their help desk and product support.
So I go there and tell them the problem. They tell me that they want to check for a loose cable. None are found. I'm now thinking that I'm stuck with a lemon of a phone. Great. I'm looking at iPhone speakers that attach to the phone thinking that may be my only option for the next 2 years until they let me upgrade again.
10 minutes later they come out and tell me that there was nothing loose and that my problem may be one of two possibilities. One may be a firmware (software) glitch and that a factory restore could fix the issue. I told him that the Apple Care phone support already had me do that. He then said that well it's obviously hardware and that he is willing to replace the phone right there and then.
So they come out with a new phone and he asks me if I made a backup of the phone before I came in. I said yes and since I had the laptop with me he showed me how to update the firmware to the most recent and how to restore my settings and apps. DAYUM! Not just good service...Damn Good Service.
So...now we're looking at the iPad. Sure it's going to cost a bit, but the things it offers makes it damn useful to us and we know that while the cost is a bit for something that is essentially a netbook, we know that we'll have good support if anything goes wrong with it.
So in a few short months...I went from an Apple indifferent, to an Apple Supporter.
Yeah, it's pricey, but it is the classic example of you get what you pay for. I paid a quality price and I got a quality product.
You ain't hearing me complaining.
wow, nice support from Apple.
ReplyDeleteIn a way it's like Country Home Products. The guys that make the DR Trimmer Mower.
ReplyDeleteMy dad bought a cordless electric mower from them and we loved it. Nice, quiet, works like a charm.
One day the UPS truck pulled up and delivered a package from them. "We didn't order anything" we all think and we open the box.
Turns out that there was a recall on the product. If you slipped and let go the safety cut off and then immediately restarted the mower, the power surge could fry the electronics. In one case, actually caused a fire.
So in the box was a letter of apology and explanation. There was also the replacement part that would prevent the thing from blowing up, paper instructions telling you how to replace the part, a video guide with a guy showing you how to replace the part, and in the off chance you didn't have one, a number 2 Phillips head screwdriver which was the only tool needed to replace the part.
Yeah that cost a bit too, but with that sort of service the cost is worth it.