Apple excels in product design and user interface, and their operating system is pretty sweet, too. What Apple has a much rockier history with is customer service—in individual instances it can be great, but historically when there’s a problem with one of their products, Apple clams up like a sullen teen and refuses to talk. Their new MobileMe service has had problems since it launched two weeks ago, and even now there are thousands of users who can’t sync, or whose email has been deleted (oops, should’ve set up Time Machine). David Pogue points out that Apple’s lack of an adequate response is completely unacceptable—or would be for any other company:
It’s amazing that Apple doesn’t recognize this situation. This is an airplane that’s stuck on the runway for hours with no food or working bathroom. And the pilot doesn’t come on the P.A. system to tell the customers what the problem is, what’s being done to fix it, how much longer they might be stuck, and how he empathizes with their plight. Instead, he comes on once every three hours to repeat the same thing: “We apologize for the inconvenience.”
It’s true, Apple did address these problems early on, even going so far as to offer a free 1-month extension to current subscribers. But Pogue points out that whatever problems were plagueing MobileMe haven’t been entirely eradicated, because a note appeared on the MobileMe support site that read, “1% of MobileMe members cannot access MobileMe Mail. We apologize for this service interruption and are working hard to resolve the problem.”
So how is Apple trying to help out this subset of customers? By hiding behind a broken customer service system, Pogue writes:
MobileMe tech support, my correspondents tell me, is nearly impossible to reach; the recording says that the support team is “unavailable due to the overwhelming interest in MobileMe.” (Somehow I doubt that “overwhelming interest” is the problem.) When you do reach them, they’re apologetic but can do nothing to help.
By contrast—and even I can’t believe I’m about to compare T-Mobile’s customer service to Apple’s, but here goes—yesterday I couldn’t get online using T-Mobile’s HotSpot service at a Starbucks in NYC. I called the customer support line at the bottom of the error message screen fully expecting to get nowhere—really it was just a masochistic impulse to test how incompetent they’d be. What I got instead was a live, helpful person after three rings, and when I was escalated up to a support tech, she answered in less than 60 seconds and gave me advice on how to fix the problem. I assume T-Mobile is dumping extra resources into HotSpot support right now, especially with Starbucks since they’re having to deal with AT&T taking over the system and causing who knows what kinds of customer service snafus, but you’d think Apple would try a similar approach with its first big push into a new service.
“Apple’s MobileMess” [New York Times]
(Screen cap of customer service wait time: Hayden)
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@sketchy “I can build a comparable PC for one third to one half of the price of a Mac.”
ha ha ha Ha Ha HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!! You can NOT.
And you’re going to build it out of what, Legos? Tinker toys? Lincoln Logs?
Let me guess, you’re going to put Vista or Linux on it? Yeah. That will be JUST LIKE a Mac.
Whenever http://www.sketchymacequivalentpcs.com goes live, please let me know, so I can buy your $400 Macbook equivalent.
Man. Thanks for the best laugh I’ve had all week.
@bluemonq: Not quite. You know, i used to hate macs a few years ago and i just thought they were good for nothing for people who knew nothing about computers. Well time has changed, and believe me, I’m not the kind of person that would completely switch over from windows to os x as fast as i did unless i was sure it was better. Well, it is, and apple fanboys are wiling to put up with a little bullshit just to have the peace of mind that is os x. But i’m sure you guys don’t understand what that is.
I use windows every day at work and it just sucks. My computer takes about 4-5 minutes after logging in to be able to use anything. When explorer crashes or IE explodes it ruins my whole windows session and it’s just way to messy. It’s not neat. I use outlook (exchange) for my mail and calendars, and it’s just not as easy, or intuitive, or “fun” as Mail and iCal. It’s just not. In this day and age using a computer shouldn’t be that painful. I should be able to expect things not to crash or be so hard to figure out (like trying to get my outlook messages to be marked as read after 1 second of viewing instead of when i click off of it to another message). It’s the little things (and MANY big things) that just make OS X a much more fun and personable OS to use.
[support.apple.com]
“and even I can’t believe I’m about to compare T-Mobile’s customer service to Apple’s”
There are multiple WTF in this one line.
Chris, T-mobile customer services is is the best I have experienced SO FAR – not only from a telecoms company (I have had my share of experience with Verizon), but ANY company I have ever dealt with. And what you experienced is NORMAL customer service when it come to t-mobile.
Just because they are not AT&T does not mean they suck. Just because they are not beloved Apple does not mean they suck.
In fact, your argument should have been the other way round given how many stories I have heard from Apple bullshitting when it comes to customer service – MobileMess notwithstanding!
This is consumerist, not Gizmodo (your sister site). Have some sense, please. Or Gawker has a blanket notice to all the sites they operate to keep on feeding Apple/AT&T lies?
I had some problems after I installed the MobileMe update, but they were just issues with Mail. After exporting and re-importing my mailboxes and re-running the installer everything is working great for me.