luke phillips

Do’s and don’ts for your wine:  The Age

*See below for update*

Dear Apple Quality Assurance People,

After growing up on an Apple IIe computer, my first Apple product of my own was a 20gb Gen4 iPod.  Superb, easy to use, went forever.. almost, until I got the <!> of death and it was no more.

White Macbook - works great except the cheap plastic finish has cracked around the keyboard leaving some ugly holes.  And whatever hinge you used has gone all off centre and so the lid doesn’t line up with the body anymore.

Unfortunately I recently knocked it off the couch onto the floor and the HD gave up catastrophically.. which was expected really, though I wondered where that “drop protection” was?  So I upgraded to a new HD and some ram and the battery decided to not work anymore.. Which is well known and documented.  So I visit the apple store where they try to give me the run-around until I can make an appointment with a “Genius” who’d better be.. or they are going to cop an earfull.

Because the iPhone release in Australia was late, because after all we’re just a backward colony (somewhere near Germany?) I had an iPod Touch for a while which I used overseas for a month which was no problem.  iPod Shuffle?  Great, easy, no problem.

Bring on the magnificent Jesus (3G) Phone!  I lined up for hours, got my phone, waited hours for it to do.. whatever..

The iPhone headphones, like 3 sets of ipod headphones before them suffered the “insides fall out” issue where the cheap glue Apple uses comes apart and you’re left with useless headphones.  So I’m either forced to buy another overpriced pair from Apple or buy an aftermarket one for an even more inflated price!

My iPhone USB/Power cable, given the apparent cheapness of the rubber, started to crack, exposing the wires.. which will no doubt soon fail to function leaving me with flat batteries.. maybe I should upgrade and buy a dock?

A few months into my bliss of Googling everything, pinching and scrolling, and finding out my location, it slid, very aerodynamically, out of my shirt pocket while I was fixing my shoe and it landed flat on it’s back, and cracked the glass inside, diagonally which gradually transformed the whole screen became into a cloud of greyed-out pixels!

After taking it to Optus (mobile provider), who is amazed that such a thing could happen, they send it to their service centre who after 5 days of looking at it, tells me according to Apple terms that “Due to signs of physical damage you have voided your warranty and must pay $396 to have it fixed/replaced”.

I had already told them I dropped it, they didn’t need signs of physical damage.  But to me paying 50% of the purchase price seems a little rough, for replacing a “fragile” piece of equipment.  Do you honestly expect people to have the “universal, go anywhere” device that never gets dropped?

So I’m going to pay and get my iPhone back working again, and I’m going to put up with the cracked cables, and my cracked Macbook, without complaining enough to actually get something done about it.

Frankly we all understand that if you’re pushing the limits and getting things out quickly, then you’re going to cut corners.. but when you do.. and it goes bad.. then fix it.  Make it super-easy for people to get their broken stuff replaced!

Not today.. but one day (and potentially tomorrow depending on whether the Genius swaps my battery over..) if you don’t lift your game, improve your quality, and your customer service.. people like me, who are fans, and evangelists, will have had enough, and will start to leave.. and run hackintosh’s built by Dell, or go back to using Nokia’s or Googlephones (now that they have all your good ideas..).

All the best to the people on the front line who deal with the complaints.. this is a board/management problem.

Luke Phillips
Melbourne, Australia.  (Not near Germany)

iPod Shuffle: OK
iPhone 3G: Cracked Screen, Broken Headphones, Cracked USB Cable.
White Macbook: Cracked Plastic, Crooked Hinge.
iPod Gen4: <!> Buried and gone after a good life.

**UPDATE: APPLE Genius Bar at Chadstone..

….So.. Chadvegas.. to the Apple store with my Apple Appointment with a Genius (smart guy that fixes stuff)..  It was “that” Saturday and so very hot.  I didn’t really want to go out but with my appointment, I didn’t want to upset the Apple (cart?) people.

I present to Genius Phil, not sure exactly how this is going to go, he’s on the young side, and in my experience the young guys don’t have the clout to comp stuff.  He’s very methodical and checks the battery on another machine, checks a working battery on my machine.. and eventually comes to the conclusion that the battery is stuffed, and that it’s out of warranty, but quite a way.  Unfortunately nothing can be done - otherwise I’d be jibbing all those AppleCare customers who pay through the nose for special treatment.

So my approach was:
1) explain that in my opinion, for a battery to “fail” as a result of RAM installation, even though it’s out of warranty, is such a “balls-up” by Apple that they should fix it.  People are going to live with their machines as bought for a while before upgrading RAM, and in all reasonableness don’t expect installing RAM - which isn’t one of those Apple-Sins that damns you to hell - like jailbreaking something.  If my battery had gradually failed over time and didn’t hold charge.. y’know fair enough.. but it was working fine, and then kaput!

2) further explain, with some and increasing passion, that I have lots of Apple stuff that keeps breaking.. and I’m about to throw my Macbook like a frisbee across the Apple Store.. for example, the aforementioned iPod, cracked iPhone, headphones, cables etc.. which were leading me to the conclusion that Apple was being cheap and cutting corners..

Approach no 1. didn’t seem to really get me far.. it was out of warranty and Phil was resisting..  In the end I got onto story no 2 and at that point Phil went to seek more Genius from a higher power.  That higher power upon being told of story no 2 and my misfortune with the ever-so-pretty Apple things - enthusiastically said “Do it.. yeah do it”.  And as those words were spoken, it was done.

Phil ran out the back to get me a new battery and swapped it in - ensured it worked - and sent me on my way.  Phil, now vindicated, told me how his Xbox had died just out of warranty and he got NO help.. and so he was sympathetic to the “just out of warranty” predicament.

So I’m a happy man with a new battery - and now a new iphone (that one cost me!).  My only beef is that you have to whinge and be a beyatch to get anything done.  I had to convince Phil that I was willing to argue.. and then he sought word from above.

Thankyou Apple for doing the right thing.  I appreciate it, and I will continue to use your pretty things!

So Thursday was my birthday.. 29.. The big almost 30 but famous for little else!

I’ve fallen behind so slipped into the trap of retro-blogging where I struggle to remember the detail from quite a few days ago… But I’ll give it a crack.

It’s kind of weird to spend your birthday by yourself and as a result it took a while to get into the swing of it. I jumped on a train to Leiden, another little cute canal town but this one has universities so it makes it a little more lively. I saw my first windmill and hit some clothes shops walking away with a tshirt from the uk.. Can’t win them all.

I then kept the train ride going to Amsterdam.. Holding onto my wallet and prepared for filth on every corner I was pleasantly surprised. It’s a little dodgier than Den Haag but I think a lot of that is mental. Tom had organised for us to me to join a corporate sailing and dinner function with the big Australian so I had to be back in The Hague late arvo. So I walked up to Dam Square which seemed to be the ‘centrum’ of town.

It was.. Tourists standing in small clusters.. Pidgeons taking off in close proximity to my face.. I wandered some more and found a brasserie type place to eat overlooking a massive construction project.. I had a Warsteiner and a club sandwich.. Marvelled a little at the attitude of an American businessman for whom ‘the card machine not working’ constituted a breach of his personal values.. Carry some cashola douche!

Hotfooting it back to the Hague a little behind schedule to meet the sailboats.. By this time the weather had turned from magical to p155ing down and sailing looked increasingly unlikely.. But I still didn’t want to be late.. The train got closer to Amsterdam but not as fast as the sailing deadline approached.. No time to grab a respectable change of clothes for dinner I arrived back at Den Haag Central with maybe 10 minutes to go. Tom suggested I get a tuk tuk down to harbour as the quickest way to go so I climb in the back of this black tuktuk with flapping sides. I exained I was late and he took the challenge up with vigour sliding the three wheeler around some sweeping corners and suitably harassing the bmw’s in front.. After a wild and breezy ride we found the yacht club with enough time.

Due to some confident misrepresentations I found myself on a nimble racing yacht with 3 other novices and a really experienced captain..