I don’t want to hear any more about the high value Apple places on the customer experience.
I ordered holiday cards from iPhoto. They were accidentally shipped to the Atlanta address, which has been sold and is currently vacant. Great. I’ll just call FedEx and have the order re-routed.
FedEx will not reroute an Apple order, only Apple can do that. But Apple no longer has live human beings resolving issues over the phone.
You call Apple only to be told you can not talk to a real person to solve the problem. You must submit an online request. Someone should reply to your online request within 2 business days.
Well, within two business days the order will be sitting on an empty house’s doorstep. What then?!
This is a rotten customer experience that could have been completely averted had they had live customer service! Instead, treat yourself to “I’m an automated voice recognition system that can understand complete sentences. How may I help you?”
The answer: they can’t.
They already have your money. Why should they care about anything but cost reduction!
Sounds like Microsoft to me!
And when Apple did get around to replying to my request, they said they would correct the error with my shipping address “this one time only.” O for god’s sake! Both tedious and petulant! Oops! Apple then only corrected one of the two address errors. So holiday cards are soaking in the Atlanta rains on an empty stoop, and Apple ended up having to reprint the order at no charge to me. So, in the end, their lack of a quality customer experience cost them more money than it would have if they had simply corrected the issue with real time phone support for customer service. <rolling my eyes>