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by sq_ 1077 days ago
Slight tangent to your tangent, but, after a poor experience last week, I'm really disappointed in how Apple handles specifically support in their stores.

Historically, I've been able to just throw in a few little bits of "yup, I know how that works" so that their techs realize that I know what I'm talking about and let up with the patronizing assumptions about what I do and don't know. However, this time, when dealing with a newly-present heat issue during charging after that very store replaced the battery in the phone (so both a safety issue and one that would be warranty if it could be determined that it was caused by the repair), the tech just kept repeating that there was no way that their work could've caused it and going "these phones don't have a fan to cool them like our laptops". No matter what I said, I couldn't get them to have an actual discussion with me, so now I'm stuck waiting for a call from their safety support team since it's a heat issue.

Hopefully I can get somewhere with the phone support people, but it's really disappointing that they don't train their techs in the stores to feel out what a customer knows or at least drop some of the "oh the user doesn't know anything" if customers are showing that they do, in fact, know things.

3 comments

A few years ago I ended up having 4 visits to get my MBP fixed. They replaced the SSD 3 times (this was the last model before soldered disks). It was still having IO problems (file system corruption) even after fresh OS installs. It would only happen under heavy load. After the 3rd time, I got a decent genius - I asked him what the likelihood of having 3 bad SSDs in a row was, and maybe they should replace the logic board? He said “have you seen the new iPhone? Just go over there and have a look at it while I run a test” - I came back “I’ve reproduced the problem wink”. He knew the checklists needed appeasing, and cheated to get the desired outcome. Still, shouldn’t have taken that many visits.

Then I had a problem with the keyboard replacement program. They agreed to replace it under their extended warranty, due to the known issues with them. Posted the laptop off. Got an email 2 days later with a blurred image “the logic board shows signs of water damage”. I had a choice. Replace the logic board at my own cost (>£1000), or return the device unrepaired. They were the ones that had previously opened the machine & replaced the logic board! The machine operated permanently in clamshell mode, vertically - there’s simply no way any moisture could have got into it. I just wanted the keyboard replacing. Very frustrating. I ended up buying the parts & doing the repair myself.

All-in, bad experiences.

> Hopefully I can get somewhere with the phone support people, but it's really disappointing that they don't train their techs in the stores to feel out what a customer knows or at least drop some of the "oh the user doesn't know anything" if customers are showing that they do, in fact, know things.

I think they have homogenized support to treat each user as equally non-technical, it's by design. Apple is like a sect, they need to have a strong grip on their users.

Also there are plenty of people that know everything, except when they don't.
I was able to talk highly technical stuff to their Mac support engineers at least. Even found a bypass in their diagnosis machine’s data protection scheme and told them about it lol, their was a few months ago.
What did you expect from the you-are-holding-it-wrong company?