Dissapointing Watch Launch - RANT

[STEALTH714]

6 - 8 week pre-order wait?? Seriously. OK, I can live with the wait as it was well known and advertised.....after waiting 8+ months after the initial Watch announcement. Dilemma..... April 10 pre-order at 3 AM Eastern???....not happening, I get up at 5:30 am.

Received this e-mail today - 6/19/2015
"Apple Watch. Now available at the Apple Store."

Really?? Not at my local store and online orders still showing 2-3 week delivery times. Guess when you get as huge as Apple, customer service is considered an afterthought.

Apple (and most other tech companies) current thought process, (no doubt invented by a Stanford MBA)....... Send an e-mail to all registered users/customers and maybe they, the consumer/customer, will order....and wait.....and wait until we have enough data to produce an appropriate number of units matching customer demand. I understand this thought process but I also expect when a company such as Apple advertise a new product or version of a current product, that product will be available to ship.....immediately! Don't use my input data/order info to justify your production schedule.

Have purchased and still own - 3 iPods, 2 iMacs, 1 Macbook Pro, 3 Apple Extreme routers, 5 iPhones, 4 iPads. I have never had to wait for an Apple product. What "Genius" at Apple thought this one out?

I am in the Apple Ecosystem and enjoy the ease of interoperability but the Watch is a disasterous launch (IMHO). I will not be ordering a Gen 1.

FYI - I'm going with a Garmin 225 as my fitness tracker but I have to say, the Garmin launch is just as pitiful as the Apple Watch launch. Supposed to be in hand 2nd qtr 2015 but looks like another 2 moth wait. Good thing about Apple is you can cancel your online order. Garmin won't even let me cancel my order. Is true technology customer service dead or currently just in purgatory?? Sorry for the rant but this stuff really ticks me off.

 

[Newtons Apple]

The launch is what it is and you are not the only disappointed.

I will reserve the long rant until the do the same kind of launch for the iPhone 6S+

 

[CellXor10]

Haven't seen one of these in weeks.

 

[za9ra22]

... I have never had to wait for an Apple product. What "Genius" at Apple thought this one out?

I am in the Apple Ecosystem and enjoy the ease of interoperability but the Watch is a disasterous launch (IMHO). I will not be ordering a Gen 1.

FYI - I'm going with a Garmin 225 as my fitness tracker but I have to say, the Garmin launch is just as pitiful as the Apple Watch launch. Supposed to be in hand 2nd qtr 2015 but looks like another 2 moth wait. Good thing about Apple is you can cancel your online order. Garmin won't even let me cancel my order. Is true technology customer service dead or currently just in purgatory?? Sorry for the rant but this stuff really ticks me off.

I've had to wait for a number of Apple products because however many Apple can build, it's not enough to satisfy initial demand, and unless I'm prepared to get up at silly o'clock to be amongst the first pre-orders, or wait for days in advance at an Apple store (of which I have none within hundreds of miles), that means waiting - for iDevices particularly.

But, what I don't get is that in your self-professed rant about the launch of the Apple watch being so disastrous, you make clear that's the reason you won't be ordering one, yet you are buying a Garmin, the launch for which is notably worse, and despite the company themselves seeming to have a rather dire attitude to their customers.

 

[PatrickNSF]

Had you gotten up a mere 2-1/2 hours earlier on the pre-order day, you'd have your Watch already.

 

[jbachandouris]

Even if OP ordered at 5:30AM, the watch would already be in his possession. And yet, you don't have the Garmin either. If you want one OP, you're going to have to order on and wait.

And I DID wake up at 3AM and still missed the 'Launch' Day delivery window.

 

[STEALTH714]

I've had to wait for a number of Apple products because however many Apple can build, it's not enough to satisfy initial demand, and unless I'm prepared to get up at silly o'clock to be amongst the first pre-orders, or wait for days in advance at an Apple store (of which I have none within hundreds of miles), that means waiting - for iDevices particularly.

But, what I don't get is that in your self-professed rant about the launch of the Apple watch being so disastrous, you make clear that's the reason you won't be ordering one, yet you are buying a Garmin, the launch for which is notably worse, and despite the company themselves seeming to have a rather dire attitude to their customers.

First off, I am a runner. The Garmin with strapless HRM and GPS is exactly what I am after. The Apple watch would have been nice to try but from all the banter in these forums concerning all of the problems associated with lack of GPS/phone pairing, delivery wait times and sporadic HR readings etc., I decided to cancel my initial order placed on April 11.

Garmin made their 225 announcement May 18? and I decided after reading the specs, it would meet all of my needs for a "sports watch". Garmin advertised "available 2nd quarter" meaning June availability. Now I find out they (Garmin) have pushed the date back. False advertising and I should be able to cancel my online order however Garmin will not allow me to cancel. I guess they still have 11 days to get me the 225.

My rant was more geared toward techno babble false marketing.

As stated, the good thing about Apple is they allow you to cancel online orders. This I appreciate.

 

[za9ra22]

First off, I am a runner. The Garmin with strapless HRM and GPS is exactly what I am after. The Apple watch would have been nice to try but from all the banter in these forums concerning all of the problems associated with lack of GPS/phone pairing, delivery wait times and sporadic HR readings etc., I decided to cancel my initial order placed on April 11.

Garmin made their 225 announcement May 18? and I decided after reading the specs, it would meet all of my needs for a "sports watch". Garmin advertised "available 2nd quarter" meaning June availability. Now I find out they (Garmin) have pushed the date back. False advertising and I should be able to cancel my online order however Garmin will not allow me to cancel. I guess they still have 11 days to get me the 225.

My rant was more geared toward techno babble false marketing.

As stated, the good thing about Apple is they allow you to cancel online orders. This I appreciate.

Ah, my bad. The rant was not related to your decision not to purchase the watch, since it wasn't going to do what you really wanted anyway. It was just a broadside against Apple for their perceived shortcomings. Fair enough.

 

[Tom G.]

Sorry, you can rant all you want but you will not get any sympathy from this corner of the world. You sleep in on launch day but yet expect to get your watch the same as those who got up, or stayed up to order. Even those who ordered later in the day have received theirs by now with the exception on maybe one model.

There was, by the way, no false marketing. Apple made it plain early on that the watches would not be available in the stores until later. That told anyone with a modicum of brain power that they would be in short supply and you had better make plans to be up early on launch day or, like me, be prepared to wait. And by the way I have received mine two weeks ago or so.

Lastly, not all models of the watch are available in the store. If you ordered one of the more difficult ones to ship, then it is not in the stores. Same goes for the watch bands.

In your post #8 you make it clear that you did not actually want an Watch, you want a Garmin watch, at all so I don't see what all your ruckus is about. Your Sour grapes statement about all the problems etc is just that. You wanted an Apple watch just to play with it for a while then send it back when you got your Garmin. This course of action would have deprived someone else who really wanted an Watch from getting it but this doesn't seem to have bothered you much.

Learn from your errors and when the 6S Phone comes out get up in time to order it or be prepared to wait.

 

[Stetrain]

I love the idea that Apple doesn't produce as many of Product X as they can because of some ploy to mess with customers.

An Apple Watch produced and shipped successfully is a credit card that can be charged for hundreds of dollars. Money now is better than money later.

If it's produced well and meets quality standards then it's a sold product that won't be returned and might generate more sales from recommendations, word of mouth, seeing them out and about.


Apple clearly had issues getting production ramped up. I know, I had to wait for mine too. But if you don't think there were managers at Apple who were upset they couldn't make and sell more watches and were trying to get as many out as they could then I don't understand how you think they stay in business.


The only other thing they could have done is to set the launch date to be July 1 instead. At some point somebody had to make the call to announce a release date based on the information they had at the time.