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How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

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Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#161

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Why is Apple Store service a thing at all? Service and repairs should happen at a service and repair centre, not at a retail centre.

Service Just Doesn't Work if you try to combine the two. You get huge delays, bureaucratic errors, people waiting and taking up space, and a general air of stress, confusion, and chaos, with everyone running around trying to handle at least two unrelated visitor streams.

It feels to me as if the original intent of retail has been overwhelmed by reality, and the whole could do with a rethink.

The customer experience is usually pretty terrible now, whether it's service or sales. It's certainly not effortlessly positive in any way.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#162

Post by sandworm101 »

bunderbunder wrote: post #61

The absolute worst thing about going to the Apple store is figuring out how to flag someone down if they're busy. For that reason alone, I've stopped recommending Apple products to my older relatives. Once upon a time, the dominant factor was that the walled garden allowed them to feel less intimidated by their technology, which left them feeling like their devices were vastly more capable, even when they technically…

>> figuring out how to flag someone down if they're busy. For that reason alone, I've stopped recommending Apple products to my older relatives.

Be cute. Wear cool clothes. Don't be old. Look like an "influencer" with a million followers. The more you look like the people in the apple commercials the faster they will get to you. Above all things, apple stores are image-conscious. They are welcoming to people who fit the image they wish to portray and shun those who do not.

Or, if you really want fast service, do the opposite. I wore my military uniform to an apple store once (picking up a xmas present on my way home from work). Despite the crowds I had a manager helping me within seconds. She was very eager to get me helped and back out the door. Camo does clash with iPhone white.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#163

Post by partiallypro »

Every time I go past/in one, it just looks like it's people wasting time at the mall waiting on someone that's shopping elsewhere, or people there for repairs. 50% of the people there are all Apple employees, and most of them don't seem to do anything but chit-chat.

Every time I walk past a Microsoft store there aren't too many customers, but usually they are hosting a gaming tournament or a code academy with tons of teens/kids.

It's an interesting dynamic.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#164

Post by mikestew »

sombremesa wrote: post #69
Swizec wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where was this? I’ve noticed most apple stores are super friendly and fast all over the world. But their San Francisco flagship store is utter shit. Understaffed, too small, absolutely mobbed by people. And it makes sense, it’s a single store serving a city of 900,000 people with millions driving in every morning for work. They desperately need more locations. The Palo Alto store, for example, is pure delight. I’ve h…

This was in Bellevue, WA. I did get the sense I'd have had a much better time just buying online.

Gawd, that store is such a disaster. Imagine you've never stepped foot in an Apple store, and you would like to buy an Apple product. I imagine it is much like the person I directed the last time I was in there, who "just want(ed) to buy this cable". Yeah, good fsckin' luck, buddy, because there's no signage and no one to tell you where to stand. I told him where to stand only because I "know" Apple stores (and even then, I wasn't 100% confident that the random cluster of people was the correct cluster). All the while, it took twenty minutes to get the Space Gray 256GB iPhone XS (no Apple Care, thanks) I originally came in for.

Yeah, yeah, buy it online for in-store pickup, use the Apple Store app to self-checkout, yada, yada, tribal knowledge. Including the tribal knowledge that the Apple B&M retail experience doesn't have queues, signs, or anyone to direct you.

Not that Bellevue is alone. When I last visited my Mom, I thought we'd swing by the Brandon, FL store, get her an Apple Watch. Man, I've never tried so hard to give someone $600 in my life.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#165

Post by sgustard »

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…

I walked in a few months to ask about a phone glitch. The rep was happily asking me detailed questions and for a moment I thought they were going to actually help me. Only then did I realize he was just making an appointment for me weeks in the future.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#166

Post by seanmcdirmid »

rootusrootus wrote: post #121
ghostly_s wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it sounds like y'alls experience has been different, but at the store I frequent in Chicago they have 1-2 people on staff doing this triage with everyone who walks in (though they just stand around the entrance, not at a desk). I definitely have had issues with wait time (I've mostly chalked that up to it being a very busy flagship location, but sounds like it's a larger issue), but they always check me in…

Agreed. The Portland store is very busy and I've had wait times that I think are excessive, but I do credit them with having a couple employees standing by the door to do triage. They zero in very quickly on grandma and she will get handed to the right person, but her feet will probably get tired from waiting.

The Portland store is like one of the main stores in the country for overseas buyers of apple products. That thing with Oregon having no sales tax...so it can get really busy.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#167

Post by xerosis »

madeofpalk wrote: post #54
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…

> You often have to wait for a few days to even get an appointment. Here's the thing that got me - last year the laptop broke on my MacBook Pro. Very common and typical problem. Whenever I tried to book an appointment there was literally no appointments in the entirety of London . It was actually impossible to book an appointment. I ended up just walking into a store on my Tuesday lunch break and they told me all the…

I live in a smaller country, there are frequently no appointments in the whole country for the entire booking window.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#168

Post by jdsully »

xvector wrote: post #144
jtr_47 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stores are more sterile and the employees and service is more "clinical" and less "hands on." I miss the original stores' refurbished/discount tables/bin they used to have. You could find great deals on those tables.. Oh.. one other thing that annoys the hell out of me about the stores an service. I bought a new iphone8, I asked if they could transfer the iphone5 data+ apps to my new phone. They said no, do it yo…

You can’t be serious? You think it would be reasonable from a security perspective if Apple was capable of transferring your data?

They used to do that a long time ago. You would sit there with them as they transferred it off your old machine.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#169

Post by sgustard »

bobbiechen wrote: post #156
tikkabhuna wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Self checkouts are great! Rather than having 1 or 2 tills you can have many times that manned by the same number of people. If you don't have any alcohol you can use it without interacting with anyone at all and its much faster. That coupled with contactless payments make it super quick to buy just a few items. A "proper" checkout is still king for large shops but for people I know (late 20s), that is becoming l…

>If you don't have any alcohol you can use it without interacting with anyone at all and its much faster. I agree that you can do it without interacting with anyone at all. But I question whether it's faster. For a class assignment on usability a while back, I observed self-checkout users and manned ("proper") checkout at a local grocery store and found that the absolute fastest of the self-checkout users were only j…

To me, the main advantage is that (at my local store) they implement a "wait for the next available machine" protocol rather than "pick a cashier to queue up behind."

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#170

Post by sonnyblarney »

The Apple Store is now fully an episode of Portlandia.

It's like a big confusing miasma at burning man where everyone is trying to 'contact' another through signs on the big board "Mine is the pink one by the bottom!" i.e. to differentiate it from the 1000 other pink notes by the bottom ...

Take a goddam number, or have a station where people can go where they get that number.

Instead of the stupid trying to find your blind-date/fixer in a crowd, they go to a spot where you can find them.

The numbers are up on a screen so you know if you have 10 or 30 minutes to wait and you can tell when you're up.

We figured out lines and numbers maybe 2000 years ago but Mesopotamian technology apparently isn't hipster enough for Cupertino.

Please - we want to see an Kumail Nanjiani thing about this on Funny or Die.

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