Ok, so I’m an Apple fan girl. I have a MacBook Pro, iPad, and a nano watch.
I held out as long as I could, but, well, I had to have Siri. And the new 2-way camera, with a flash, (at last!) and iMessage, and all the rest of the newly added goodies. Apple has made buying the new iPhone a royal pain. Because they can, I guess. Because they don’t care what customers think, I gather.
The Apple site says you can go to a store to buy the iPhone 4S. So, I went to the Apple Store in SoHo yesterday and was told by a sweet young Apple employee that, actually, you can’t just walk in an buy the 4S. You have to reserve it, online, the night before.
I defy you to find that information on the Apple page about the iPhone 4S.
I called the support number and learned that every night, at exactly 9 p.m., you can go online, pick a store, and see what they’ll have available the next day, and – if the model you want is available – then go to the store the next day to pick it up. Visit an optus shop mount gambier to pick out your phone and get started on charity mobile
Is that written anywhere on the iPhone 4S promo page? Nope-er-do.
I wasted hours going to the Apple store on Saturday. Left feeling like I hadn’t made the team.
At 9 p.m. the phone I wanted was available at the 5th Avenue store. I reserved it, and made an appointment to pick it up between 3 and 4 p.m.the next day.
At the store, there was a huge line, which I waited in for 45 minutes until I finally got to spend my several hundred dollars and take my phone home.
The bottom line: Apple took the fun out of getting the latest phone, wasted many precious hours of my weekend, and ended up making me not at all glad to part with my hard-earned cash.
You know what Apple: I don’t care who you are, if your customer service sucks, nothing else matters.
And this way of selling the new iPhone just doesn’t cut it. Even Apple will feel a bite if you keep acting like customers aren’t the real reason you have to come to work. FAIL.
But yeah, Siri is great.
Good point. But you still bought it! What message does that send to Apple?
You’re right, up to a point. I bought the 4S and it’s great. But i have a fairly large audience and I am sure I speak for many who are equally annoyed by this disregard for customers. Apple, or any other company, can’t get away with this behavior for long before it bites them.
An interesting perspective on the supply-side of the iPhone 4S. The reality of the problem is demand for the 4S exceeds the supply which requires you to pre-order or otherwise “reserve” one. Unfortunately, you can’t glean that information from the Apple website.
If you can wait a few months this will be self-correcting. Sales will stabilize and supply will then be able to meet or possibly exceed demand.
By now, Apple ought to have far better ways of anticipating and meeting the demand. This manufactured scarcity is a marketing ploy. And it stinks.
Sometimes it becomes difficult to distinguish between customer service and marketing strategy when it comes to large brands. The secrecy of and the need for buyers to reserve the phone at a set time before being able to purchase it creates a sense of exclusivity, because it implies that the product isn’t easy for just anyone to get.
if apple had a competitor – and it doesn’t – this type of disregard for customers, disguised as marketing, would never fly. The phone is great. But the aggravation and wasted time made this Apple taste bad.
Two of my colleagues had similar experiences and all of them were poorly handled by Apple.
Poor customer service brought Dell down many notches and they still struggle after “Dell Hell”. Apple needs to listen to its customers. We think this tactic stinks.
I agree 101% with B.L.! Not only this practice is obnoxious and disrespectful, there should be some kind of law against this sort of “false advertising”! The website shouldn’t just say “Unavailable” and leave it at that! The minimum expectation is that it would at least show your name in a virtual, trackable queue so one could see exactly when (date and time) it would be available for pick-up at the store or sent in the mail. By now, I’m really rooting for Google to come up with a true iPhone killer once and for all!