As I’m writing this, I just got off the phone with a customer service representative at a high-tech company.
To anyone with experience in the matter, that sentence probably provokes a sympathetic wince, at the very least. But this was a very different experience. Let me ‘splain… no, there is too much, let me sum up.
On Wednesday, August 26th, my trusty Dell XPS m1210 laptop computer died, suddenly and totally unexpectedly. As I must have a computer to do my work, I went out the same day to get a replacement. For various reasons, I ended up with an Apple MacBook Pro.
Friday, August 28th, a major new version of the Apple operating system (OS X 10.6, code named “Snow Leopard”) was released. Since I’d just purchased the computer, I was offered a really cheap upgrade, which I ordered that evening (gotta keep up with the latest OS versions for security reasons, you know). I received the shipment notification on Monday the 31st, saying that it should be delivered by Friday, September 4th. I happily went on my way.
The fourth came and went, with no Snow Leopard disk. Monday the seventh was a holiday, so I figured it would be here on Tuesday — no luck. Ditto Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Friday evening I looked up their customer service number and hours — to my surprise, they offered weekend hours too. I was out of town all day Saturday, so I resolved to call on Sunday (i.e. today).
Now, I’ve dealt with customer service at computer companies dozens of times over the last twenty years. They are, without exception, the worst experiences — worse than the phone and cable companies, and they’ve gotten even worse over time. When you finally make your way through their computerized discouragement systems and half-hour hold times (assuming the system doesn’t hang up on you before that), you inevitably find that their customer service lines are manned entirely by minimum-wage people who aren’t allowed to deviate from their prepared scripts, and usually with such heavy accents that I have to ask them to repeat themselves half a dozen times each call. So, bracing myself for a similarly-painful experience, I made the call.
After less than thirty seconds on hold, my call was answered, and by someone I could easily understand. She agreed that the disk should have been delivered by now, and immediately arranged to send a replacement, this time with a tracking number to ensure that it got here.
(I have to say, typing this entry has been difficult… it’s hard to keep my jaw off of the space bar long enough to get a full sentence written.) 😉
I do not want to become an Apple fanboi. I think it’s ridiculous to be devoted to any publicly-traded company, because the company certainly won’t show any kind of loyalty to you in return. But between the quality of the hardware, the quality of the operating system, and the quality of the customer service… I must admit that I’m finding it very difficult to resist.
Now you’ve found out first-hand why “Apple tops customer satisfaction survey” (see: http://geekblog.oakcircle.com/2008/08/20/apple-tops-customer-satisfaction-survey/ and the comments therein) ;D
I had completely forgotten that one. 🙂
Steve Jobs is not in good health, and although he has his faults, I think the company is for a large part his vision of “quality” as in Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” sense of “quality”. He’s a perfectionist and wouldn’t have his company behave in a way that was totally contrary to his wishes (note I don’t say the customer’s wishes, which is the partial reason for the problems with the appstore and the less open and often idiosyncratic hardware and software…) Better hope his new liver lasts, I know I do.
By the way, the fanboi article you linked to about Apple’s expensive monitor doesn’t mention the real reason for the price and quality. It uses not TFT, like most of their laptops and iMacs even do now, but IPS, like the more expensive Eizo and the top of the line professional monitors of Dell and HP that are similarly priced. As a result, it has higher refresh rates, and is unsuitable for games but color that can be used by certain types of professionals who have to have the best color representation in an LCD. (TFT displays dither 6 bit color often, that’s good enough for the average consumer, but is clearly of a lower level quality to anyone in a side by side comparison.)
That having been said, I have an acer 22″ monitor, with probably the worst and most cheap panel available of that size from a major manufacturer, like almost everyone else uses at that price point. Price is definitely a factor, and I can’t say I don’t enjoy the large panel at an affordable price.
I wish him good health (as I do almost everyone), but I do hope that his successor has absorbed the good parts of his vision, for whenever that becomes necessary.
I linked to the “fanboi” article more for the term — so people who don’t follow Apple news would know that it’s a deliberate spelling, for instance.
Tim Cook, his likely successor, isn’t a visionary. He isn’t a bean counter either though, he can best be described as an production efficiency engineer type who is known to have a cool head who functions ordinarily as an offset to Job’s “creative” personality. He’s great to have on the Apple team, to use corporate-speak :), but there really isn’t anyone lined up with what President George H.W. Bush called “The Vision Thing”. 😉
As an update: today I received not one, but two copies of Snow Leopard — the original one I ordered (quite late), and the replacement for it (on time). Oh well. 🙂
I guess when it “snows” where you live, there’s a real “blizzard.”
oops, I meant higher persistence rates (ghosting) rather than higher refresh rates in my explanation above. I think you knew what I meant. 😉