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How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

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Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#211

Post by dv_dt »

sandworm101 wrote: post #202
dv_dt wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Who said anything about america? I'm in Canada. We don't get military discounts everywhere. When we wear our uniforms in public we generally get looks of surprise and confusion. We don't get priority boarding. In fact Canadian soldier almost never wear uniforms while traveling, certainly not while on civilian aircraft. America's soldier cult is a very unique thing.

Sorry for assuming the context, but I do still find it very unlikely that an Apple store rushed someone service wise to minimize military apparel away from public appearance.

That said the Apple store is losing luster because it's organized around a human touch feel, but seems to want to not supply enough humans to actually handle capacity. This after making sure placement of the stores are optimized for high-traffic locations

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#212

Post by mwfunk »

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…

I totally believe that someone in uniform might get extra nice treatment, but aside from that, I'm surprised you could type something like that without it feeling like waving a big red flag at yourself. If I find myself thinking stuff like that (and I do, all the time, because I'm old and unattractive and can have quite the RBF if I'm not paying attention), it's almost always because my expectations are way off and I'm feeling insecure and paranoid, or I'm feeling insecure and impatient and grumpy and am projecting, or (most likely) I'm the problem. I always remember the old saying about how if some days it seems like every single person I bump into is an asshole, I'm the asshole, and I usually am.

Everybody who works retail wants nothing more than to get customers in/happy/out ASAP, nobody in a busy electronics store cares about only helping attractive people. They want to help those people get out of the store ASAP too. For example, even if there's some questionably hygienic, angry looking morbidly obese fiftysomething guy in a MAGA hat and Crocs standing in the corner glaring at everyone, they're still going to want that person happy and out of the store ASAP, just like everyone else. Maybe even more happy and more out of the store than most if he's creeping out other people. Not helping people who need help just gives them a bad experience and keeps them lurking around the store getting progressively angrier. Nobody wants that.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#213

Post by jarjoura »

Meh, if anything the Apple Store is a victim of its own success. For all the complaints in this thread about slow Genius bar experiences, it's important to remember it was originally designed and conceived as a way to teach people HOW to use their new Mac's and iPhones. In the early 2000s Mac's were still considered toys and Apple was trying to get around that by allowing people to learn as much as they can about their new hardware.

Apple consistently gets top ratings for customer service across the industry, and not saying there isn't room for improvement, obviously there is, but point me to another electronics company of Apple's size that is doing it better?

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#214

Post by CharlesColeman »

duxup wrote: post #192
CharlesColeman wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like the standard inevitability for every service related thing that it degrades noticeably with time. I don't think that's an inevitability, just the effect of a particular type of corner-cutting business culture that's very prevalent nowadays. Today's business conventional wisdom isn't very wise, and I do hope that it's eventually replaced by something better.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes hold inside service related business units. I saw a strong trend where good leadership in those business units simply leave that area and move into other business areas (engineering, sales etc) when it became clear that any initiatives they started that didn't involve cost cutting were not going to happen in any support related department. There was a serious brain drai…

> I fear that fundamentally support related business units are just not likely to have anyone who knows how to do it right (even if suddenly given resources), let alone care.

Yeah, the rot starts from the top and needs to be fixed from the top, and least in today's corporate structures. I think it's the conventional wisdom of C-suite people that needs to change.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#215

Post by CWuestefeld »

I have one experience with the Apple store, when I went there to try to get my wife's phone fixed.

I had no idea that's a stupid thing to do, that you can't just go there and ask for help. Actually, I had to go there and try to flag someone down. He told me that I had to make an appointment to get help.

But he couldn't just make the appointment for me. There was a line for that. I was told they'd probably be able to get to me in a half hour or so, so I should come back then.

At that point I was able to make an appointment to come back a week hence, when I could get them to actually look at the phone.

They did eventually fix the problem very satisfactorily, but the process to get to that point was nothing less than infuriating.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#216

Post by jrochkind1 »

sombremesa wrote: post #46

I went to buy a brand new laptop at the Apple Store, and despite knowing exactly what I wanted I had to wait for at least 20 minutes - when I walked in, I was told to wait until an associate was free (whereas in most stores I could just grab a product off the shelf and go check out), then I was ping-ponged around at least 2 other people (both of whom I had to wait for - 'just hang around this area and we'll send some…

> whereas in most stores I could just grab a product off the shelf and go check out

Well, and then wait in line at a cashier to be fair. Probably less than 20 minutes though.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#217

Post by asdff »

I'm disappointed with the lack of autonomy that the staff has in the Apple Store. In any interaction with the genius staff, they go off the official playbook to the point where it doesn't even make sense sometimes.

I have a macbook pro where I've replaced the disk drive with an SSD and boot off of that. One day it stopped booting from that drive, so I brought it into the genius bar to see if the drive was dead or if a ribbon cable failed.

After talking about the problem for a while, they finally took it to the back and opened it up, and just as quickly returned it to me with a grave face. They saw that the optical drive had been removed and the RAM upgraded to 16gb, and because of their corporate policies, all they could do to a machine that's been upgraded is button it back up and return it to the user. Never mind that the problem with my macbook wasn't the drive or the cable, the drive had wiggled out of its mount and was just loose in the case.

You could shake the laptop and hear it slapping around, and the geniuses definitely would have noticed the loose drive as soon as they opened it like I did when I returned home, but their policy was such that they couldn't even tell me what they saw in there. Imagine if your local mechanic operated so rigidly. Looking back at it, it was like a scene out of 1984 and I wouldn't have been surprised if one of the geniuses slipped me a scrap of paper with the words on it that they clearly weren't permitted to utter with an apple lanyard around their neck ("reattach ssd to optibay").

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#218

Post by askafriend »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #215

I have one experience with the Apple store, when I went there to try to get my wife's phone fixed. I had no idea that's a stupid thing to do, that you can't just go there and ask for help. Actually, I had to go there and try to flag someone down. He told me that I had to make an appointment to get help. But he couldn't just make the appointment for me. There was a line for that . I was told they'd probably be able to…

You could have booked an appointment sitting at home in your underwear.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#219

Post by okcando »

airstrike wrote: post #174
tootie wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand being anti-Google, but why anti-Google and pro-Apple?

I think their view is that Apple tries to keep your data to themselves vs. sharing it with third-party ad providers

Last I heard, Google also tends to keep data to themselves. The difference in business model is that Google internally uses user data to effectively place and sell advertising, not that advertisers have direct access to that data. Apple isn't an advertising company the way Google is.

But perhaps things have changed.

Re: How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster

#220

Post by PKop »

rootusrootus wrote: post #130
beamatronic wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I have felt many times that the Apple Store could use a vending machine for iPhones. Anything that somebody might want to just grab and go no matter how expensive.

1000% agree. I don't always want someone to walk me through setting up my iPhone. I've used them since the very first one, I don't need any help. Take my money already and let me get out. Even just picking up a set of airpods for my wife took far longer than it should have. A vending machine would be all kinds of awesome, maybe like the ones Best Buy has at the airport (which sells some Apple products like airpods, c…

> Take my money already and let me get out

This is what online ordering was made for.

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