Apple Ending 'Joint Venture' Program for Business Customers Next Month

[Groovemaster17]

Good riddance to this and every other “retail business” program they ever had. Non-supported joke. At my stores JV was basically a “free pass to the head of the line” at the GB.

I know other stores were different, but my 5+ years in retail business was a crap show when the store leaders in my area came from the Gap. That’s great you can manage a clothes store, but for some reason you can’t grasp that it would be beneficial to support a program (biz) that could drive 20%+ of a stores revenue with like 5% of its assets.

Sounds familiar... either we ran in the same circles or Apple retail has a 'type'.

 

[cecil444]

If you worked within Apple Retail around 2008-2011ish you remember how annoying of a metric Joint Venture was Lol. Couldn’t sell that or MobileMe to save my life!

It won’t be missed. (Well, I guess by some it will be)

Or ProCare! Though in my observation, employees didn’t sell them because they didn’t recognize the value in it, and therefore simply never tried to sell them. The sales reps that regularly tried to sell them had the best metrics.

 

[mmedeiros92]

I loved having support that came to your business to fix this. I had them fix our Mac Pro on site and replace the logic board. Sucks that no support option like this is now available.

You didn’t need Joint Venture to have someone come on site. It’s offered in an AppleCare+ for Mac agreement, and (I think) is offered based on the distance from a retail store or an Apple Authorized Service Provider.

 

[jcooper17]

ProCare was before my time. I messed up the dates in my original post not realizing JV came out in 2011. It was a metric though for at least a couple of years it seemed.

Oh yea, if your dates were wrong then that makes more sense. Fun times!!

 

[newyorksole]

Or ProCare! Though in my observation, employees didn’t sell them because they didn’t recognize the value in it, and therefore simply never tried to sell them. The sales reps that regularly tried to sell them had the best metrics.

Yeah good point. Hard to sell something that we don’t personally use / see value in. The Business Team sold a bunch I’m sure.

 

[namenotfound]

You didn’t need Joint Venture to have someone come on site. It’s offered in an AppleCare+ for Mac agreement, and (I think) is offered based on the distance from a retail store or an Apple Authorized Service Provider.

1. Availability of each option depends on country or region in which service is requested and location of Apple Authorized Service Provider. Apple may also request that the customer replace components with readily installable parts.

Desktop support might be in option if it were actually offered. Since a good many Apple Stores are closed for COVID, you can't take them in and good luck getting someone to come to your office. If anyone in the US has used AppleCare + to have an APPLE tech come to their office, please chime in...

 

[Digital Skunk]

If you worked within Apple Retail around 2008-2011ish you remember how annoying of a metric Joint Venture was Lol. Couldn’t sell that or MobileMe to save my life!

It won’t be missed. (Well, I guess by some it will be)

For me it was ProCare and MobileMe. Hated those metrics and hated that we didn't get any real compensation for pushing those attachments.

I think JointVenture was .... decent, but the sad part about it was most users ended up just using the Genius Bar as per usual. A few of the small business I worked with (the ones who deployed 10 or more Mac Pros) either used ME as IT support or hired out.

The others just took the machine into the shop or dropped it off at a certified repair center and came back when it was fixed.

Or ProCare! Though in my observation, employees didn’t sell them because they didn’t recognize the value in it, and therefore simply never tried to sell them. The sales reps that regularly tried to sell them had the best metrics.

I tend to agree, but there was also the lack of actual value in the services. ProCare was more or less AppleCare Pro and did offer Pro user the ability to drop their machine off quickly and at times get faster turn around time, but not always. It was good, really good for customers who weren't as informed but overall most saw it as reps just pushing an extra $100 that would sit in a drawer.

For a lot of small businesses it just wasn't as necessary as the standard AppleCare support.

For those businesses in the know, they knew they could get the same value from going to a local 3rd party repair shop for free.

Then, for the medium businesses, they had an internal IT department (person or two) or they just opted for option 2 above.

I don't know much about JointVenture (I left Apple Retail while ProCare was still king) but a rep tried telling me about it when I was running my production company and it was intriguing but we didn't need that much IT support that we couldn't provide ourselves.

 

[iotashan]

I'm not surprised. The company I work for bought in to JV, but other than the store in Colorado where they originally purchased it from, literally no store I went to had ever heard of it when I went to use it. Chicago, Phoenix, Madison... literally every single store was like "huh?". Even their supposed Business reps didn't know about it.

One feature of JV was supposed to be no-down-time repairs... If a MBP needed service, for example, they would give you a loaner to use in the meantime. What they didn't bother telling you was all the loaners were base model 3 year old machines with different ports, chargers, the smallest amount of storage, and not updated MacOS installs. Best of luck actually *using* the loaner with anything you already have like a TimeMachine backup or cabled accessories.

We cancelled after the first year because literally the only thing that they actually came through on was the ability to get same-day appointments no matter how busy they were.

 

[MacBH928]

I don't get what support here means, does this mean they will be your IT department? Installing and fixing stuff for you? Or will give training to your employees?

 

[applefanboysince93]

ProCare was before my time. I messed up the dates in my original post not realizing JV came out in 2011. It was a metric though for at least a couple of years it seemed.

There were 4 upsells in that era... AppleCare, MobileMe until iCloud, one to one, and I guess ProCare was the 4th though I don’t really remember. It’s ironic that they were so proud about not being pushy on the products themselves but the services were very high-pressure.

 

[newyorksole]

There were 4 upsells in that era... AppleCare, MobileMe until iCloud, one to one, and I guess ProCare was the 4th though I don’t really remember. It’s ironic that they were so proud about not being pushy on the products themselves but the services were very high-pressure.

Yeah ain’t that funny? I guess because the products sell themselves and it’s easier and more controllable to have metrics on services than products. Selling 2 Macs at 100% AppleCare is better than 10 Macs at 20% AppleCare.

Glad I don’t have to worry about any of that anymore! Lol