Here’s a letter that just goes to show that customer service depends on which employee you get. Reader Cody works at Best Buy (in the Apple department, apparently) and his brother is getting the runaround at the Apple store. Is this the ultimate retail showdown?

ATTN: Store Manager and/or Assistant Managers

I never thought I’d ever have to write this email, but I am.

My brother visited your store on November 17th, and visited a Mac Genius. And I have two issues with this visit.

1. After making a reservation through the online concierge service for 4:45 pm five hours prior to the scheduled time) he was told he didn’t have a reservation and would have to wait to receive support with his malfunctioning iPod Nano.

2. The genius repeated steps that my brother told him didn’t work, and told him to take it home and try again.

Upon getting home, wha-da-ya-know.. still doesn’t work.

I’m not mad, just kind of irritated. I hold you guys to a higher standard, because you’re also capable of higher quality.
I’ve been using macs for over a decade, and to hear from my PC brother that Apple wasted his gas driving 12 miles to get there, waiting through holiday shopping Saturday traffic, and his time to see a genius… that disappoints me.

The irony is we got him the iPod to make his life easier, and it has stressed him out even further.

Here’s What The Problem Was:

iPod Nano 2nd Generation that continually reboots, gets stuck, reboots, gets stuck, reboots…. until the battery dies. This was an issue that happened right out of the box, but was solved by a Restore; three months later, it started doing it again. After he returned home, I temporarily fixed it by restoring it with my mac, then restoring it with his PC. I loaded 10 songs to test it, and it worked great. Then I loaded the rest of his library, and boom.. back to square one. There is a corruption in the boot sector of his flash memory causing it to have this issue.

I realize this is a rather complex issue for a Mac Genius, but it doesn’t take a Mac Genius Training Course to realize this is something that you don’t just “hope for the best”.

The fact that it did it immediately after pulling it out of the box puzzles me, especially when we have done the same steps to fix it we did the first time.

The iPod is currently in deep sleep, which I was able to turn on by accessing the iPod service menu

I would love to have more correspondence with you over this issue, and I would prefer you speak to me instead of him.

I have read the limited warranty twice, and I know that his iPod is eligible for replacement for this hardware/software malfunction.

I’ll quote it..

“If a hardware defect arises and a valid claim is received by Apple within the Warranty Period, at its option and to the extent permitted by law, Apple will… …(2) exchange the product with a product that is new…”

I will be making an appointment to see a Mac Genius on Tuesday November 20th, and I hope we can get this issue resolved once and for all, and I can go back to being a happy apple fan-boy.

P.S.
I work at Best Buy in the iPod section, and I’ve never drawn out a warranty issue with a customer about such an obvious defect with their Apple iPod. In-fact, I’ve personally made sure that I handled that issue as fast as I could whether it was with a repair that Best Buy did not receive any payment for, or with a full replacement with a new iPod. I’m not paid with commission, I just know that you don’t grow a business by shrugging your shoulder and say “try again”.

Honestly I’m not angry, just upset.
Because you can do better.

The genius he spoke to was

[redacted]

The iPod was restored with iPod Nano 2nd Gen. software 1.1.3 on both:
a Windows machine running iTunes 7.5.0.20
a MBP 10.4.11 running iTunes 7.5 (r19)
See you tuesday.

Update:
Before hitting the send button in Mail.app I decided to try one last time…
Same problem except now it refuses to enter Service Mode or Disk Mode,

😦 This sucks. Cya soon.

A Very Upset, Yet Extremely Loyal Apple UserCustomerThird-Party Salesman,

Cody

He seems to have everything well in hand, so we’ll just say: Good luck, Cody!

(Photo:Maulleigh)

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