How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#181

Post by CharlesColeman » Tue, May 07, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #16

>[Angela Ahrendts'] overhaul of the Genius Bar has been especially controversial. Customers looking for technical advice or repairs must now check in with an employee, who types their request into an iPad. Then when a Genius is free, he or she must find the customer wherever they happen to be in the store. Ahrendts was determined to get rid of lineups, but now the stores are often crowded with people waiting for thei…

> I don't see how the old dedicated space for a Genius Bar would work better. The problem is that the old way tied tech support to a spatial location in the store. The new way assigned tech support to a person instead of a location. This allows any and every table in the store to become a temporary "genius bar" for that customer session.

It's better UX. As a customer, I know what a service counter looks like, but I can't recognize a tech support employee roaming around.

> If an Apple exec wants to bring back the dedicated area for the Genius Bar, how does one avoid the logistical nightmare of those lines? You still have to work within the same finite retail floor space.

Their current process is a logistical nightmare. Basically they take a description of what you're wearing, then tell you to hang around in a crowd by the "Genius Bar" next to the iPhone cases. Eventually some employee is supposed to pick you out of that crowd based on the description they entered earlier.

Lines are a well understood, tried-and-true technology for managing crowds. What they're doing is different but not better.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#182

Post by bdcravens » Tue, May 07, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

The only surprise to me about the article is suggesting that this is a recent thing. I’ve experienced this for years.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#183

Post by BoorishBears » Tue, May 07, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

megous wrote: post #133

tuxone wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

HW design, that fails 3 times in a row in the same place (and ultimately even destroys the logic board - probably because of the short on the exposed cable wiring), and the service that fails to prevent that, I'd hardly call a "true heaven". It's terrible. Say, they failed to make the cable protected enough in the initial design. During the first service, they should just not replace the cable, they should also add t…

Do you know how many Dells, Acers, and Asus laptops have known problems that affect the vast majority of units but will still take shipping your computer on your dime and being without for weeks at a time?

My mother can afford a Macbook, I've told her this, but she insists on buying cheap Dells on sale.

In 3 years she's gone through 3 200-300$ Dells. Every time they break Dell comes back with some untenable repair arrangement and off she goes.

She could have bought a used Macbook Pro 3 years ago, and today it'd be worth more than all of those Dells put together, and odds are it'd be in working condition unlike the 3rd one which she's telling me is picking up a flickering screen issue.

If something broke she could go to the Apple store and get it fixed within a couple of days. Even out of warranty she'd be better off than Dell out of warranty, which is like Apple's out of warranty support... except more expensive and slower.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#184

Post by rosseloh » Tue, May 07, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

tuxone wrote: post #40

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 b…

Nah, it wasn't you. Those cables are a very common failure. We keep them in stock at our (not apple) computer store.

Normally it's just the cable. Sometimes it's the cable and the OS needs a reload (because whatever goes wrong with the cable causes the drive itself to get corrupted, but not actually physically fail).

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#185

Post by ndiscussion » Tue, May 07, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

groovybits wrote: post #180

sandworm101 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 more you look like the people in the apple commercials the faster they will get to you. I'd say this is a bold claim w/o non-anecdotal evidence. Customer service should be non-discriminatory, no matter what product/service you're selling. If I, as a customer, cannot rely on an associate to address my problem simply because I do not dress like their image, then this is not a business worth walking into in the fi…

> I can walk into a grocery store with either a million-dollar suite, or a tshirt/shorts, and I still expect the same customer service.

Oh. Is that borne from past experience? Because my experience living in a very accepting, liberal city, tells me the opposite. Unless your tshirt and shorts are from j crew.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#186

Post by dv_dt » Tue, May 07, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #162

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…

Or like many other corners of America, aircraft boarding, etc, military personnel are given some extra perks for the risks for which they volunteered.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#187

Post by rosseloh » Tue, May 07, 2019, 4:27 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

Just for curiosity's sake what was the issue with the keyboard?

Because I work at a repair shop. Not an apple one (we're way too small for that, they want something ridiculous like $100,000 a year in used apple sales before they even consider letting you apply to be a reseller/repair store). People bring apple stuff here because there's nowhere else to take them except a three hour drive to the nearest big city.

The only issues I've seen on MacBook keyboards in my 8 years working here, required a full keyboard replacement. And I just did one a couple weeks ago. That's a good hour or two's work, just getting the thing disassembled far enough to get to the keyboard in the first place, then pulling all of the hundred or so screws for the keyboard, replacing it, and rebuilding everything.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#188

Post by JoelTheSuperior » Tue, May 07, 2019, 4:28 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #114

seqastian wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, he means that they value replace over repair. Like when I brought a MBP in with a charging circuit issue - just wouldn't charge, OS said battery was healthy, but at 0% capacity. Would run on AC. I thought $200... no... $600. Not "Would you like to schedule that service?" (I didn't - for its use case it could stay on AC the rest of its life)... but the first comment after the price? "That's quite a bit, huh? Maybe…

Yup, noticed the same in the UK. I can't help but feel like the prices are intentionally kept high to pressure people to replace rather than repair.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#189

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, May 07, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #166

rootusrootus wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe it. A significant number of the developers on my team that visit from Hyderabad take at least one new iPhone home with them. Lack of sales tax combined with the prices Apple charges in India (IIRC they don't sell directly, which may be part of the problem) make it attractive to buy them in Portland.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#190

Post by justincormack » Tue, May 07, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

jharger wrote: post #160

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…

That's kind of the key, right? If you're buying one or two items, the self-checkout is great! If you're buying a week or two worth of supplies, it's terrible. Here in the US, at least at the stores I shop at, each item requires that you scan it, wait for the machine to tell you to place the item in the bagging area, wait for it to register the weight, then you're allowed to move to the next item. If you accidentally…

It depends on the store design, Waitrose in the UK doesn't bother with the weighing thing, and you can scan as you go around the shop and just pay at the end. It is way more convenient.