Two years later!!! I have just had a APPALLING experience at the Apple Store in Westfield Stratford City, London.
I purchased an iPhone 5 just over two months ago. As of Friday the phone shows full WiFi connectivity but no carrier service and therefore no 3G. In other words the phone does not work as a phone and I can only connect to the internet via WiFi.
I called O2, my carrier, they did a bunch of tests and asked me to go into an O2 store. In the store they did a bunch of other tests (Resets, swap SIM card etc) and they told me that the fault was with the handset, that the mobile transmitter was probably faulty and I would need a replacement phone. Deja Vu!! Precisely the same problem happened with a previous iPhone 4 and I needed to have that one replaced too. So I visit the store I purchased the phone in and they tell me to go to Apple, that they would simply replace the phone.
So I go to the Apple store in Stratford. I get in line and eventually get to speak to a guy with an iPad named Marcel. He tells me that I need an appointment so come back some time next week! I knew nothing of an appointment process but he behaved as if I should have done so (the store I purchased the phone in apparently should have told me but they did not).
I explained that I have been 5 days without a phone, I need it for business, I have only had the phone for two months, I do not live/work near any of the 3 Apple stores in London (it is not as if there is one located on every corner) and it is the SECOND faulty phone I have purchased from Apple. He said that they were busy and there was nothing he could do. I said that I simply needed someone to exchange my phone. He replied that everyone in the queue might need their phone replaced (of course ridiculous as many of the problems people go into the store with are trivial). Astonishingly he then advised me that I could purchase another phone there and then in order to use it while he finds an appointment slot for sometime next week! Then I could return it within 14 days. I told him I wanted to speak to a manager. He said he was a manager. I said I wanted to speak to a more senior manager. He claimed he was one, which was a lie as he had been instructed earlier how to handle the queue by a clearly more senior person. I left.
So the idea that all problems are equal is clearly a nonsense. A one appointment/queue system for all issues is ridiculous. For someone who needs a replacement phone, with certainty, they should be accommodated. I am now paying for a service which I do not have and a replacement there and then would have been easy. A guy using his common sense would also be helpful.
Apple was a company which I previously admired for their service as well as their innovation, design etc. Clearly the company has got lazy, smug, self satisfied and arrogant. Which is why it is losing market share to competitors who have worked this out and are playing on it. My experience today simply confirms that unless action is taking quickly to reinvigorate the brand, Apple are a the beginning stages of a long slow decline. Very disappointing!
