Apple Errors – in iphone and Customer Services

Turned out to be a busy day but out of nothing that specific. Started my day bit late, as I take off from works normally on Sundays. The day was sunny and wonderful but stuffs I dealt with left me pissed off. And now as I am finally back to my apartment planning to take some rest, my mind is still occupied by all that happened today. So, here I share the unique error stuffs I experienced today that I specifically term as “Apple Errors”.

Let me tell you how it started first. I had my iphone delivered three days ago from the network provider Vodafone UK under its contract scheme. The phone was great as always (as I think it to be) but it took me a day to figure out a defect in it. The phone had a defect with the speaker built in. The following day I took it to the Vodafone store to let them know about the defective phone, all they advised me to do was visit the nearest Apple store and get it replaced. I googled the nearest Apple store only to find out that the nearest one was an hour away. I called the store to have the specific instructions on what I should be doing for the replacement. People behind the phone of customer services were so generous enough to guide me through the process properly and help me troubleshoot the problem. But when nothing seemed to work, they booked me an appointment to see someone at the store the next day (today). (So that was the iphone error, a brand new phone yet defective)

Today as I started my day just some hours before the scheduled appointment I had, the first thing I did was to make a call again and confirm the appointment and about any documents I need to carry. I boarded a bus to Kingston; luckily I was at the Stop on time, as on Sundays there are just two buses in an hour. The traffic was fair and I managed to get at the store (Apple Store Bentall Centre store) on time. I asked one of the customer services team member about where I need to report for the appointment and smilingly he pointed to someone at the end of the room busy wandering his hands on the ipad 2. I made my way through that busy and strikingly designed store to the person and did let him know about the appointment. He asked me about the time and here goes another problem. I had no appointment scheduled/registered on this gentleman’s ipad scheduler. It took some time for me to explain all the details on how I booked one and convince him for that. I even went up to showing the call log on my iphone. When I had him fully convinced, he tried into getting me another problem of asking me to show my confirmation email. Well to that, I let him know that the service person didn’t ask me for it the last day when I made the appointment. Startled, the store leader apologized for the error on their side and decided me to keep on Standby as the store was really busy and no appointments were available for rest of the day. He further advised me to have a break and come back after an hour or so. (So that was another error at Apple Customer Services, great service yet error-prone)

Being hungry, I popped into nearby Costa to have some muffins and a cinnamon latte. Browsing through some of the pages of my book that I was reading, I didn’t realize how I had already spent somewhere around an hour. I returned back to the store to see the store leader and when he had checked me in asked me to have a sit so that he would ask someone to see me as soon as possible. Hardly had I known I was going to wait for another hour at the store itself. Though the waiting was painful, I invested my time watching at the display tips behind the screens at what they called “Genius Bar”. Notably, some of the team members working there had Genius as their surname on their identity badges.

And then, I was finally seen by one of those team members who asked me to explain the problem with the iphone. After having a simple test, he confirmed the defect and asked me to wait till he comes up with a brand new iphone to be replaced. Everything goes well until he asks me to sign the paper that had different name the phone was registered to. Surprisingly, I told him this wasn’t my iphone or at least the printed name on the paper. The service man again tried confirming if he had made any errors. But no, according to details, the phone was registered to someone else! (And so that was another error either with the network provider or Apple itself.)

Returning back, I called my network provider’s customer service asking to change the details the phone was registered to. The service provider, figuring out the unique problem consulted his manager and let me know that the phone will be replaced again. And now they have scheduled another date on which they will come to replace my iphone which was delivered just four days ago.

All of these errors rarely happen here! I must admit I love Apple not just for its wonderful products but also for its awesome service. But errors like this are kindda weird and that’s what it makes worth blogging.

Nepal has also got some official Apple resellers (In case you wondering D&D International , Evolution Trading, Kasthamandpa Asia International, Titan Nepal Pvt Ltd, Neoteric Nepal P Ltd and TradeLink International are the official ones and there’s official Mac Support office at Kantipath, Katmandu) and the craze of using Apple products is definitely growing. A lot of them already use the popular ipod and some of them are making their move towards the latest ipad 2 beyond iphone and all. Are you an Apple user? Have you had any such errors/complains related to apple? Share in the comments below.