Dealing with unrealistic expectations is as much, if not moreso, a part of being a Genius as is general Mac troubleshooting. Customers demand all sorts of things silly, idiotic, or worse. They want special treatment, because they assume none of our other customers have business critical machines. They demand replacements because it’s not reasonable to accept a single hardware failure in a year. They demand on-the-spot replacement of a module that is out-of-stock, and then demand to speak to a manager, as managers are well known for rectally-expelling physical goods on command. When reality sets in that, in fact, a manager’s arse does not house a wormhole to the warehouse on the other side of the continent, they then demand a replacement computer, since “tomorrow” is too long to wait.
Replacement Computers
Apple replaces computers. All the time. Scarcely a week goes by that I didn’t replace someone’s computer. More often than not, I actually offered it as a solution before the customer asked for it. If, by chance, you asked for a replacement before you really merited one, we would try to find a way to squeeze your situation through the nebulous guidelines provided. What we hate are people who demand replacement computers for reasons of insanity.
An iMac once came into the store with an iMac G5 exhibiting two problems. First, it had the very well-known video problems from that model, which Apple has acknowledged and will repair even if out-of-warranty. The second was a shattered LCD.
Not “broken.” Shattered.
Such is common on PowerBooks and iBooks, as they’re carried around and dropped quite frequently. Breaking the bad news on these is a weekly event at the Bar. In six years at Apple, I witnessed precisely two (2) broken LCDs in iMacs. And this one was shattered, to boot. I explained that we could fix the artifacting video problem, but that LCD replacement was her responsibility. She accepted this and admitted to having dropped it while moving. She would not pay to repair the LCD, she would just live with it. We fixed the logic board all was well.
Until this machine failed to power on, one day. Faulty power supplies are also an Apple-acknowledged problem in this machine. We fixed it, and sent her home, only to get a call claiming that we had made the shattered LCD worse. We explained that we had already quoted her the replacement cost and she had accepted responsibility for the damage and declined the quote. We would gladly replace it, and even had the part in stock, but that she would still need to pay for the repair. We even offered to turn the repair around next-day for her, a priority level we only give to ProCare customers.
No good. She wasn’t asking for a new LCD... she wanted a new computer. At no cost. We even offered to replace the computer if she would just pay for what she broke. No good.
Business Critical
Another common play is the claim that a computer is so important to a business that it needs special treatment.
Seven to ten days? I can’t be without it that long. You have to fix it today.
There’s a limited amount of space in the back of an AppleStore – some more limited than others, and none more limited than the AppleStore where I spent most of my career. Given limited space, there can only be a limited number and selection of repair parts. There’s actually a system in place that measures each store’s historical service part usage and adjusts the store’s standing inventory to keep the most commonly used parts in stock. Even if the part is not in stock, the warehouse can usually get your part to the store before its turn is up for repair.
You don’t see it, but there are two lines for the Geniuses. There’s the one you see at the Bar, customers waiting to be helped. Then, there’s a line of customers at home (or work) waiting to hear that their computer is fixed. The line you don’t see is almost always longer than the one you do. Most customers can’t see past themselves to the other customers at the Bar, much less to the customers of yesterday and last week. While you’re chewing on the Genius trying to get him to give you preferential treatment, he has to consider all of the computers he and four or five other Geniuses checked in over the last week. Guess how many of those customers said their computers were also business critical and demanded preferential treatment?
All of them.
Give Me Free Stuff
Customers frequently want compensation for their troubles, in some cases even going so far as to complain about the amount of gas it took to get to and from the store. They want to be comped a copy of Tiger, iLife, iWork, extra RAM, or more, for trivial things. I had a guy demand I give him a copy of Adobe Photoshop because his hard drive needed to be erase & installed, and his “friend” had his Photoshop disk. I’m sorry, did you just demand that I give you a legit copy of Photoshop because I have to erase your pirated copy to fix your computer?
Yes, you did. Jerk.
One customer I truly felt sorry for, though, and he just kept making his own situation worse. His iBook’s hard drive crashed and needed replacement. He’d been through this before with another computer and was irritated that his new hard drive only came with an OS on it. It did not include all of the bundled software that the iBook itself originally shipped with. I explained that he could reinstall all of that software with his original Software Restore CDs, but that maintaining a library of every possible install/restore CD image Apple has ever produced was time and resource prohibitive. We load the OS and make the machine functional, but you have the disks and can easily reload the software.
I don’t have time for that! It’s your job! If you can’t reload all the software versions that came with it, you owe me upgrades!
Ehhhhh…. no. My job is to replace your hard drive and return your computer to functionality. The restraints of time, space, and cost restrict my ability to reinstall every single application you could feasibly have been using. It’s your job to back up, and part of that equation is keeping up with your install disks and learning how to use them. And didn’t you say you’ve already been through this once? Shouldn’t that have been your wake up call to start backing up?
The Grand Daddy
Sadly, I can’t share most the details I want about the case I call The Grand Daddy. There may (or may not, for all I know) still be some legal proceedings going on that I wouldn’t want to run afoul of. I can say that I sympathize somewhat with the guy, and he deserves (and was offered) more than just a replacement computer.
His demands, however, were in a world of their own.
- Salary
- Compensation for counseling
- Compensation for counseling for his girlfriend
- 17” PowerBook, maxed RAM, to replace his 12” iBook
- A new computer, comparable to the 17” PowerBook, every two years
- $5000 in software
- $5000 in credit at the AppleStore
The followup call was something to the effect of “Give us a call when you grow up.”
Perhaps even more sadly, I’ll never know the resolution to his story. After it became apparent that he either had retained a lawyer – or, based on the absurdity of some of his demands, was getting help from a legal-minded friend suffering from a moderate bout of insanity – we told him to have his lawyers call ours and never heard back.
Are you saying that if you replace a hard drive the customer gets a system back with the bare OS and not the version of iLife they should have?
It’s not as if there is a huge variety of application software packages that ship on different models — if you buy one in 2004, you’ll get iLife 2004/appleworks, if you buy it in 2005, you’ll get iLife 2005/appleworks. Having an appropriate install CD with recent security updates and running it for the customer should be basic customer service, IMHO.
There’s a HUGE world of difference between expecting the originally bundled software to be installed on a replacement drive and expecting “every single application you could feasibly have been using”.
I’ll let JC explain in severe detail when he gets around to it, but consider:
That’s a lot to keep on-hand. Just keep your own install media around and you’ll be fine.
4×2×5= 40 CDs. That’s a lot less restore CDs than any IT department I’ve worked in had to keep track of. And of course, many of those product lines and models have the exact same software configuration.
They already have multiple Mac OS versions available if they’re reinstalling the original system, so keeping track of and refreshing CDs is obviously not the issue.
At the very least, from a customer service perspective, they should advise people to bring in the original restore CD/DVD and offer to run it for the customer when the replacement drive is installed.
The out-of-the-box experince with Apple is part of what makes the product so great — why can’t we expect the same standard for out-of-repair?
The Genius Bar is not an IT Department.
I have worked in plenty of IT departments myself and there’s one major difference; when you’re an IT guy (or gal), you wait for things to break, and you have even coverage of coworkers to help you fix things between normal business hours 8-5.
There are always broken things to fix at the Genius Bar, and there are far more hours (8AM to 10PM in most stores) to cover with several fewer people than your average IT Department. Things that are nice, like managing a CD/DVD library, don’t tend to happen. We had a hard enough time keeping copies of required diagnostic CDs in stock on a daily basis. Assigning someone to manage this task just means turning away customers at the Genius Bar.
So… Turn away customers every day? Or risk that occasional customer who gets bent out of shape that I don’t have AppleWorks 5 and iLife ’04 just laying around…
Hard choice, that.
Seems to me that you unnecessarily raised this ladies expectations, at which point she just demanded more and more.
Just do what PC Shops do and say; “bad luck”, “tough” , “you broke it, you bought it”, or just “NO!”,
The whole incident of SJ calling a customer about a crack/join in his G4 cube was the beginning of the end imo.
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