11–20 of 58 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Dell do face-to-face tech support?
They do for corporate customers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They do for corporate customers.
correct me if i'm wrong, but I thought "the Dell Guy" that comes is a 3rd party company? They'll come to your office and fix your machine, but I'm not sure that guy is a Dell employee...
is this really that different from, say, Dell? I imagine their tech support also has a database or two.
Another hidden benefit that they may or may not make use of - Apple can directly observe their users interfacing with their products. With websites and to a certain extent with software, usability data collection is a given. But for consumer products like iPods, iPhones and Macs, it's a little harder to come by. By having thousands of end users in dozens of stores around the world playing with their gear, it seems li…
There is also the danger that Apple ends up with massive amounts of unstructured data, so much that no one can possibly make heads or tails of it.
is this really that different from, say, Dell? I imagine their tech support also has a database or two.
Does Dell do face-to-face tech support?
I had someone give me an broken iBook G4 and ask "Can you see about getting the data off the drive?". Here are takeapart instructions for it:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-iBook-G4-14-In...
14 pages, 60 screws.
Compare to a recent MacBook:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-MacBook-Unibod...
3 pages. 3 screws.
That's progress.
(in fairness, that's the model with the door on the bottom - the more recent models have 14 screws to remove, but the disassembly isn't difficult compared to the iBook: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-MacBook-Pro-13... )
is this really that different from, say, Dell? I imagine their tech support also has a database or two.
I called Dell to order a new power supply. They didn't have it in stock, but promised to get back to me by the next Monday. They never got back to me. A week after that Monday, I called them again and they directed me to a third-party supplier. That supplier listed the price of the power supply at $259.99 (the power supply is not available in any local store in the Seattle area)
In fairness, Dell sells PCs at low prices, Apple sells their products at premium prices and so it may not be fair to compare the two. However, in terms of customer support, it is hard to see how you could be correct in suggesting that Dell's customer database and awareness of customer concerns is anywhere close to that of Apple.