Painful Apple Technical Support

[Oakey]

I have an Ipod Mini which recently started showing the folder / exclamation mark error, nothing I did could solve the problem. My only resort was to contact Technical Support.

I take it they've now outsourced to India? Last time I phoned it was an Irish guy. Not this time. It was an Indian guy with a heavy Indian accent. I had to spell out every single word that he needed to complete the details. Ie, my name, address, email address, the personalisation on the back, etc, etc. And just to make it that extra painful, he would then spell every word back to me to double check. Now, I'm not being racist but the fact he asked what country I was located in leads me to believe it was some crappy call centre in India.

It took me over 30minutes on the phone (at whatever their 0870 number costs) to arrange a service.

I wish there was a law against outsourcing call centres, it's so goddamn painful

[Apex]

i fell the pain..... just had this with netgear never again am going back to cisco !

[Jonny M]

Don't get me started on Apple's tech support. I work for one of Apple's largest high-street customers/retailers (think large depertment store chain). We sell Apple products to people, we demo Apple products to people, which must net them a considerable sum of money. But when something goes wrong with their products, they won't even let us phone them up without first wanting to charge us just to speak to them.

It's a one-way street unfortunately, we bend over backwards to ensure Apple are "happy with the placement of their products" (they actually send people round to make sure that we are presenting their kit appropriately), and they reward us with a supply chain which is a POS, and tech support which is nonexistant.

Why can't their support to us be more like HPs

[Ruggerbugger]

That sucks Caged With your knowledge, are you able to give your customers much help yourself. Perhaps there's a business in providing Apple-independent customer support?

[Oakey]

Just to clear, was I charged to call their 0870 number tech support? Because if so, I wasn't given any warning AT ALL and if I find a large bill I will be screaming.

Oddly enough, I phoned Norwich Union today to pay my car insurance and actually spoke to an English guy named Brian, not a hint of an Indian accent. However it took 10 minutes for them to answer.

[Jonny M]

No Oakey, you buy an iPod and you are allowed to phone them up once for support for free. After that you pay.

Which sucks.

[Oakey]

That sounds like a complete con. How is that legal? I thought all electronic products in the UK had a mandatory 1 year warranty?

That really takes the piss considering the failure rate of the ipods.

[Doug]

all apple products have 90 days of free telephone support and a 1 year warranty. if you call them up outsde of that 90 days, you'll pay for the call, but not if it's a warranty claim.

[Oakey]

all apple products have 90 days of free telephone support and a 1 year warranty. if you call them up outsde of that 90 days, you'll pay for the call, but not if it's a warranty claim.

And how much is the call? I'm assuming you only pay if it's just support, ie, anything outside of complete failure?

Eg, my ipod refused to work so it's being sent back for service under warranty, I wouldn't pay for the call I made to request the repair?

[Atomic]

Oddly enough, I phoned Norwich Union today to pay my car insurance and actually spoke to an English guy named Brian, not a hint of an Indian accent. However it took 10 minutes for them to answer.

hehe Norwich Union, I can bet that was probably a local university student!