If only they could provide this kind of customer service worldwide. I've been fighting with Apple (Asia) about screen burn-in since 2010 (which I've already given up); I can never ever open iPad keyboard more for than 5 minutes without getting a burn-in since the first day since I bought it. The only thing they ever did was denying the problem. I love Apple products, but never have faith in their customer service.
Apple has great customer service in general. At least in the US, dunno about Asia.
I got them to replace my 27" iMac screen, on site, without taking it to an apple store, just by sending them pictures of it. Had some intermittent discoloration. And it got replaced the very next day.
Their phone system is also great now. No waiting on hold or typing numbers into your phone 3 times each, then repeating them to each agent, like with comcast and others.
That's the exactly problem: they have great customer service in US but for some region (e.g. South East Asia) it's almost on the same level as all other companies out there.
It's cultural. There's only so much Apple's customer service culture can do to overcome the customer service culture in a country, when the staffing of the company sources people locally who have different ideas of what constitutes customer service.
The US has great customer service and of companies operating in the US, Apple is the cream of the crop. So it's effectively the creme de la creme in the US. Customer service in southeast Asian countries is largely crap across the board (I lived in China for 1.5 years and I'm speaking from experience).
One of the cultural phenomena that backfires customer service-wise is the collectivistic culture versus individualistic culture. Business people see customers as a collective and not a group of individuals. In this environment, no matter how good Apple's policies are, the judgement of whether or not your case/issue will be judged on a case by case basis and deemed worthy of meriting a replacement is going to break down because the people you ultimately deal with don't see or treat you as an individual or your case as unique.
There are benefits of collectivistic cultures, but customer service isn't one of them.
Sounds like he's referring to "image persistence", which is similar in appearance to burn-in, but a different mechanism.
Burn-in is more likely to be found on CRTs and can take a long time to occur. Image persistence can happen in seconds or minutes and is what is seen on LCDs. It's usually temporary or reversible. (And plasma owners can experience both, yay! :)
Hmm, you're right. I did choose a wrong word, my problem is more of Image Persistence[1][2] than CRT-type burn-in, which in my case, did magically appears after few minutes of use and took a long time to disappear.
This doesn't deny my point of Apple support is awful outside US, though. I also have issue with horizontal line on 2009 iMac screen that they refuse to acknowledge the problem until very recently (October 2011). I'm happy that it's finally fixed, but it shouldn't took two years.
you should understand that they just push cost around, and put a better face forward by focusing on the 'valet' type service model. you actually pay for this, for eg. when you pay an extra $100 for 16gb of ipad memory; which should really cost you $15 as an sdhc expansion.
Products are not priced according to the sum of their costs.
If your logic was valid, similarly priced products using similar components would naturally have comparable customer service, because the cost of excellent customer service would be "built in" to the COGS of the product. But of course that's not the case.
The extra hundred dollars you spend for "RAM" has nothing to do with the cost of RAM; it's that Apple uses RAM to segment customers by price sensitivity. If you want more RAM in your iPad so much that you'll spend $100 to get it, that makes you less sensitive to price, and so Apple can soak you for the price you're willing to pay while still letting people less agape with the iPad pay less. I suppose that could irritate you, but then I've got real bad news for you about the market for automobiles, plane tickets, organic food, hotel rooms, TV sets, and furniture.
Obviously Apple can provide good customer service because of their high profit margins and spectacular overall profitability. But it is not then the case that when Apple sells products with lower margins and worse COGS that you get poorer customer service.
If your observation is that ultimately, good customer service is simply part of marketing a product: that's absolutely true, but a bit banal.
Good customer service reaps a customer that makes a lifetime of iPad purchases.
Assuming their prices keep up with inflation than every two years that's $500 in today's dollars to Apple for say, 50 years. Your iPad purchases, when you are happy, is thus worth $12,500 to Apple, not counting all your friends, parents, lovers, and kids that you start on Apple.
It's not that every product you purchase from Apple has to have this good customer service cost built into it, because you're not going to need a new screen for each.
It's that they can justify the cost of good customer value by taking it from your lifetime value to the company if they keep you a happy customer.
Nice story, but try getting them to fix a MacBook after you spill a soda on it.
Edit: well after a second of reflection I guess that's not really comparable. Screen burn-in is at least arguably a defect in the product. Spilling a coke on a MacBook is your own fault (even if accidental).
I have this problem with my Macbook pro screen described here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2793446?start=0&tst..., and the laptop is about half a year passed warranty. Do you think they will fix the problem as easily and for free?
I had an issue with the nvidia graphics card that wasn't technically covered by the nvidia warranty replacement program, Apple replaced the motherboard 3 years after warranty ran out on it. No problems, just ran their little diagnostics (or tried to, the machine just wouldn't boot anymore).
They ended up shipping it off, came back as good as new besides the screen being off (there was a line going down the middle now that wasn't there before) that would show up sometimes when you would tilt the screen a certain angle (no, I wasn't trying to bend it too far). Sent it out again, got it back, brand new screen.
Yes, being without it twice kinda sucked, but it was my secondary machine. In the end Apple fixed everything that was wrong with it long after the warranty ended.
Now, one thing I would say is that all of my laptops always get checked in under my personal business name, so each time I get a "Apple's business department is here for your business" spiel and a business card attached for when I want to upgrade.
Couldn't be more happy with Apple, I have been extremely satisfied with my purchases to date and enjoy using their products daily.
I've had several similar experiences: (1) iPhone replacement for uneven LCD edge lighting, (2) iPhone replacement for quirky physical button problem, (3) Replacement of white Macbook due to malfunctioning iSight camera (even got away with newer unibody model).
Sometimes you've got to know how to approach the situation to skip past the standard questions and get the ~5min response time. As mentioned, you pay for it up front. With other brands, these sort of things aren't even considered issues.
One more thing to note is that Apple earns a lot (more ) from the services on the iPad. The apps you buy, the books you buy etc. So it is also in their interest to make sure you are back to buying these as soon as possible.
Aside from degradation, the difference the poster noticed in the display quality between the two different iPads can also be explained by two other phenomena:
- "Silent" hardware revs: Apple will frequently rev the hardware to fix issues without actually changing the model number (other than perhaps changing the range of numbers or adding a trailing suffix indicating the new revision). They certainly don't announce these announcing anything. The changes can include new parts, new firmware (which can be rolled out to existing hardware as an update if Apple considers it important enough), or fixed / updated boards. A newer iPad may have several improvements over an older one, even if it's ostensibly the same model.
- Multiple suppliers for the same production runs: even within the same revision, you can get two different instances of the same hardware with two different manufacturers for the same part. You could go to the store in a single trip and pick up two iPod Touches and end up with one that has a Sharp LCD and another one that has a Samsung LCD.
23 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 66.5 ms ] threadI got them to replace my 27" iMac screen, on site, without taking it to an apple store, just by sending them pictures of it. Had some intermittent discoloration. And it got replaced the very next day.
Their phone system is also great now. No waiting on hold or typing numbers into your phone 3 times each, then repeating them to each agent, like with comcast and others.
The US has great customer service and of companies operating in the US, Apple is the cream of the crop. So it's effectively the creme de la creme in the US. Customer service in southeast Asian countries is largely crap across the board (I lived in China for 1.5 years and I'm speaking from experience).
One of the cultural phenomena that backfires customer service-wise is the collectivistic culture versus individualistic culture. Business people see customers as a collective and not a group of individuals. In this environment, no matter how good Apple's policies are, the judgement of whether or not your case/issue will be judged on a case by case basis and deemed worthy of meriting a replacement is going to break down because the people you ultimately deal with don't see or treat you as an individual or your case as unique.
There are benefits of collectivistic cultures, but customer service isn't one of them.
Could you clarify what you mean by this? Not sure if I understand.
Burn in requires a static image for a long period of time (months/years). It doesn't just magically show up after 5 minutes of use.
Burn-in is more likely to be found on CRTs and can take a long time to occur. Image persistence can happen in seconds or minutes and is what is seen on LCDs. It's usually temporary or reversible. (And plasma owners can experience both, yay! :)
This doesn't deny my point of Apple support is awful outside US, though. I also have issue with horizontal line on 2009 iMac screen that they refuse to acknowledge the problem until very recently (October 2011). I'm happy that it's finally fixed, but it shouldn't took two years.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_persistence
[2]: http://compreviews.about.com/od/monitors/a/LCDBurnIn.htm
When I bought my first MacBook, I wanted someone to stand behind it and just handle complex, hard-to-diagnose problems.
Downtime can be very costly. You pay for that too.
If your logic was valid, similarly priced products using similar components would naturally have comparable customer service, because the cost of excellent customer service would be "built in" to the COGS of the product. But of course that's not the case.
The extra hundred dollars you spend for "RAM" has nothing to do with the cost of RAM; it's that Apple uses RAM to segment customers by price sensitivity. If you want more RAM in your iPad so much that you'll spend $100 to get it, that makes you less sensitive to price, and so Apple can soak you for the price you're willing to pay while still letting people less agape with the iPad pay less. I suppose that could irritate you, but then I've got real bad news for you about the market for automobiles, plane tickets, organic food, hotel rooms, TV sets, and furniture.
Obviously Apple can provide good customer service because of their high profit margins and spectacular overall profitability. But it is not then the case that when Apple sells products with lower margins and worse COGS that you get poorer customer service.
If your observation is that ultimately, good customer service is simply part of marketing a product: that's absolutely true, but a bit banal.
Assuming their prices keep up with inflation than every two years that's $500 in today's dollars to Apple for say, 50 years. Your iPad purchases, when you are happy, is thus worth $12,500 to Apple, not counting all your friends, parents, lovers, and kids that you start on Apple.
It's not that every product you purchase from Apple has to have this good customer service cost built into it, because you're not going to need a new screen for each.
It's that they can justify the cost of good customer value by taking it from your lifetime value to the company if they keep you a happy customer.
Or something like that.
cf Nordstrom.
Edit: well after a second of reflection I guess that's not really comparable. Screen burn-in is at least arguably a defect in the product. Spilling a coke on a MacBook is your own fault (even if accidental).
They ended up shipping it off, came back as good as new besides the screen being off (there was a line going down the middle now that wasn't there before) that would show up sometimes when you would tilt the screen a certain angle (no, I wasn't trying to bend it too far). Sent it out again, got it back, brand new screen.
Yes, being without it twice kinda sucked, but it was my secondary machine. In the end Apple fixed everything that was wrong with it long after the warranty ended.
Now, one thing I would say is that all of my laptops always get checked in under my personal business name, so each time I get a "Apple's business department is here for your business" spiel and a business card attached for when I want to upgrade.
Couldn't be more happy with Apple, I have been extremely satisfied with my purchases to date and enjoy using their products daily.
Sometimes you've got to know how to approach the situation to skip past the standard questions and get the ~5min response time. As mentioned, you pay for it up front. With other brands, these sort of things aren't even considered issues.
Their misuse of the word "genius" is beyond irritating.
My wife's solution...
main = putStrLn $ "The Genius Bar" ++ "f"
- "Silent" hardware revs: Apple will frequently rev the hardware to fix issues without actually changing the model number (other than perhaps changing the range of numbers or adding a trailing suffix indicating the new revision). They certainly don't announce these announcing anything. The changes can include new parts, new firmware (which can be rolled out to existing hardware as an update if Apple considers it important enough), or fixed / updated boards. A newer iPad may have several improvements over an older one, even if it's ostensibly the same model.
- Multiple suppliers for the same production runs: even within the same revision, you can get two different instances of the same hardware with two different manufacturers for the same part. You could go to the store in a single trip and pick up two iPod Touches and end up with one that has a Sharp LCD and another one that has a Samsung LCD.