My iPhone Buying Experience

Earlier today I went to the Apple store to try and make myself like the iPhone enough so I could ask my wife to get it for me for Xmas. I failed… the keyboard sucks, the phone sucks, the mail app sucks (15 minute mail check intervals were ok.. five years ago) the configuration sucks and it really boils down to a midgetized, albeit beautiful, tablet without actual applications. So I need a new Christmas present idea for the wife…

This post, however, is  about something else – customer disservice. I spent close to 30 minutes playing with the iPhone, really doing everything I could to see myself dropping the Samsung Blackjack for. In that time I was harrassed by no less than 10 separate “Geniuses” – I suppose they don’t often see people using their devices as the name of the game is “let’s make idiots gawk at pretty pictures and run to the register” – so I paid them no attention. Read the swag bitch, you may be an Apple Genius but you’re not qualified to delete SPAM from my Junk Items.

So as I was trying to will myself into thinking iPhone would be for me, I got to listen to the “Geniuses” blast their arrogance on their customer base. All of whom left without purchasing anything. All of whom, as a result of this experience, will likely never return to an apple store.

The key argument: Unlocking. Can you unlock the device? Can I use it in another country? Can it be unlocked. The answers were not “no” but were far more threatening and egoistical. It was as if you were committing an act against the humanity by trying to be on a carrier other than the one Apple chose to abuse its monopoly with.

“It’s possible but its difficult and I would not recommend it. You are likely going to destroy the phone and we will not take it back.”

“We cannot unlock the phone, it can’t be done.”

“If you try to unlock it you void the warranty and we will just lock it back the next time you connect it to your computer”

What cracked me up was the shere ignorance of these walking Apple infomercials – they are a smug little bunch, for being a bunch of retail retards making I venture to guess $12 an hour tops? I wonder if there is a huge gap in the Apple staff training that needs to go a long way to explaining to these geniuses that they are not actually “geniuses” in the IT space that can showcase ego but rather just retail sales people, you know, like the kind you find at Macy’s. Without this check, Apple seems to be antagonizing a fair amount of sales through their customer disservice.

As usual, time to grab the mirror and make sure we aren’t doing the same.