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Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

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Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#21

Post by Pxtl »

bsimpson wrote: post #6
ebbv wrote: post #2

Apple and Google do take very cold, inhuman approaches toward customer service (or lack of it.) Except in the case of the Apple Store where the employees are generally quite friendly, even if their actual helpfulness varies greatly from individual to individual. That said, it would be moronic of them to allow comments/threads which are advocating people to take legal action against the company on their own boards. It…

Google phone support for Chromebooks is surprisingly good.

I found them quite helpful when I sent my N7 for RMA, too. Seems like they get it right for paying public consumers - I guess that's the demo that's critical to your reputation. Everybody expects corporate clients and free public users to get crapped on, but once you're paying for a physical widget you expect the warranty signed in blood.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#22

Post by Pxtl »

skwirl wrote: post #15
usaphp wrote: post #8

Why did not he just call apple or visit their store? I want to see him dealing with Google or other big company via community forums, I remember a story on HN when a nexus was released and people could not get the phone for months after they paid for it, they could not even get a phone number to call and ask a question. Apple has a genius bar at their stores and a phone support, you can not seriously expect a reply f…

You only get 90 days of phone support with new Apple products unless you buy AppleCare. I don't know about the person who wrote this article, but many people do not live near Apple stores. Even where I live in metro Boston, it takes 40 minutes to get to one from my home (red line to green line, ugh). Where I grew up in Upstate NY, the nearest is 70 miles away.

The AppleCare might explain things. They want people to pay for Apple's high-quality care and get the great Apple experience that way, not get low-quality crappy free support from a forum. So the forum is only operated out of necessity - if Apple didn't run one, somebody else would - and it can't be a support avenue because Apple must always control the quality of the experience and you have to pay Apple for that.

It's actually consistent and reasonable when you look at Apple's obsession with quality.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#23

Post by w0utert »

KaiserPro wrote: post #17

Sadly this isn't news. Apple have been doing this for the last 5 years at least. I support a large fleet of Macpros (Ha, yeah "fast" and "magical" with 5 year old procs in them) Everytime an OS upgrade comes along something is silently broken. Trying to get support is a nightmare. For example when they changed which version of kerberos they used without any warning. Or changing the syntax of automount. Apple are shit…

Apple is shit, Google is shit, Microsoft is shit, and the list continues...

Not trying to defend anyone here, but with so many customers, products, software versions, it's no surprise problems will occur, which are sometimes inappropriately handled. This goes for any company, Apple is no exception here. I have years of anecdotal evidence of only positive experiences with Apple products and customer service, the only difference between me and the people affected by this WiFi bug is that I don't feel the need to start a blog to praise Apple for the joy I get using their products.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#24

Post by jevinskie »

ctdonath wrote: post #12
ebbv wrote: post #2

Apple and Google do take very cold, inhuman approaches toward customer service (or lack of it.) Except in the case of the Apple Store where the employees are generally quite friendly, even if their actual helpfulness varies greatly from individual to individual. That said, it would be moronic of them to allow comments/threads which are advocating people to take legal action against the company on their own boards. It…

Yup. The problem seems a small matter of an OTA software update. The solution being posted - and deleted - is demanding a replacement of >US$500 of hardware. Whatever the reason for not fixing the actual problem, what's being advocated as a solution isn't: it's just a way of counter-irritating the company into (one hopes) releasing an actual fix. Abusive behavior is not corrected by abusive behavior in return. There'…

Your product doesn't work and the company refuses to support it or fix the issue. What are you supposed to do, suck it up and be happy with your $500 paperweight?

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#26

Post by driverdan »

bambax wrote: post #16

Why isn't there a forum for Apple products not controlled by Apple? Shouldn't there be a stackexchange site for this? Lawrence Lessing needs to ask Joel Spolsky about this. Edit: as mentioned below, the site already exists. So people need to be using it instead of an Apple forum where the most useful posts get deleted by The Firm...

There are a ton of Apple discussion forums, including the Stack Exchange one others have posted.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#27

Post by metaphorm »

ctdonath wrote: post #12
ebbv wrote: post #2

Apple and Google do take very cold, inhuman approaches toward customer service (or lack of it.) Except in the case of the Apple Store where the employees are generally quite friendly, even if their actual helpfulness varies greatly from individual to individual. That said, it would be moronic of them to allow comments/threads which are advocating people to take legal action against the company on their own boards. It…

Yup. The problem seems a small matter of an OTA software update. The solution being posted - and deleted - is demanding a replacement of >US$500 of hardware. Whatever the reason for not fixing the actual problem, what's being advocated as a solution isn't: it's just a way of counter-irritating the company into (one hopes) releasing an actual fix. Abusive behavior is not corrected by abusive behavior in return. There'…

counter-irritating them to actually fix the problem sounds like a good plan to me.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#28

Post by aroch »

Pxtl wrote: post #21
bsimpson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google phone support for Chromebooks is surprisingly good.

I found them quite helpful when I sent my N7 for RMA, too. Seems like they get it right for paying public consumers - I guess that's the demo that's critical to your reputation. Everybody expects corporate clients and free public users to get crapped on, but once you're paying for a physical widget you expect the warranty signed in blood.

I don't know, I had to RMA my Nexus 7 twice (both due to faulty hardware, one was missing the physical buttons entirely and the other was reporting 1GB total space) and both times Google didn't want to process the RMA or wanted me to send it to Asus who would them send it to Google (while both companies placed a ~$400 lien on my card) and take 1+month.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#30

Post by driverdan »

To those who help others on Apple, Google, or other big multinational business discussion groups / forums, why do you do so?

I understand helping others with a startup's product that you like. You want it to succeed and an increased customer base will most likely lead to product improvements. But billion dollar businesses have the resources to provide support themselves. Why would you do it for them for free?

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