Our family is a long time user of apple products and we own apple stock. I’m curious as to your experiences getting service done on apple products at apple stores in your area.
We live in a less populated area with towns and smaller cities, no major cities- and have had good experiences/turnaround time at our local apple store.
Recently, we were visiting one of college kids right when they were having issues with a laptop (advice: don’t be the student who lets your laptop provide the tunes at a college party). Trying to be helpful while we were there, my spouse and I took the laptop in for service at the apple store 5 minutes from campus after kiddo’s college IT department diagnosed the issue as a connector cable issue, fortunately a relatively minor repair cost and time wise. Unlike our local hometown apple store, this store is located in the suburbs of a major metropolitan east coast city. Showing up without an appointment, we were told they could not see us that day and we could either make an appointment with a genius, the earliest of which would be 4 days out, or come by the store as soon as it opened the following morning. We chose to do the latter. We showed up early and began queuing up 1/2 hour before store opening and there were over 20 people in line when the store opened, looking to do the same thing we were. Fortunately, doing so we were able to be seen by a genius within minutes in the morning and, per usual, the genius was professional and competent. Added downside: the wait of as much as 5 days to make the minor repair.
So, what are your experiences where you live? Are we just lucky to not have this kind of experience at our home store? Is this experience in a more populated area the normal for appts and turnaround time? Is apple intentionally creating scarcity for their service? Why don’t they hire and train more people?
I have had xcellent experience when purchasing apple products at the Apple Store…bought two IPads there.
I have never been for service myself, but have been with two friends. The wait time was horrendous…and in both cases the problem could not, or would not be dealt with by Apple (one was a very commonly known problem with the home button in the old iPhone…it failed. They didn’t give two hoots).
I’ve had good experiences. It’s a good idea to use the website first, rather than to show up without one. We can get to several Apple Stores. Wait times can vary between stores.
Doschicos, you didn’t wait in line the first day they released the new iPhones, did you?
@Periwinkle - No, it wasn’t the 6s release date. We typically make appointments but had a very short window in town so decided to wing it. We couldn’t wait 4 days for an appt anyway.
Sounds like our experience might be an outlier related to this store/area. As a shareholder, good to hear that they are busy but that service is usually better.
They’ve pushed people to sign up for appointments on the web, using the Apple Store app. They’re good if the problem is something you’ve done or if it falls in the normal range. Anything truly weird can stump them … of course.
I have found the service at the 2 Apple stores nearby has declined quite a bit in recent years. Appointments at the genius bar take a minimum of 3 days. Then, when you go into the store for the appointment, you’re passed off from the greeter to the scheduler to the genius (or something like that). Then, when you finally get to see the genius, they’re usually condescending or of no help. Everyone around here complains about the Apple store service and see it as a last resort.
Both stores have an army of t-shirt clad employees, but why does it take at least 3 of them to help one customer. No wonder it takes days to get an appointment. Seems like their staffing model needs tweaking.
My experience has been terrible. I’ll make an appointment (usually 3 - 5 days in the future), show up on time, and have to wait 30 - 50 minutes anyway. It feels like a public health clinic on a Saturday!
D3 had an issue with her iPhone and had apple care. 5 days for an appointment! If she had purchased care through Sprint she could have just walked in. The apple store told her to show up 30 - 60 minutes before they opened if she wanted to get in sooner, without an appointment, and hope that the earliest appointments were no-shows.
This is why I added the apple store to the stores I hate most in a different thread.
Wow, sorry to hear the stories of bad service. I have good experiences in both Pittsburgh and LA (Glendale) but haven’t needed help for about a year so maybe things have changed.
We have had really good experiences with the Apple store genius bar services, which have been many over the years. But, I don’t recall ever just walking in; we’ve always made appointments. In the past couple years, we have made appointments through the website, and since there are a number of Apple stores around us, we can choose one with the least wait.
Most recently, we chose the online chat help option, which was amazing - and available at an odd time, if I recall (like, very late at night I think). The person was able to somehow hook into the computer and solve the problem over the internet…all without us having to leave the house. Obviously, this would not work for a hardware issue.
I agree with above that Apple appears to be trying to shift customers away from Genius appointments. You have to toggle a bit further to find the appointment section…when you do, slots are full for the day…then you move on to trying to make an appointment with One-on-One, and those slots are all full, other than the group appointments.
Also agree that there are more tee shirt-clad employees than customers some days, and that every appointment requires contact and hand-off among four employees.
Having said all of that, I still purchase Apple Care every time we buy a new Mac computer. I haven’t bothered with the phones, but they did replace the glass on my 6 when it developed a hairline crack. No evidence of physical damage and I was only in inquiring about cost to replace glass, so was pleasantly surprised when it was replaced free in an hour or so.
It varies wildly. Disclosure: I work in tech. Although my background is liberal arts, I’m considerably more than casually conversant with the insides of machines, both hardware and software. If I’m calling tech support for anything or showing up at the Apple Store, I’ve already done a massive amount of triage and have a list of what I know is NOT the problem. And yes, I’m a woman, but that doesn’t mean I’m clueless about computers. Some “geniuses” have spoken with me as if I can’t possibly understand the complicated piece of equipment I’ve brought in. Others have asked what I tried to do to fix it, listened to the steps I took before bringing something in, and have worked from that point forward.
@2manybooks – I know nothing about tech, but my boys are beyond savvy, so I completely understand your description above. I feel like Apple should keep records and see that we never call or visit unless there is something significantly wrong. I had one desktop suffer a kernel failure. They had to order a new computer built from scratch after first replacing two expensive parts that did not solve the problem. Replacement computer suffered a HD failure. These two experiences have left me believing in Apple Care.
Screen of son’s MCP developed this tiny little line across the screen under the glass. He thinks they replaced the entire glass and outside case.
I never buy extended warranties on appliances but feel it has been money well-spent on our computers.
Buying AppleCare is a tough question. We’ve had one laptop that had a problem: the sudden shutdown problem that affected early MacBooks (caused by a failure of the fan to turn on, which was caused by a software failure.) That was maybe 2006. None of the other Apple products - multiple computers, tablets, phones - have ever had a hardware issue. There are occasional glitches: my new 6s Plus was dead yesterday morning but I force rebooted it and then rebooted it again because it didn’t make calls. But that was a software glitch and probably in the beta software I run.
There have been annoyances: the absurd system call eliminated in the new version of OSX which caused system hang-ups. But sometimes things happen. I’ve managed to crash Google Chrome so hard it won’t force quit even though I can see it in Activity Monitor (but it’s greyed out) and it won’t respond to Kill commands even when run as super user, etc. Can’t even restart from Terminal without a hard, push the button shutdown. It’s frustrating because it’s so hard to figure out what the problem is without going through endless log files. My guess: it comes from security, that the increased isolation of applications in individual sandboxes means that when there’s a broken system call of some kind (but what?) you can’t even reach the app, that it’s isolated from you as part of the desire to limit what it can do as evil to your system.
Now I’m trying to get used to the idea we can’t even repair permissions. Used to be the diagnostic/repair process was basic: beginning with trash preferences, zap pram, etc. Couldn’t get something to work: repair permissions. Now?
I’m no longer convinced I need AppleCare even for an iPhone. I put mine in a case. It also has a screen protector that makes it harder to crack the screen. I’ve dropped it a few times but I’ve never dropped one down a flight of stairs. And now with the new payment plans I may be trading it in a year or so.
Only thing we have extended warranty on is the front loading washer/dryer. Those things break.
Mixed bag with Apple, I have called their tech support when I had a funky issue with printing (affected my wife’s and my macbook air), and the guy there was great. On the other hand, the local apple stores are worse than getting an appointment with the doctor, and it took a long time for them to fix the issue (they couldn’t fix it, took almost a week to fix). In NYC there is a store called Tek Serve I used to work near, they were an authorized service center and when the motherboard in his macbook needed replacing (the net port was broken), they repaired it under warranty in a couple of days, lot nicer place. Part of the problem is that the Apple Stores basically want to sell new products, and don’t want to be bothered with helping people, and often the people working in the “Genius Bar” seem to be some pretentious jerks who seem to buy into somehow that working at an Apple store makes them ‘above it all’ or something (not all, but have had more than a few jerks).
Apple care is worth it if you are rough on your pc. While hard drives (and especially solid state drives) are a lot more robust than they used to be, and the macbooks in general are a lot better made and reliable IME, they still can break, keyboards can break, screens can go, and with Apple Care you are saving yourself some big bucks if you do have issues. On the other hand, if you are a careful user, don’t treat them roughly, odds are any issues will happen in the first year anyway.
We’ve long been UNDERWHELMED by Apple support. My SisIL wanted them to help her transfer her contacts from one computer to another Mac. She had AppleCare & extended service. They were worse than worthless and she wasted a LOT of time on the phone and going to the Apple store. H & S finally figured out how to fix it for her, but it was a HUGE struggle and she was annoyed that no one at Apple was able to help her.
When we’ve tried to get help with our phones, we’ve had help for my dad once or twice but usually they want to have you make an appointment and return days later–very irritating, especially if it’s a very simple question and fix. The folks that staff the store are mostly sales people and not authorized to help you and just want to show you the cool new devices. ICK!
We have found that Apple support has gone downhill. Instead of having one Genius working on my problem, they now have a table full of people with issues and one Genius working the entire table. It’s so frustrating to be seated and get the attention of the Genius, only to be told to log in and he/she will be right back. I log in and wait for 10 minutes to be told to do something else that takes under a minute and then wait until I can get attention again.
Online help seems to be the same way. They are fielding many calls at once and there is a wait between steps. The last time I did that the guy could not remember that I was trouble shooting a desktop and not a laptop and kept wasting time giving me incorrect info.
We also own Apple stock and it’s done very well but we are starting to think it’s time to think of getting out.
I dealt with Apple just last night on behalf of my son and his iphone. The phone was dead and would not charge. He has Applecare for it so I did a live chat and after one or two diagnostic tests the rep set up a replacement phone that should be here in 3 days.
There is a charge being held on my card until the broken phone is sent back but it all seemed pretty painless. Took about 40 minutes total. There were sometimes lengthy pauses between steps. If my son had not had the extended warranty he was prepared to just move on, probably to a non-apple phone (partly because he says he hates itunes and partly distance from a store, though I think he was surprised how easy it was to get resolution from the live chat).
We live in a pretty rural area, and the nearest store is 2 hours away, so the online option was key for us.
My experience is mixed. Two years ago, I had an issue with my new iPhone 5s. Without going into detail, all of my notes got lost when transferring from my former iPhone. The genius at the store gave me several methods to try, but I could tell she was just grasping at straws. I came home and called apple support. He had to put me on hold while asking for help, because he never came across that issue before. Then he told me he had to work on it and call me back. I thought, yeah, right. But he did!
He then spent close to an hour walking me through a bunch of steps, and I got them! So I love apple support.
I think the support over the phone is superior to the genius support, but maybe that’s just me.
