Mark Harrison's Profile

I'm interested to hear people write about "exceptional service" from Apple, because my experience of SERVICE to date has been two lousy experiences and zero good ones. STRIKE ONE I own precisely one Apple product - an iPod. It synced fine to my (Windows) PC, powered itself off the USB cradle, and everything worked. Then I got this message from Apple that I needed to "upgrade the firmware" (or some other such runes) and told me to "click here". At the end of following the on-screen instructions it said "Now plug your iPod into the mains adaptor - you CANNOT use the USB cradle for this part." Well, theoretically I must have a mains adaptor, but I've never used it, and have absolutely no idea where it might be. So I called Apple support, who told me that: 1: My nearest Apple store was about an hour from my house 2: The iPod was, until I purchased a replacement charger, useful as a paperweight, but not as a music player 3: They did NOT feel it was appropriate to warn that the mains charger would be needed BEFORE starting the installation Fortunately, a local electrical store found me a "car charger" which worked, but that meant no iPod until the weekend. STRIKE TWO I am leaning towards dipping my toe in the water with the Mac, so went along to an Apple Store earlier this week (the one that's about an hour from my house, remember) and asked to look at a Mac Mini. The salesgirl (who was sufficiently younger than me to by a "girl", trust me on this) said "And it comes with all this software"... and pointed at the row of applications. A bit of playing with the spreadsheet had me pretty much ready to go, but for some reason I double-checked "All that's included?" and was told "Oh, actually no. That's an extra £300". Ah, so the price of the Mac Mini as shown was £800 not £500, then. Now, I don't deny that the Mac looked a lovely piece of kit, and seemed really easy to use... but I've used enough computers over the last 25 years for SERVICE to be important to me... and my experience with Apple hasn't been great. You may say "MS are just as bad", but that's missing the point. To make me CHANGE you have to be MUCH BETTER...