Have you ever owned a new/premium car that was still under warranty? BMW 7-Series, Mercedes S-class, etc? When you take those in for service, you typically get a 3-series or equivalent 'base model'. They don't have a fleet of 760i's ready for loaners, even if you had one of these, and it decided to break down on the highway a month after you bought it.
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Horrific Apple Store experience, can anyone help me out here with my Apple Watch?
- Thread starter DMG35
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Individual autonomy and front-line decision making hasn't ever been part of Apple's corporate DNA. This didn't affect individual users much in the past but now that Apple has a huge retail operation, it has hurt a lot of people.
This assumes that Apple takes constructive feedback to heart.
Most businesses will either say "give us a perfect 10 or call us before submitting the survey" or "thank you for your feedback." They don't use the feedback to help the customer in any observable way, they only use it to show that they are meeting some customer satisfaction performance metric. So complaining during a survey is like screaming into a pillow.
What I don’t get is why showing up in the shop with a faulty phone with Apple Care+ does not result in Express Exchange (or whatever they call it), when calling them will?
Edit: I mean- I can read from the posts, that this is how it is, and Apple is unlikely to read and answer this thread, but it just doesn’t make sense.
Edit: I mean- I can read from the posts, that this is how it is, and Apple is unlikely to read and answer this thread, but it just doesn’t make sense.
My interpretation of what happened: they told him they were going to try to fix it in-store. When they couldn't, the systems took the phone down the path of ship-off repair. Express replacement was not an option after that ship-off designation was assigned, and the techs couldn't override.
yes, and that’s all fine and great, but you’re forgetting something very important.
You’re dealing with a company. They don’t care what you did to the phone, they don’t care if it was your fault or theirs, they want money.
Also, if Apple did the exact opposite and gave everyone a 14 pro max 1tb as a loaner, you’d have the exact opposite complaints here. People complaining that Apple force them to go back to their 64 GB XR instead of letting them keep the 14 pro max for free.
Of course you’re going to get an older outdated model, you are using the phone totally free and if it breaks while it’s in your use, it’s not that big of a loss for them.
Let me ask you a question, let’s say you break that XR totally on accident. You just destroy it, run it over with a car or something. Would you rather pay the $300-400 to replace that, or pay the $2000 to replace the shiny 1 TB 14 pro max they gave you.
It doesn't make sense and that is the problem - poor communication and failing to set expectations with the customer without expecting the customers to figure it out on their own.
Unfortunately Apple is far from being the only business guilty of this, but that doesn't mean we as customers should just take it all in stride either. Before Continental Airlines merged with United Airlines, Continental went from "worst to first" by empowering front line employees to resolve most customer issues in real time and to provide customers with timely and honest information. They also refocused the company on a common vision of being a great airline. The changes went a long way toward their turnaround.
Of course, Apple is not in need of a turnaround so to speak because of their dominant market position, so the motivation to change is probably not a priority for them right now. But there is always room for improvement. Apple sells products with baked in obsolescence, so it is in their interest to cultivate long-term relationships with their customers so they can keep selling more stuff to them. For decades they have been able to ride on a wave of well-made products that entice more and more sales but the tide is turning and Apple will need to figure out how to stem that tide. Customers can see through the scripted and robotic acts of the store employees. They want to be treated as more than cash machines when they return with a problem.
For the record when it comes to your Apple Watch data, if everything is backed up as it should be, the series of events should be quite easy:
A: get the new phone.
B: restore it from the latest iCloud back up.
C: open the Watch app, and it should give you the option after pairing to restore from the latest back up.
It will *not* give you this option if you set the phone up like new, so be absolutely sure to restore it from a back up.
That should be it
If I were you, as annoying as it is, I would absolutely not try to pair that watch with the XR, that would only complicate things.
Just put it away until you get the 14 pro max back
A: get the new phone.
B: restore it from the latest iCloud back up.
C: open the Watch app, and it should give you the option after pairing to restore from the latest back up.
It will *not* give you this option if you set the phone up like new, so be absolutely sure to restore it from a back up.
That should be it
If I were you, as annoying as it is, I would absolutely not try to pair that watch with the XR, that would only complicate things.
Just put it away until you get the 14 pro max back
Lol this isn’t a car. Equating swapping a car with a phone is ludicrous and makes zeros sense. The car/phone analogy is ridiculous. You can’t just choose items randomly and say “well they don’t do this for this.” It does make me laugh though.
Thank you, appreciate the insight. Unfortunately the Geniuses at the Apple Store told me that pairing it with the XR would keep all the info on it. Now playing f I unpair it from the XR I’m worried the last backup will be when I unpair it, which has nothing on it. I guess we’ll see.
That’s my point. Apple should care. They have all of this advanced diagnostic equipment and can tell if the phone was dropped or bent or had water damage. They clearly know it wasn’t anything I did.
And no, I don’t expect Apple to give everyone a 1TB iPhone 14 Pro Max as a loaner. I’m saying that they can determine if the faults was the customers or not and they should be able to make adjustments based on that.
Also; they told me the XR would be $699 out of pocket if I broke it. Which I laughed out loud when they told me that.
What make me laugh is your delusion that a like-for-like in-person instant swap out has some precedent or commitment from Apple.
A $1600 Samsung phone? Nope, Samsung doesn't do that.
A $1600 laptop purchase from Best Buy? Absolutely not.
How about a $5K PC workstation from Dell? Not on your life.
Surely a $100K car from a premium brand like Mercedes? Ya right.
Why don't you tell us an equivalent consumer electronics purchase that has set this precedent for you?
If a product is covered under warranty, Apple has the option to repair or replace. With automobiles, there is no replace (maybe buyback but not replace). But if the option to replace exists, then wouldn't the customer be happier with that option? I think so. Instead they dangle the possibility of replace in front of you but decide to repair instead. How do they make that call and how does that affect customer satisfaction?
It's all a numbers game. Apple has profit margin expectations to its shareholders, when you're as big as Apple, stuff like that can literally costs billions.
Sure, you can complain (or even take your business elsewhere), but just because 'it makes the customer happier' doesn't mean Apple, or anyone else, is required to do such.
For the iPhone 13, I got it on launch day. It arrived with a DOA FaceID sensor. I went to the Apple Store and they gave me a refurbished replacement (yes, this was still launch day). If they had wanted to ship it off, I could have gotten my money back. The difference is the OP was not in the return window.
Lol how is your situation different? You got a replacement phone on launch day. Do you think App,e had a pile of refurbished iPhone 13’s laying around on launch day? They didn‘t. They did the right thing and replaced the phone. Apple knows I didn’t do anything to the phone from their diagnostic tests. And even if I did I purchased AppleCare+. They should offer the same service in store as they do with Express replacement. Or at the bare minimum should have told me the second I took it in there that they couldn’t replace it if they couldn’t fix it but that express replacement was an option.
Do you know that Samsung doesn’t replace their phones in their brick and mortar stores? No, you don’t, you are just making a general assumption and have no idea how they handle their policies with defective phones.
Best Buy doesn't make laptops, they simply sell other people’s items and are bound by each manufacturer’s policies so that makes zero sense.
The car analogy is just dumb. Why people think equating a car to a phone is remotely the same I have no idea. Do you realize that if you have a Mercedes, make an appointment and request a loaner, that they give you a Mercedes as a loaner if you are at a Mercedes dealership? Do you think Mercedes if giving you a Chevy Malibu to drive off in? They aren’t. And if they don’t have a Mercedes to give they will give you another high end vehicle to drive. I purchased my wife’s Suburban from a Mercedes dealership. One of the calipers needed to be replaced about a year later and I took it into the dealership. Guess what they gave her as a loaner, a Mercedes.
Yeah, I fully believe that on launch day Apple had a bunch of refurbished iPhone 13’s sitting around. Makes a ton of sense that a brand new phone will have a nice stock of refurbs sitting in the back….
So you're implying I'm lying? It is obvious from this thread you don't have a handle on how retail works, much less Apple's logistics around these type of things.
Sorry for your alleged bad experience. Over the course of owning about every Apple device type, many since before the store existed, I have had dozens of Apple Store experiences. Every visit has been five star (except for the fact that I consider going to any store to be a PITA). Obviously YMMV.
You proved my point. No one is guaranteed an upgrade loaner, much less a like-for-like.
You still cannot tell us of any time you got a like-for-like replacement, or where this is common practice. You got 'the loaner they had on hand', which was the same one (i.e. a C-class or equivalent) they would have given you if your original car was a S560.
Not only do I expect that sometimes Mercedes might give you a Chevy Malibu, I've experienced it first hand. When my local BMW dealership runs out of BMW loaners, they give you credit to use at their on-site Enterprise. What does Enterprise give you? Whatever the have left sitting on the lot, and they're never BMWs.
Apple gave you the loaner they had on hand, which is exactly what Mercedes did. In the Mercedes example, you came out ahead. With the Apple example, it was 'horrific'.
It’s not really the same at all—what would be closer would be if the loaner didn’t understand all your systems, and couldn’t drive or work the way your old car could. But it’s impossible to use this as a good comparison. If you can’t restore onto a phone, it’s definitely far less useful or convenient, and it doesn’t work well.
Which indeed furthers the point... there can be no such thing as a like-for-like loaner available at mass-scale for consumer level products. It's not cost effective, operationally efficient, nor can it account for every use case.
The entitlement here is mind-boggling. You get what's in the agreement. Else Apple is in violation, and you can take them to small claims court or whatever. But that's not what happened.
Maybe if you have some specialized enterprise equipment with paid-for SLAs, then sure. But that's not what OP agreed to when he purchased AppleCare+.
I'm not sure how you are getting entitlement out of this. You walked into an Apple Store (on launch day supposedly) and got a new phone because yours was defective. I fail to see how just because yours was in the return period how the situation is any different. Apple could have easily said "You will just have to return it and buy a different one." But they didn't and they gave you a new phone. Somehow my situation is different because I'm out of the return period? If anything, they should have plenty of "refurb" models to give me as a replacement.