Today’s excitement! Having never before let any of my hard-earned slip into the fingers of Apple the day finally came. A series of nuisance rendering glitches on the Apple platform over a short space of time finally pushed Nextstudio to buy one of these machines that the fanboys rave about so wildly. I have a horrible feeling you’ll see an “Apple” category on this blog before the year is out, however it may be marked NSFW. That aside…
The Apple shop! The computing world’s equivalent of the prestige car dealership. I walked through the door hand already outstretched to accept my complimentary espresso, shoes already half kicked off for a short foot-rub while I waited for my well-groomed Apple consultant to complete another transaction before dangling an array of keys with expensive looking logos, and asking just how fast I like to drive. Actually I was a bit disappointed. Two staff members, 3 or 4 customers already in the place, half an hour of waiting with nothing more to pass the time than a wall full of earbuds in blister-packs. No seats. Apparently the funky new world lives on its feet.
Customers one and two are a young couple. Apparently this Mac is their first, and they want to know how to take good care of it. Customer three is a middle-aged man with a warranty claim on something that is either a Flash Gordon raygun or an external hard disk. I think it was the latter. Customer four is not a customer at all, and after our wait has dragged on he introduces himself. Apparently he “works for Apple”. He’s sharply dressed enough – the word “prissy” springs to mind. He’s carrying a handbag^H^H^H^H^H^H^H satchel. He actually looks a bit crestfallen when he finds out that we’re there to buy something, not to chat about how cool their products are.
Eventually the moment comes, there’s a free salesman, and he may yet have a silver platter upon which to serve our goods. Or maybe not…
“We’re after a Mac Mini, just the most basic one, with 2GB of RAM.” Our salesman, let’s call him Adrian, moseys on over to pick up the display card off the shelf, little plastic holder and all. Armed with this information, he deduces that he “thinks” that extra memory will make it a special order, and we’ll have to wait a week. Keep in mind that the machine in question comes in two varieties – 1GB or 2GB – from the Apple website. Apparently they expected nobody to read all the way to the bottom.
“Wait, I’ll check out the back, we have one in stock. Maybe it’s got 2GB?”
This sounds like business. Maybe the RAM fairies came overnight. Surprisingly, no, once he comes back there’s the morose report that it’s still got the 1GB with which it was delivered. And they can’t fit it there, because they’re just a computer shop. We’ll have to order it. The extra RAM will cost an extra $95, which is the only good news as the Apple website indicated that it’d be closer to $200 extra.
Adrian fumbles with his screen for a while. It seems he doesn’t know how to put an order through. Eventually his boss comes over, and they fumble together. Satchel-guy joins in too after another 5 minutes. There’s some worrying mumbling going on between them, talking about service charges to fit the memory.
“So you want 2GB of RAM in the machine?”
Yes. Still. More mumbling about taking it from the South Melbourne stock list and replacing, shuffling, something something.
“Do you want to go to South Melbourne to pick it up, or Malvern?”
“Errr, how about here, since this is where we came?”
“Oh, we’ll have to get it delivered here then.”
Genius. Pure genius.
“Ok, what software do you want? You want to do some word processing? Spreadsheets, that sort of thing?”
“No, really, still nothing extra apart from the RAM.”
“Oh right the RAM, you wanted that”. Clickety click. Another 5 minutes of mumbling at the screen.
“Do you want AppleCare or something?”
I’ll take whatever “or something” you like if it will get me out of this place before close of business. “No thanks, just the machine, the RAM, that’s it.” At this stage I’m wondering if they’ll take offence at pressing a few of those soft-looking laptop boxes up the back into service as a seat/footrest combo. Maybe not.
Eventually Adrian decides it’s deposit time. 10%. $84 or thereabouts. Hang on, that’s 10% of the basic price. The one without the RAM.
“Oh right, the RAM.” More screen fumbling.
Finally, finally they’re good to take some money. Adrian gets the contact name and phone number twice, slowly, just to make sure he’s got it, and we’re out. Satchel man wishes us a good day on the way through the door. From the outside, it’s still an Apple shop. It looks funky, full of white fittings, shiny laptops, big screens. Are they all so hollow on the inside?
Update
Time has rolled by, and somehow I never got back to tell the end of this tale.
The following week the phone rings, and our good friend Adrian has been on the case. The delivery-man has just arrived with the shiny new bundle of silicon joy! We can turn up any time we like to collect it.
By this stage we were cracking the champagne on account of this likely being the last day of having to deal with these imbeciles. Sadly it was not to be. Turning up at the shop a couple of hours later, Adrian isn’t there to greet us with a high-five and congratulations on our purchase. Pity, I wouldn’t have minded “thanking” him for the service we got. Instead we have a new “funky” assistant sporting a couple of discreet facial piercings. After explaining what we were there for and showing the receipt from a week earlier, we watched her jet out to the back of the store to box up our new toy. We then watched her jet back out from the back of the store empty-handed.
“It hasn’t been delivered yet.”
If you’ve ever seen a man cop a stray cover drive in the testicles during a game of backyard cricket, that split second before reality and agony come roaring in, you can probably picture the look of shock and horror on our faces.
“But the guy called, hours ago, and said it was here.”
“Well it’s not, you’ll have to come back, we’ll call you when it arrives.”
You’ll note the complete absence of the phrase “sorry for wasting an hour of your time coming down here” in the exchange above.
Another 24 hours rolls by, another phone call, another trip down to visit our friends. This time the hardware is there, and another imbecile is taking the remainder of the payment. He wrestles with the glistening white Mac trying to put through the invoice. The one and only positive experience in this whole saga comes when the second shop assistant (definitely not the imbecile manager), after hearing some of our complaints while this is going on, comes and takes over the process. Instead of making us sit around for another hour while trying to round up an invoice, he takes the money and hand-writes a receipt for it so we can be on our way.
In summary, I have never been so offended by a customer service experience. I’m utterly perplexed as to why people are return customers here.
I think you possibly picked the most crap place to buy it in the whole of Melbourne. Chapel Street is decidedly the most shallow place in existence. You were actually probably served by mannequins from the surrounding clothing stores. Phone/Web order from Streetwise is much less stupid/painful. They don't have handbags and they actually (well the tech department at least) know what they're doing. If you order over the net you can avoid the whole cheap shiny salesman shebang altogether.
Amen to ordering online. If this streetwise crowd can come anywhere close to our online experiences with AusPCMarket, they've got it in the bag.
I'm sad to say there was a round two when it came to collecting the gear a week later - I'll update the post when I get around to it. To be fair, there did seem to be one guy in the shop who vaguely had a clue and got us sorted out in the end. It was only by chance (or at least, a process of deduction) that we got to speak to him though. More details will follow!