Apple's Customer Support

If you haven't guessed, I will just be jumping around to the most random things and writing posts about them whenever I feel like it, and try to get out one per day.

Today's post is about Apple Customer Support. I recently bought a new computer through them, with an educational discount. As such, I received a free $100 iTunes gift card, as well as a nice discount on the computer. However, the $100 card was charged to my account.

We went in to the local Apple store to ask. They said that since it was an online order, they couldn't do anything about it, in the store, but told us the support number to call. So, we did. When most companies have huge support systems, they automate the first part with a "Press 1 for English" system. Not Apple. You can talk to their automated system, and it will understand you, and interpret what you want it to do.

The system took my order number, information about what was wrong, and my account information, and then referred me to a person. Not only that, but it gave the person all of the info that it had, so that there wasn't any time wasted while the person asked for the same information again. That issue, where you put in your information, and the next person requires the exact same information, is one of my biggest peeves with customer support systems.

So, the person, with the information, was very surprised. It sounded like this had never happened before. However, she was able to quickly come up with a solution: Because we already had the gift card, she couldn't refund it. However, since my computer was on back order, she was able to simply reduce the price of the computer by $100.

We then had an issue when the computer finally came in, and they tried to charge us. The total amount was a bit over the credit limit on our card, so we had to call in again. A different person quickly approved the purchase to be made in two parts, one each day, so that it would go through the card. This went through their system with no problems, and again, she had our order ready to look at before we talked to her, thanks to the automated answering system.

Then we got a call from the credit card company, wanting to confirm that the computer was a valid charge. Their automated system was a push the numbers system, and took about 15 minutes to go through. Then, on the very last step, the system got caught in a loop and started refusing to recognize when we pushed any numbers. After 5 minutes of struggling, we called again and restarted, but forced them to forward us to an actual person. And despite the fact that we'd already entered our card number before talking to them, the person had no idea who we were or why we were calling. Once we finally got things cleared with them, the charge went through, and my computer was on its way.

I got the computer a few days later, and I love it. I've since been back in for several training sessions with my computer, but that's a topic for a different day. All in all, the customer support was fast, easy, and solved every problem quite quickly, even those they'd never seen before.