I recently went to Mexico City and had a dreadful experience with the Apple Stores there. From what I learned, this might be a pervasive problem and needs to be known. Apple Stores in Mexico, and perhaps just abroad, are not real Apple Stores. They sell apple products but are not obligated to follow any apple service policy, or care for damaging the brand. In my experience I dealt with thugs who knew what they were doing and intentionally limit online feedback from disgruntled customers such as me.
Here is the story in a nutshell:
I went to Mexico for three weeks and forgot a cable I needed. The second day there I went to the "Mac Store" on Altavista, in San Angel, the historic seventeenth-century neighborhood in which I also happened to be staying, so for me it was just a short walk to the store and back.
They had the cable, but it was more than three times the price than on Apple's website ($19 versus $70). I needed the cable for a presentation the following day so I unhappily bought it. While I was waiting to pay, I couldn't help but notice that a "genius" close by could not answer a simple question about an IPhone and I was very surprised when he admitted he didn't know how you closed apps on an Iphone!
Off I went, and a few hours later I related my story to a local acquaintance who directed me to a non-apple store two blocks away from the Altavista Mac Store, where I found the exact same apple cable for $19. I had not opened the package, so I came back to the apple store and asked them for a refund. The cable was still in his box/bag unopened and had been out of the store for only a few hours. They said they could only give me store credit which, at those prices, I did not want, or refund 90% of the amount. I chose the later although I felt this was unfair since the product was unused and bought the same day. The real problem was that refunds had to be paid in the form of a check that could only be made at the corporate office and was going to take one week! I began to really get upset and asked to talk to the manager. He told me the same thing. He explained to me they were not real Mac Stores, but that they sold Macs. The corporate owner of the store was Compudabo, a large distributor of computers who sold all kinds of computers, and specialized in large government purchases, so individual sales were not a priority for them. I was shocked at the candid response, figured out I could not do anything, cut my losses and left.
A week later they told me they did not have the check, and they did not have it the second or third week, or by the time I had to come back.
To the question of why they were doing this obviously foul practice... the same manager told me basically that they were doing it because they could. They had no obligation to following apple customer service policies and had all the feedback and comments on all associated websites closed.
I of course went online to check that information and tried to leave feedback on their website and on the apple website, but it was true. One cannot leave feedback for Mac Stores in Mexico in the apple website.
For the principle I asked the persons I was visiting to help me collect that check. It took them two and a half months and several trips to the store (over the phone nothing could be done). Transferring the money to the US is not worth the trouble, and it doesn't begin to cover my friend's troubles or mine.
I feel we should be aware when we travel that "Apple Stores" are not real Apple Stores, and as I am sure there must be very good ones out there, there is no certainty you will find a good one. You may instead fall in a thug's lair as I did.
Here is the story in a nutshell:
I went to Mexico for three weeks and forgot a cable I needed. The second day there I went to the "Mac Store" on Altavista, in San Angel, the historic seventeenth-century neighborhood in which I also happened to be staying, so for me it was just a short walk to the store and back.
They had the cable, but it was more than three times the price than on Apple's website ($19 versus $70). I needed the cable for a presentation the following day so I unhappily bought it. While I was waiting to pay, I couldn't help but notice that a "genius" close by could not answer a simple question about an IPhone and I was very surprised when he admitted he didn't know how you closed apps on an Iphone!
Off I went, and a few hours later I related my story to a local acquaintance who directed me to a non-apple store two blocks away from the Altavista Mac Store, where I found the exact same apple cable for $19. I had not opened the package, so I came back to the apple store and asked them for a refund. The cable was still in his box/bag unopened and had been out of the store for only a few hours. They said they could only give me store credit which, at those prices, I did not want, or refund 90% of the amount. I chose the later although I felt this was unfair since the product was unused and bought the same day. The real problem was that refunds had to be paid in the form of a check that could only be made at the corporate office and was going to take one week! I began to really get upset and asked to talk to the manager. He told me the same thing. He explained to me they were not real Mac Stores, but that they sold Macs. The corporate owner of the store was Compudabo, a large distributor of computers who sold all kinds of computers, and specialized in large government purchases, so individual sales were not a priority for them. I was shocked at the candid response, figured out I could not do anything, cut my losses and left.
A week later they told me they did not have the check, and they did not have it the second or third week, or by the time I had to come back.
To the question of why they were doing this obviously foul practice... the same manager told me basically that they were doing it because they could. They had no obligation to following apple customer service policies and had all the feedback and comments on all associated websites closed.
I of course went online to check that information and tried to leave feedback on their website and on the apple website, but it was true. One cannot leave feedback for Mac Stores in Mexico in the apple website.
For the principle I asked the persons I was visiting to help me collect that check. It took them two and a half months and several trips to the store (over the phone nothing could be done). Transferring the money to the US is not worth the trouble, and it doesn't begin to cover my friend's troubles or mine.
I feel we should be aware when we travel that "Apple Stores" are not real Apple Stores, and as I am sure there must be very good ones out there, there is no certainty you will find a good one. You may instead fall in a thug's lair as I did.
