How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#31

Post by GeekyBear » Tue, May 07, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

atonse wrote: post #4

My biggest complaint about the Apple Store is the long wait times when your computer breaks. You often have to wait for a few days to even get an appointment. But the award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things. So people just wander around wanting to buy something and not knowing where to pay for it. And they end up wasting a lot more time…

>The award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things.

For small ticket items, you can scan, pay and leave without needing to interact with the staff.

>Thanks to the Apple Store app, you can use your iPhone to scan the barcode of an accessory off the shelf and use Apple Pay to pay for it. From there, you can just walk out of the store with your new Apple accessory in hand.

https://www.howtogeek.com/338754/how-to-buy-stuff-at-the-app...

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#32

Post by seqastian » Tue, May 07, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

avelis wrote: post #30

oldjokes wrote: post #19

I went in a few months to get a hardware thing fixed with an appointment set and nobody helped me. I waited for like 10 minutes past by appointment time and everyone was booked up. I tried pestering people but everyone was helping someone else and asked me to wait for another associate. Eventually I gave up and left the store. I'm sure their analytics never even noticed me, their data says I just never showed up for…

Their genius bar is just slowing down since they want you to buy new instead of repair what you have. Not always the case but I get that feeling. That and “IT at home” requests seem to flood the bar now.

Yea they persuade you to buy more from them with bad service. Flawless logic right there.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#33

Post by benatkin » Tue, May 07, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

Two things that were features aren't anymore now that I moved to Miami.

I'm tired of Face ID. Give me back Touch ID please. My sunglasses prevent Face ID from working when I have them on, and that's quite often here, and I don't want to switch to a light form of Face ID that doesn't check that I'm actually looking at my phone. Sometimes I temporarily take my sunglasses off to use Face ID.

The cooling design makes my MacBook Pro very quiet, but it doesn't always keep up with the heat indoors here. I've got to the point where I have to suspend my Vagrant box before I close the lid, or there's a good chance it won't wake up when I open my MacBook Pro and I'll have to restart it. I wish it used fans more to keep it cool.

I need to take it into an Apple Store because I think it might be a real hardware problem and not just a limitation or a software problem that causes it not to wake, but I'm not sure. Fortunately we have lots of Apple Stores and the availability is not too bad. There's only one appointment available today and that's 40 miles away in Boca Raton, but there are appointments at about 5 different Apple Stores in the area with appointments available tomorrow.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#34

Post by spzb » Tue, May 07, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

Strange. The article doesn't reflect my experience of Apple stores at all. The only problem I have with them is trying actually to get in past the hordes of kids playing with the latest tech.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#35

Post by matwood » Tue, May 07, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

zitterbewegung wrote: post #10

atonse wrote: post #4

My biggest complaint about the Apple Store is the long wait times when your computer breaks. You often have to wait for a few days to even get an appointment. But the award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things. So people just wander around wanting to buy something and not knowing where to pay for it. And they end up wasting a lot more time…

I was able to get an appointment next day at an apple store to fix my keyboard . After I arrived I got it done within 15 min

I think it depends on the area. I live near an Apple store, but it is the only one for a very large area that includes a college. It's literally packed from open to close. I haven't had bad experiences, but definitely not as smooth as yours.

People have been saying that Apple has not grown its store count along with the numbers of device users they have added. I think it shows in areas like mine.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#36

Post by chadash » Tue, May 07, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

davidy123 wrote: post #13

chadash wrote: post #8

I live near an Apple store and frequent it every few months when I need to fix a phone or laptop, or buy a dongle, etc. The store near me gets lots of foot traffic, but the experience is just fine. There are usually at least 2-3 employees who will come up and ask me how I'm doing and what they can help with. Given the size of the store, the number of employees is surprising actually. And it's as easy as ever to book…

Lenovo's onsite service is inexpensive and, in my experience, excellent. I've used it a few times over the years and it's involved minimal interaction with helpful, focused staff and techs.

In my city, for onsite service, I have two options within 30 miles: one is an office depot, and the other is a computer repair store. Both seem to contract with Lenovo. I'm sure that there are some repair centers that provide excellent service and some less so.

Meanwhile, Apple has five stores within a 30 minute drive. And in my experience, every single Apple store I've been to gives me a more-or-less consistently good experience. Is it perfect? Far from it. But they can fix most issues I've had onsite, and the turnaround time is predictable when they ship out for repairs.

Meanwhile, with other companies, it's a crapshoot. I had a phone from LG that broke. I mailed it in and after 5 weeks and many follow up phone calls, I still didn't have it back. They claimed that they were out of the part that they needed to repair the phone and were waiting for it to come in. They initially told me that the repair would take 2 weeks. In my mind, a company with decent customer service would see that the part is out of stock and just give me a replacement phone if they can't turn around the repair in a reasonable time frame.

With Apple, you know what you are getting into. And if they say 1 week, they usually mean 1 week.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#37

Post by ausjke » Tue, May 07, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

They could downsize them to street corner booth for repair needs, or even better just sell some self-help-kits to cover majority of the basic DIY fixes.

I don't use apple, my Dell PC and Thinkpad laptop and Android phones never needed any repair, if they do, most likely I will just repair them myself or buy new ones(e.g. keyboard etc).

Apple will be struggling for a while after the iphone era for sure.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#38

Post by village-idiot » Tue, May 07, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #31

atonse wrote: post #4

My biggest complaint about the Apple Store is the long wait times when your computer breaks. You often have to wait for a few days to even get an appointment. But the award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things. So people just wander around wanting to buy something and not knowing where to pay for it. And they end up wasting a lot more time…

>The award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things. For small ticket items, you can scan, pay and leave without needing to interact with the staff. >Thanks to the Apple Store app, you can use your iPhone to scan the barcode of an accessory off the shelf and use Apple Pay to pay for it. From there, you can just walk out of the store with your n…

The fact that there's a "how to" article for buying things at a store is a sign that the UX is a complete and miserable failure.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#39

Post by pmcollins » Tue, May 07, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

When I want to buy something from Apple I can buy it from apple.com and have it shipped to me, but the last time I did this their "two day shipping" took a full week. Never again. Or I can buy it from Amazon, but last time I bought an Apple product from Amazon, I didn't notice it was counterfeit until well after the return window. Never again. Or I can buy it from their physical store. Last time I bought AirPods I drove 45 minutes to the Apple Store and had to wait for 10 minutes for the employee who was going to check me out to answer questions for the customer ahead of me, even though all he needed to do was swipe my credit card (there's a category of products that you can't self-checkout and it includes AirPods).

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#40

Post by tuxone » Tue, May 07, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

atonse wrote: post #4

My biggest complaint about the Apple Store is the long wait times when your computer breaks. You often have to wait for a few days to even get an appointment. But the award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things. So people just wander around wanting to buy something and not knowing where to pay for it. And they end up wasting a lot more time…

I know it's just my experience, but it looks like this thread (as the article) is all about personal experiences.

I had four time the same issue with a MBP 2011, the HDD cable was failing again ad again. First time they replaced it, next time they replaced the cable plus the HDD, third time they replaced cable plus logicboard, fourth I got a new MBP 2013. All for free, without Apple Care. Every time I got my laptop back in less than 4 business days (also the replacement unit, I received it at home even before they had picked the old one).

This is true heaven if compared to my nightmarish experiences with DELL, ASUS or ACER (as a private customer, not business).

About the repeated MBP issue, I blamed my way of carrying it around (with a passport bag) and the fact that the cable was directly in close contact with the unibody shell.