Sour Apple

The internet is filled with stories praising how wonderful Apple's customer service is, how the folks at the Genius Bar in an Apple Store will do just about anything for you and hand out new replacement phones at the drop of a hat. Whenever somebody starts listing the things they don't like about Apple products, an Apple disciple's two most likely retorts are about how easy they are to use, and how awesome the Apple customer service is.

I'm here to puncture that lie.

Starting a few weeks ago, I began to have an intermittent glitch with my iPhone. (Last year's generation, the 5.) About two or three times a week, I'd go to check something on my phone in the middle of the afternoon, and find a message on the screen: "No SIM Card Installed." Each time, I'd restart the phone and the issue would seem to correct itself, but it was a bit inconvenient -- not to mention the fact that for however long passed between the time this error would occur and the time I'd notice it and restart the phone, I wouldn't be receiving any texts or emails (or calls, I imagine) from anyone trying to contact me.

Sunday afternoon, I logged onto the Apple web site to make an appointment at the Genius Bar of the closest Apple Store. That wasn't until 6:40 Monday night. (Hmmm... that seems rather a long wait for repairs on your supposedly reliable products, but okay.)

Last night, I drove to the Apple Store straight from work. A few hours earlier in the afternoon, my phone (in?)conveniently had the same error, presenting me the "No SIM Card Installed" message. Rather than reset it, I decide to leave the message there on screen so that I could show the exact problem to the person at the Genius Bar -- even though this meant going a few hours without being able to contact anyone.

I arrived at the store at 6:30. I walked straight to the Genius Bar at the back of the store... where I was completely ignored by three different employees who all looked right at me at different times without engaging with me, even though I'm clearly standing there with my phone in my hand, looking like I'm trying to get someone's attention.

As 6:40 comes, and still no one has bothered to help me, I decide to go back to the front of the store to talk to the employee greeting people at the door. I explain how everyone at the Genius Bar has been ignoring me, she apologizes, and then "checks me in" for my appointment. She then asks me to stand over in an area that's nowhere near the Genius Bar, and someone will be with me shortly.

Ten minutes pass. There's yet another employee sort of milling about this area of the store, who finally seems to notice that I'm standing there for no apparent reason. He comes up to me, asks if he can help, and I explain that I'm waiting for my Genius Bar appointment. He says "Christian will be with me shortly." He gives me absolutely no indication of who this Christian is or where he is.

Ten more minutes pass. I grab this second guy whose section I'm apparently standing in, and ask him what the delay is. He punches a few things on his iPad, and tells me, "oh, it looks like we're running about 20 minutes behind." Nice. Somebody could have told me that before I got all worked up from just standing around doing nothing.

I stand around staring daggers in the direction of the Genius Bar for another five minutes, and finally one of the employees calls my name. This is the fabled Christian. And apparently, although I've waited for nearly half an hour past my appointment time watching people get one-on-one sessions with the "geniuses," they've decided that now that my turn has finally come, they're now going to line up three customers with one employee and have him round robin us all at once.

I typed in a description of my problem on the web site when I set up my appointment, so Christian is already on the case. He pops out my SIM Card and takes a look, and says, "You're on Verizon? This is weird, because Verizon doesn't even use the SIM card." I'm not sure exactly what that is supposed to mean to me, but he pops the thing back in and asks me to restart the phone. I do so, and he goes off to help the other two people while I wait.

The phone is restarted a minute later, and he's back to me. "Is it working?" he asks. Yes, I say, though I quickly point out: I've always been able to restart my phone to reset the problem this entire time, so that hardly means anything has been "fixed." Well, says Christian, "the first thing I'd do is go to a Verizon store. There may be problem with one of the contacts on the SIM Card, and they need to fix it for you."

And that's it. What the hell? I waited almost half an hour for an appointment I made a day in advance, got to spend all of two minutes at the Genius Bar, time shared with two other customers, after which I was told Apple could do nothing for me -- it's Verizon's problem.

This is the customer service Apple is so famous for? "Did you cycle the power? Then that's all I can do for you" is literally the kind of crap service I can get on the phone from any number of other companies. And at least I can get that from them on the phone from the comfort of my own home, rather than carving out an hour of my day to go stand around and be ignored.

Apple, your customer service sucks. (And while I'm at it, your new iOS sucks too.)