Okay, here's a delightful story for you all about my experience with Apple customer support:
I got on the phone with Apple technical support to help me out with an iTunes bug (either that or a bug on Apple's iTunes servers). For some reason, about 50% of the songs I purchase and download disappear from my computer after a while (a few days, a few weeks, a few months). They leave absolutely no trace of themselves behind, except on my purchase history in my account. If I look at my purchase history online, there they are. And when I try to download them again through the Apple store, it tells me that it's already purchased and that I need to purchase it again if I want to re-download. So I'm on the line with tech support, and the guy's pretty friendly and very bright (imagine that!), but he's not quite able to figure out the cause of my problem. But he leaves me with this: he says to re-purchase the song and then he'll forward me to billing in order to undo the charge. I say fair enough, and I do it.
So after waiting on hold for 20 minutes, I finally get through, and I explain the situation to the lady. She tells me in a thick southern accent: "That's not the way it works, sir." I ask what she means. She tells me that because the problem is technical, this is an issue for tech support. She tells me that tech support is supposed to help me troubleshoot the problem (he did try--for a good 45 minutes--but couldn't resolve it in the end--I don't expect miracle workers). Then she tells me that reversing the charge will not work because once the charge is reversed, I will not have access to that song.
I tell her that I'll back up the song and then she can reverse the charge. Then... SHE HANGS UP!!!
That was... by far... THE worst experience with customer support I have ever had... literally!
I've always had a bad impression of the quality of Apple's products... I swear they hire monkeys to do their software development... and now I'm equally badly impressed, if not worse, with their customer service. I really hope a decent software company shows up soon about on the level of Microsoft or Apple in terms of competitive edge so that I never have to deal with these two #### head giants ever again.
I got on the phone with Apple technical support to help me out with an iTunes bug (either that or a bug on Apple's iTunes servers). For some reason, about 50% of the songs I purchase and download disappear from my computer after a while (a few days, a few weeks, a few months). They leave absolutely no trace of themselves behind, except on my purchase history in my account. If I look at my purchase history online, there they are. And when I try to download them again through the Apple store, it tells me that it's already purchased and that I need to purchase it again if I want to re-download. So I'm on the line with tech support, and the guy's pretty friendly and very bright (imagine that!), but he's not quite able to figure out the cause of my problem. But he leaves me with this: he says to re-purchase the song and then he'll forward me to billing in order to undo the charge. I say fair enough, and I do it.
So after waiting on hold for 20 minutes, I finally get through, and I explain the situation to the lady. She tells me in a thick southern accent: "That's not the way it works, sir." I ask what she means. She tells me that because the problem is technical, this is an issue for tech support. She tells me that tech support is supposed to help me troubleshoot the problem (he did try--for a good 45 minutes--but couldn't resolve it in the end--I don't expect miracle workers). Then she tells me that reversing the charge will not work because once the charge is reversed, I will not have access to that song.
I tell her that I'll back up the song and then she can reverse the charge. Then... SHE HANGS UP!!!
That was... by far... THE worst experience with customer support I have ever had... literally!
I've always had a bad impression of the quality of Apple's products... I swear they hire monkeys to do their software development... and now I'm equally badly impressed, if not worse, with their customer service. I really hope a decent software company shows up soon about on the level of Microsoft or Apple in terms of competitive edge so that I never have to deal with these two #### head giants ever again.