Open Letter to Apple Customer Service Management.

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littlebrother
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Joined: Dec 5 2002

[Bob - Contact me if you'd like more info about this on kennymillar -at- mac dot com ]

4 xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx Place
xxxxxxxxxxxx
Glasgow
G66 XXX
12th March 2004

Customer Service Manager
Apple Computer International
Hollyhill Industrial Estate
Cork
Republic of Ireland

Dear Sir.

I am writing to complain in the strongest possible terms about the shocking lack of customer focus which your company has shown me again and again and again. I have tried writing to you directly, but you chose not to reply.

I wish this complaint to be logged in your complaints file, and an official record of it made, so that it can be dealt with by your quality review process, in the hope that no other customers may be dealt with so embarrassingly by your company.

On November 13th last year I ordered a PowerBook 12” and an Airport Extreme Card. The details of the shocking mis-information and broken promises I was given regarding the shipping of those orders is another story in itself, and has already been recorded by yourself as a complaint from me. Although it has to be said that all I got in reply from you was an email which was also sent to every other Applestore UK Customer. There was no personal reply to myself, and nothing was done which in any way restored my faith in your company.

As it turns out, I was disappointed, but not altogether surprised, that the Airport Extreme card you sent me is faulty. This is the basis of this current complaint. The whole handling of this, as you will see, demonstrates your continued lack of customer focus, has further eroded my opinion of Apple Computer Inc,.

I called on 31st January 2004 to report that I was having trouble with my Airport Extreme card was misbehaving. After about an hour on the phone your customer service agent diagnosed the card as faulty and promised to ship me a replacement. He took all the relevant serial numbers, order and invoice numbers and even my credit card number. He told me a new card would be shipped and that I should return the existing one once the new one arrived. The case number I was given at that time was 21411950.

More than a month passed, with no sign of the replacement card. No email from you, no letter, nothing, just pure silence. I called on 3rd March to find out what was happening and what followed was just a total farce. First of all I was connected to someone who sounded Indian, he could hardly speak any English and communicating with him was extremely difficult. Through much repeating of myself and frustration I eventually managed to discover that he was telling me the system was saying “no warranty information found” and he attempted to put me through to “the UK Office” (which suggests he was not in the UK) for further assistance. After holding for the usual hour or so, the transferred call was eventually answered by a female, who immediately started speaking Spanish to me. After much confusion we managed to find a small number of English words which we both understood, but we could not progress the call. All she would say was “No warranty information on system”.
I called back again the next day, and this time managed to get though to someone who could speak English. He told me my call from the previous day had probably ‘overflowed’ to a call centre in Europe due to sheer volume of calls. So, there must be a huge number of faulty apple products out there! We managed to progress quickly this time, he told me that following my original call on 31st January, they had been unable to find any warranty information, and so they had just abandoned my support request. He took all the details again, and promised to send out a new card. He again took all the original details, and again took my credit card number. He assured me the card would arrive within the week, and that it would come with a return label with which to return the faulty card.

8 Days later the card arrived, but with no return label and no instructions on how to send the faulty card back. This is typical of Apple’s lack of attention to detail. Anyway, I called the customer support number, and eventually got through to another foreign speaking person, who listened to the problem, and transferred me through to another agent. I was on hold for over 20 minutes before eventually being connected to someone who again listened to the problem, took some more details and promised to send out a return label “next week”. I won’t hold my breath.

On top of all this, since last November I have trying to decide whether to switch my video editing suite from the PC Platform to Mac. I currently use 2 Pentium 2.4GHz systems, both with Dual Monitors, Adobe Premiere 6.5, After Effects 5.5, Ulead Media Studio Pro and Sonic DVDit. I have emailed the UK Applestore on numerous occasions for details on cross-grading deals and equivalent packages, hoping to put together some idea of how much it is going to cost to switch, but have only ever had one single reply – and that was to say “You can get all the information you need from the UK Applestore” !!!!! Eh, right. I have tried phoning the store, but all you get is an hour or more of hold music. All of this completely undermines my faith in Apple. It is looking extremely unlikely that I will ever buy another Apple product, despite actually wanting to switch to the Powermac G5 platform. I was hoping to switch to Powermac Dual G5, with FCP, but I’m not convinced Apple would be able to supply.

I would like you to reply to me as soon as possible with some clear answers to the following questions. If you can’t reply then I’ll assume the only way to contact you is via an open letter to the press.

• Why is contacting Applestore UK about anything, sales, deliveries, tech support, pre-sales, cross-grades etc etc so impossible?
• Why was my first support call just dumped without letting me know? I wasted over a month waiting for the replacement card.
• When my replacement card did eventually arrive, why was there no return label, which resulted in another 30 minute long call to support.
• Why do UK Callers get put through to non-english speaking operators? Are UK Jobs being sold to other countries?
• Why does the Applestore UK, not reply to any correspondence, emails letters, phone calls all go unanswered.
• What do you plan to do to restore my faith in Apple. Bearing in mind that my entire dealings with you so far have been problematic at every single step of the way.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kenny Millar

.ps. 25-March-2004
Since this letter was first written, even more examples of Apple’s lack of attention to detail and total lack of customer focus have occurred. Like I mentioned above, the replacement part did eventually arrive, and like I said, without the returns label for the dead unit. However, a week after that on 24th March a second replacement part arrived – I have no idea why Apple think they need to send me 2 replacement parts for each faulty one. Once again there was no reply label, and where the reply label should have been there was another label – another one addressed TO me FROM Apple. This time I’d had enough and I just handed it back to the delivery company and told them to send it back directly. I just cannot face trying to call them on the phone to sort it out because I don’t have time to learn 2 more foreign languages.

Also, since I posted this letter to Apple there has not been a single reply. Just a cacophony of silence from Apples Customer Support.
-KDM.

PDX10P, PowerMac G5 Dual 2.5, PowerBook 12.

PaulD
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Joined: Aug 31 2002

Hi
The only official Apple cross-grade I have heard of was a time-limited offer of Final Cut Express v1 in exchange for a Premiere 5/6/6.5 install CD. This expired in September last year.
There is an official upgrade from FC Express to Pro.
Adobe would offer an upgrade path to After Effects v6 - in the past they have been very accomodating in cross-platform upgrading AFAIK.
You get iDVD4 bundled with a new Mac, as well as iMovie4, so you get basic video edit and DVD authoring software free.

I obviously agree that the lack of appropriate replies from the Apple Store, and Customer Service is very remiss.

I certainly wouldn't have spent 30mins (or 2mins) on the phone dealing with a return matter! (That's for them to organise...)

But if you were to purchase an Apple replacement Editing Suite it would be very capable of doing everything (and more) that your present computers can do IMO.

Certainly you can get advice and information here (and elsewhere on the web) about what software and hardware would be appropriate for your situation.

If you can't shop in person at a branch of John Lewis (where they give a 2 year warranty period), you can buy online from them, and they have their own Customer Service division, and Mac trouble-shooting helpline:
http://www.johnlewis.com/stores/shelf.asp?str=401&shelfid=1307&m=6
Regards

GTFC Video
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Joined: Nov 30 2001

I cannot believe that you would even contemplate purchasing more equipment from a company that has treated you like that.

They certainly wouldn't get any more of my hard earned dosh.

Martin

SIFI
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Joined: Sep 16 2001
Quote:
Originally posted by PaulD:
Hi
But if you were to purchase an Apple replacement Editing Suite it would be very capable of doing everything (and more) that your present computers can do IMO.

With service like that from Apple do you really think anyone would buy from Apple again.

If they cannot set up a simple and effective customer service, with a UK based person who can actually speak the language there is a serious problem.

If the things were so superior to Windows systems it may be worth the gamble, but with decent components the Windows platform will serve you equally as well.

Simon

Simon

harlequin
harlequin's picture
Offline
Joined: Aug 16 2000

humour mode on

Silly boy.
the second card was unsolicited goods.
you could have kept it , emailed them (which they would have ignored) and after i think it's six months , sold the unsolicited goods.

might i suggest you claim the whole machine is faulty ..... you may get 2 free replacements.

humour mode off

this is similar to my recent experience with dell
they took ages to collect a laptop , returned it more broken than it had been when it went away.
has now been uplifted for the second time in less than 21 days.

i think they are all working on such slim margins they no longer care ...... box it up and ship it out.

Gary MacKenzie

sepulce@hotmail.com ( an account only used for forum messages )

Thinkserver TS140 , 750ti Graphics card  & LG 27" uws led backlight , Edius 8

Humax Foxsat HD Pvr / Humax Fox T2 dvbt

littlebrother
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Joined: Dec 5 2002
Quote:
Silly boy.
the second card was unsolicited goods.
you could have kept it , emailed them (which they would have ignored) and after i think it's six months , sold the unsolicited goods.

I did consider that given their recent lack of attention to detail, they would not even have noticed if I kept the 2nd card, but I want to play this right down the line.

PDX10P, PowerMac G5 Dual 2.5, PowerBook 12.

cvgh
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Joined: Jun 28 2004

Welcome to the club! Apple couldn't even get a £25 purchase for latest QuikTime right. It took 6months to sort the payment out then I got credited twice!!
Geoff

billyboy
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Joined: Jan 11 2002

And those who are APPLE mad wonder why they are a minority - PC based systems are no longer the poor second cuz to a G5 what ever you are doing
editing, graphics, you name it