I actually had a similar interaction with Apple on a smaller scale. I had just ordered a magic mouse for my sister's fiancee for Christmas. I talked to my sister after purchasing it online and she told me that they were in an Apple store the day before and he had mentioned that he wanted a magic pad.
Shit.
So I called up Apple asking if I could return the magic mouse that I ordered online for the trackpad in a store because there wouldn't be enough time with Christmas fast approaching. The customer support guy put me on hold for a minute and then told me that in light of the Holiday Spirit they would send out a trackpad with express shipping free of charge. I could return the magic mouse if I wanted or keep both.
Fed Ex ended up dropping the ball on the express shipping, but still Apple stepped up and made my day! I ended up giving him the magic mouse for Christmas and then the trackpad a month later for his birthday.
Apple's service is, bar none, the best I've ever received from any technology company.
A couple of years ago my MacBook Pro was conking out - graphics tearing probably caused by bad VRAM.
I called them up, and having had a DVD drive and a latch fixed in the past, they informed me (voluntarily! without me asking for it!) that given the number of repairs done on this machine they'll just send me a new one instead of going through another round of repairs. This is also with ~2 minutes on hold, and talking directly to a human instead of navigating the touch-tone gauntlet.
They sent me a return shipment label to start the process - I told them that I really can't be without a machine for a whole week while they sent out the replacement. They didn't argue or be difficult, they just decided right then to ship me my new machine and I can ship back my old one at my leisure.
Did I mention I got a unibody MacBook Pro out of the deal despite being 2-3 generations out of date at that point? They replaced the MBP with the latest and greatest instead of sticking me with an old-gen refurb as is standard for hardware replacements.
That singular experience has made me an Apple laptop customer ever since.
The best part? My roommate at the time was dealing with a conked out Dell laptop, so were on the phone with our respective support lines simultaneously. Between dialing the number and finalizing the shipment details of the new laptop I took about 25 minutes end to end. He spent the next 7 hours arguing with Dell. On the other hand, after those 7 hours of pure customer service pain, they sent someone out that fixed the machine same-day... so his resolution was faster, but considerably more painful.
You pay a little more for hardware, but Apple usually outdoes itself in support.
At the 3 year mark I decided to replace the optical drive on my macbook with a big hard drive and use an SSD to boot. Three weeks later the computer is dead. I reverse the process. Still dead. Both hard drives worked, but I couldn't test the other parts.
I took it to the Apple store and the genius said they couldn't look at it since it had been modified. I was bummed but knew it was a long shot. The store sends a follow up email survey and I say I had at least hoped I could find out if the machine was salvageable - I'd get a new logic board if that would fix it - or consider a new laptop.
The store manager calls the next day and has me explain exactly when I did and what happened in the store and says they can send it to an Apple warehouse and for ~$200 they'll fix anything that is broken and return it in a week. I took him up on that.
The next day I get a call that my computer is ready. No warehouse. No charge. They fixed it in the store, replacing the internals. I admitted I was probably the reason the machine died. All I wanted was to see if they could just test the logic board so I knew how bad the problem was. And Apple repaired it, well out of warranty, for free.
I probably would have bought a new computer from them had they said it was toast. I didn't hesitate to buy another mac a year later.
Amazon gave me great service when they had to do a warranty replacement for my Kindle. It took 2 minutes at 2:30am to convince the guy to send me the replacement. My wife being from Canada didn't believe such customer service even existed, but back in the UK I bought everything through Amazon and they were always great.
I did find out in the process that FedEx is as incompetent piece of shit as it was in the UK. The delivery guy left the package in the hallway to my apartment building and obviously forged the signature required as it was an international expedited and insured delivery.
Amazon is great for that, when I got my Kindle I was perhaps a bit too rough with it. It was the week after I had gotten it as a birthday present and I didn't have a case yet but I wanted to bring it with me for a train trip. I threw it in a bag with books, keys and other loose materials and the next time I tried to turn it on, the screen was completely broken.
I called up Amazon support and explained the situation to them, being completely honest about how rough I was with it. I was pretty confident they'd just say it was my fault and make me pay for repairs but instead they simply got my Amazon account details off me and sent a new one right away. I mailed the broken one off a few days later and didn't have to wait too long for the replacement despite being in Australia.
This is to be predicted, as if you don't have a working Kindle you are not going to buy e-books for it, where they make most of their money on that product line. Companies that have high margins ("the Apple tax") or secondary markets (Amazon, and again Apple with iTunes) have good support because they a) can afford to have it and b) can't afford not to have it: a lost customer is a loss of thousands of dollars of future profits; for most companies you can talk about thousands of dollars of revenue, but the actual profit to be lost from an ex-customer are so low as to make even hiring support staff untenable (most hardware companies), and when they are required the staff are often gulags with very very strict service/refund quotas (telecom companies).
That's what I miss about Dell. I bought a 800 UKP laptop with 3year onsite warranty. After 6months the touchpad went wrong.
They sent out 12 on site repair visits replacing the touchpad (including 2 trips with the wrong part and 2 to replace bits of the case the previous guy broke) before deciding it was the motherboard that was faulty.
The onsite repair is done by a 3rd party who bill Dell 250 UKP for each visit. They spent almost 4x the cost of the machine repairing it - but Dell company policy is not to replace machines more than 30days old.
Funnily enough that was the last Dell laptop I bought and last place I ordered Dell servers for.
Their coverage is crap, but support for TMo is one of the best out there. If there was only a way we could combine the best of both worlds -- Apple & TMo's support without being tied to AT&T.
If it would not be a hug expense for them (not to mention wrong market), having Apple take over TMo, build out a world class 3G infrastructure coupled with world class support, I'd be seriously happy.
My bluetooth adapter doesn't work, and I can't send in my laptop till this summer since I do iPhone development for my school. By then though, I'll be pushing it really close to the end of my 1 year warranty.
There were known NVidia graphics hardware defect issues with MBPs of roughly that vintage, so if that was the problem, you should have received similar service even if you were not covered by the AppleCare extended warranty.
Mine was a ATI chip unfortunately. The problems were all in the end related to a broken latch - broken latch interfered with sleep mode, which meant that occasionally the laptop would spend a few hours in a laptop sleeve, fans going full blast, failing to go to sleep. I'm pretty that cooked the VRAM and DVD drive.
The non-unibody MBPs had a lot of functionality tied to the ridiculously complex lid latch. If the latch broke the laptop was SOL.
Now if he was smart, he would buy her a new pair of shoes, dress, new tie and shirt for himself and take her out with the money saved. That's what I call a good week.
Or he could just spend the money on a bigger pair of balls.
Note: This is based on the assumption (perhaps false) the ipad was not a financially irresponsible decision. If it not ok to spend the money on frivolities like an ipad, clothes and fancy dinners are right out too.
Sure, maybe if you have no clothes, or they are falling off you, or they no longer serve the purpose of actually clothing you.
However, most clothes purchases are on the same level of necessity as an iPad - such as: "my current stuff is old" or "out of style" or "I just want something new and shiny".
The "Rationalization" variant: "I have a professional obligation to stay up-to-date / Wouldn't want to embarrass my friends / Need to support my favorite designer.
What is it about hacker culture that places women on a pedestal and encourages fawning, obsequious devotion and sacrifice to them? Relationships should not be about master/slave dynamics, yet geeks seem to relish this dynamic more than I've seen in any other subculture.
The man in this article has already castrated himself for his wife; this +15 comment suggests that unquestioningly bending to the indomitable will of his wife was not enough?
What's next? Recommending cuckoldry as a solution to satisfying his wife's sexual needs?
> The man in this article has already castrated himself for his wife... What's next? Recommending cuckoldry as a solution to satisfying his wife's sexual needs?
Wow.
Um.
Daaaaamn.
Unresolved issues much?
Without knowing the couple in question, I could see any number of potential explanations that indicate a co-equal relationship. Let's enumerate some:
- Trying to cut back on expenses and reduce debt, need to watch out for each other's impulsive spending
- Saving for big vacation, remember?
- Return it you oaf! (Your birthday is in a month and I already ordered you the best one)
- Hey, uh, just lost my job. Sure we want to keep it? That $600 is a lot of bills
When you're sharing your life with someone else, finance is a team sport.
The same baseless, ad-hominem, assumptive comments about the man in the article, right?
You're jumping at ghosts - and IMO there's something concerning about reading that far into so little information. The fact that he had a disagreement with his wife and returned the iPad doesn't imply being castrated, obedient, dominated, or otherwise enslaved. The fact that you would jump on this possibility as a default is a bit concerning.
That is quite unusual, but not for geek relationships, for MANY relationships. There seem to be a non-insignificant amount of people who accept their partner making decisions for them, regardless of their wishes.
This is creeping Redditization: it's based on it being a boys' club in here, it isn't particularly funny, and we can expect to hear it and variations repeated in every thread forever if this behavior is rewarded.
Perhaps it's some sort of honeypot by pg to try and increase the signal to noise ratio, ie. everyone who voted that comment up gets blacklisted from HN.
This is the most machiavellian idea I have ever heard around internet community management. You can mercilessly enforce policies while appearing to do nothing at all. Except you dont blacklist them, you just reduce the influence of their votes in the ranking algorithm.
I submitted the article because it reminded me of a pattern of good-spirited customer service I've had from Apple.
It's a lesson in how to treat customers in a way that rewards their humanity. The end result is that this guy and his wife will likely be Apple customers for life. That's likely upwards of 30 years of loyalty for the cost of a single iPad.
I'm sorry I didn't add this comment the moment I submitted the story, but I figured most people would take away what they came with. Good question! And feel free to stay skeptical and have high standards. Let your snob flag fly!
The implication in those decrying the 'wives are expensive' comment is that they do not believe spouses in general are expensive. Anecdotally, I find that very hard to believe.
So... joking about blacks being [racist stereotype] on a majority-white website is ok because (a) it makes the majority laugh and (b) it's not making fun of any one black person individually? Please explain your logic here.
I accept that my attempt to justify such humour was wrong. That said, I stand behind my main point which is the reason it was being voted up was because people were amused by it.
I think those jokes are acceptable. I think racist jokes are funny, and that includes jokes that make fun of my own race. We laugh at absurdity, and one thing that's pretty absurd is racism.
It seems wrong to apply logic to people's perceptions of humour and offensiveness, since perceptions are rarely logical. But going with this, if the person telling this same joke were black, would that be OK? Or equivalently, are there classes of jokes that may only be told by black people?
(also I feel I should point out that jokes about race tend not to be equivalent in offensiveness to jokes about sex, so this whole premise is largely irrelevant)
It seems to me that both jokes are in the same vein: referencing a satirical husband-wife power stereotype. But no one is complaining about the male stereotype.
it's funny. it has an element of truth to it one can recognize if you live long enough. HN is mostly male and the software development profession is overwhelmingly male. no harm, no foul. plus I'm sure there are jokes women can make about men which are also based around a core of truth. no worries. :)
Over the years, I've had about a dozen close girlfriends and hundreds of casual girls-night-out buddies. Not once do I remember anyone joking about men not being too smart. Where do you get your "all women, always" from?
So you're saying that despite hundreds of female acquaintances going on nightly excursions, you've never heard even one of them express exasperation or jesting concern over men in general over the course of years? Never once a comment on how men don't pick up on things, never once a comment on how men don't understand, and all possible criticisms are individual-specific?
Either:
a) You're just making this up. Humans are just not that invariable. I've had hundreds of casual night-out buddies of both sexes... and I would be lying if I could state any thread that ran through all of one gender, anatomical traits aside.
Hell, I'd be hard pressed to find a thread that ran through even half of them, with the possible exceptions of 'likes to imbibe some form of inebriating substance' and 'speaks English'
b) You state 'joking', so perhaps all general criticisms of men were considered serious statements?
c) You state you don't remember, so perhaps you get so blind drunk you can't remember any conversation?
"all women, always" is not that much worse than "no women, never"
I know gender discussions make everyone blind with emotion but come on. How do you go from a few hundred casual drinking buddies over the years to blind-drunk nightly excursions? And from "not once do I remember anyone joking about men not being too smart" to "no women ever make any negative comments about men whatsoever"?
Of course "no women, never" argument is just as stupid as, "all women, always" argument. If I made the argument. You took my rather short counterpoint/anecdote and ran away with it. Far, far away.
I didn't run as far as you think I did: "you've never heard even one of them express exasperation or jesting concern over men in general over the course of years". As for And from "not once do I remember anyone joking about men not being too smart" to "no women ever make any negative comments about men whatsoever"?, you're putting words in my mouth. I never said that.
How do you go from a few hundred casual drinking buddies over the years to blind-drunk nightly excursions
That was one of three options in my "Either" list, jokingly picking up on your "I don't remember" comment.
When you're complaining of other people taking you out of context, it behooves you to take them in context.
The "no woman, never" thing was referring to you saying that in your vast experience of socialising with women, you do not recall a single incidence of -foo-. In casual talk, that's making the point "no, never".
Are these your friends or your family? If it's the former, time to find new friends. If it's the latter, a dysfunctional family doesn't need to warp your sense of what the rest of the world is like.
See you have just insulted both my family and friends, and it's ok. In the same sense people can joke about my family, friends or me and it is ok as well. Again, you guys need to just chill.
I didn't say anything about your friends or family that you didn't say first. You told us that they constantly make fun of you for not being too smart, or did I misinterpret? I don't think it's bad to suggest that you don't need to subject yourself to verbal abuse from people around you, or, in the case of family, choose to take the abuse with at least a big grain of salt.
That shits me SO much, because of how any similar "Women are incompetent" jokes are vilified. Is it blanket OK or blanket not OK? You can't argue that it's OK for one sex to insult another, but not the reverse, it just doesn't work that way.
There were about 5 identical jokes in this thread and this is the one that irked me the most. Mostly because I nor any of my other female friends are particularly interested in any of the stuff listed here. As I age I've transitioned by being equally amused as every other guy here, to mildly annoyed as the jokes don't evolve AT ALL.
Please stop telling me I like furniture! The closest I've ever gotten to purchasing furniture is picking some off the curb for free in response to a Craiglist ad.
Is there any reason to believe that this actually happened and isn't just an Apple employee feeding PR fluff to MacRumors? It's essentially unverifiable.
True or not, this story is pretty much just fluff anyway. I clicked the title, because I figured it would be something interesting since it was on HN, but I just got a tiny anecdote about a company being nice.
"You can get good PR by giving your customers free products." This is worth reading?
They do have a reputation for taking good care of their customers. I believe that qualifies as "any" reason. Secondly, considering their margins, it's probably the best bang for the buck with their advertising dollars. Tens of thousands of impressions for $226 (or whatever it costs them to make the dang thing).
well, not having an external source link simply means this is the source. Whether or not you believe it or not is a separate issue.
disclaimer: I wrote the article, and I believe it likely to be true, but can't verify it for certain, unless the Apple VPs or guy who-got-iPad steps forward.
I suspect it's true. It's certainly Apple's style. But of course there is no proof.
Think about it: if Apple put out a press release saying "we're awesome because we sent this guy a free iPad 2", everyone would (rightly) think it was crass.
Great customer service is some of the best advertising money can buy. It's something that's been known for years, but hasn't made its way into corporate culture for a long time. Kudos apple/newegg/amazon/all the other startups out there/etc who've been successful with these principles.
Clearly Zappos' famously awesome customer service isn't good or memorable enough to make the off-the-top-of-your-head list there. Interesting!
(They always keep saying "Whoa, Nellie! We upgraded you to express shipping free!" on my orders -- it was a delightful surprise the first time, but now I suspect it's standard..)
I would love to have been in the room, when the execs heard about it and decided on the note, or to see the face of the guy when he received the iPad again.
There are lots of stories of people going into an Apple store with a product broken after it's warranty and still walking out the door with a brand new replacement.
You just don't get that kind of service from any other company (especially in the computer hardware business).
You just don't get that kind of service from any other company (especially in the computer hardware business).
...because most hardware companies are trying to compete for "price conscious customers" as commodity products, and therefore don't have any margin to spend on support.
People are actually returning their iPad 2s for reasons other than production defects? (If there were defects I am sure the blogs would be abuzz about it by now.) I know this one was Wife defect but the story says Apple is looking to see if there are any production defects.
I am pondering getting one and couldn't find one anywhere. To the people returning for refund of same amount - come over on eBay ;)
I have a Verizon model, which I'll be returning. It was the only one I could find. I ordered an AT&T model online at 6am EST on March 11. It's still in Hong Kong.
I can return this model up til this coming Saturday and get a free refund.
iPads have had huge problems with mass organized scalping, particularly here in New York. For many, it's their job to camp out all night and buy 2 iPads, fronted by a guy carrying a wad of $50k+ cash for a bunch of people in the line.
The scalpers want AT&T models first and foremost (the GSM 3G is internationally usable) and then Wifi-only. They aren't interested in Verizon, which I guess explains whY I found out.
I've considered eBaying it but I don't think Verizon models are as in high demand as the other two. Probably more hassle than it's worth.
Interesting. I didn't even question this part :). 80% of people here make money off of software. If I was being funded by an iPad app it definitely would be that important.
I can't believe people are responding negatively to your comment.
Of course you can do development in the simulator or on an older model for a couple of weeks. Developing on the old model is probably a must-do for at least another year or two.
Furthermore, while you do need to test on a device later in the dev cycle, I (and most other devs I know) actually don't deploy to hardware for days at a time early in the cycle.
Early in the iphone dev cycle there were enormous disparities between bugs on hardware and the simulator. Some symbols didn't even link consistently between the two and re targeting would cause compilation errors. This is no longer the case and the two targets are very, very close.
In fact, if someone told me they wanted to get into ipad development, I would tell them to write their app first, and then buy an iPad to test it on.
Emulators aren't 100%, I had a problem with an app that worked perfectly on the simulator, and crashed on the device. Also, if you are doing something with the new features, like the cameras, you will need a new device.
Also of note: there is no iPhone/iPad emulator, only a simulator. There's huge differences in performance, in addition to some rare bugs that only manifest themselves on either the simulator or the device.
Curious if you just bought the Verizon model because that was the only one you got in the stores or if you felt it was no good without LTE (compared to ATT) and so are returning it?
Speaking of Verizon LTE - I had no idea my area was already LTE enabled until I went looking in the context of 4G upgrade for my Xoom. For the iPad2 it doesn't matter as it's going to be used outside of the US so only AT&T model will do - wish the scalpers slowed down a bit!
I go overseas. There is no choice for me other than the AT&T version, which works in Australia and Europe. Verizon only works in the US.
Even if that was OK, Verizon annoy me by charging $35 activation. I loathe that kind of charge. I'll pay for service. Don't make pay for the "privilege" of paying for service. Particularly when you basically have to do nothing.
LTE isn't even a consideration for me until LTE rollouts are widespread.
I travel overseas too, but I'd not want to face the roaming charges (I guess I could swap sims, but I have a phone hotspot anyway).
Getting an iPad that works in the US (especially when there's a high density of Apple users, aka AT&T can't cope) is way more valuable to me - I'm only considering the Verizon version.
Mine has a couple pretty bad light leaks on the bottom right which had me considering returning it. I decided not to though since they are only noticeable on a black screen (letter boxed videos notably) and because I don't want to have to wait for a replacement.
Wait till you're already going to be without it for a brief period and send it out expedited then. Although be careful if you don't have a good mail carrier.
I had a package containing a replacement Kindle left in my apartment hallway by a moronic FedEx employee, who I'm only guessing forged the 'signature required' box so he didn't have to drop it off at the post office.
Although Amazon was great with the replacement, it took 2 minutes to get the guy to send out a replacement for a battery defect at 2:30am. Having dealt with them before back in the UK my wife simply didn't believe it that they actually had competent people working past 6pm let alone midnight (customer service here in Canada is on par to what black men got at KKK rallys).
A friend of mine bought the Verizon 3G model so that, between iPad and iPhone, he'd have a device on both of the major networks. After using it for a few days he found the Verizon coverage/speed to be noticeably slower at his home and office, so he's about to return it for a GSM 3G model.
Does anyone know if Apple has any sort of employee empowerment policy?
At start-ups, it doesn't (or at least shouldn't) take much for the decision makers to hear from customers and respond in a way that "wow"s them, but I'd be curious to know what processes or mechanisms specifically a large company like Apple has in place to catch these kinds of opportunities.
Right, but I'm wondering HOW they found out about it. Was is just dumb luck that a particular go-getter found out about it and passed it up or do they have some kind of "pass interesting things up" policy and actively encourage it? It obviously wasn't the Veeps that were receiving the the returned iPad.
I actually can see it traveling pretty fast. District Manager calls Store Manager to find out how things are going. Store Manager does a "You gotta hear this return reason...". Or, the someone at the store calls corporate to find out what to code this return as. Never underestimate the number of stories that start "This guy gave returned it because....".
Internally at MSFT we have support discussion lists that are used by field personnel to interact with the product team; our VP is on the alias and sometimes answers questions with the products that they used to directly work on.
Granted, joining a discussion list is easier than monitoring product returns, but there is probably an analog for the retail channel (i.e., there is probably an upwards-facing report on iPad 2 sales and returns, and this note was probably included as an item of interest). I'm just guessing though.
Odds are that anybody who really knows isn't going to tell you.
Supposing that it is true, Apple has paid a very small amount of money and received a (comparatively) very large amount of advertising. Why, they've been well placed on HN for quite a while now, for one thing.
It's funny that there are people on this forum that believe husbands actually make decisions. A great quote from some random sitcom - "Marriage is all about compromise. My wife wanted a cat, I didn't want a cat, so we compromised and got a cat."
> sorry but is this what "Hacker News" has become....
How can you possibly make a statement about the quality of Hacker News articles in a comment without proper punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, or even content? I think that if any argument is made about the trending quality of Hacker News, the evidence presented should be your comment and not this article.
If you can't see why this belongs here, I'd say you're in the wrong place.
This is a story of a tech company gaining a huge PR win for an incredibly low price by performing a feat of over-the-top customer service. Apple is going to get a lot of mileage out of this, and it will make up the $500 it cost them dozens if not hundreds of times over by the time the dust settles. If you run a software business, you should be paying attention to things like this and trying to figure out ways of emulating this behavior to your favor.
That's the reason we're here. The place used to be called "startup news" because most of us are entrepreneurs who just happen to be computer programmers. If you're here and you're just a programmer, you need to understand this, and not get offended when you see an article discussing things other than the inner workings of haskell.
There might be a lesson here on how to get a lot of positive press, inform people that you are taking quality really seriously in an indirect way, and don't spend much money doing it.
We can expect more articles on cooking, which is just "hacking" food? Gardening, as it's "hacking" vegetation (literally, sometimes)? Mental illness treatment advances, because it's "hacking" the psyche?
FWIW I've seen cooking and gardening articles here. Can't recall seeing things on mental illness but possibly stuff about drug regimens; sleep disorders have been handled several times.
"What would happen to overall customer satisfaction if instead of simply refunding his money, we sent an Ipad2 and added a funny note? Could that story go viral and create enough buzz that we could not get for less than $400,000 in marketing budget and countless meetings?"
That sounds like hacking to me. But hey, I am no hacker, so....
Shit.
So I called up Apple asking if I could return the magic mouse that I ordered online for the trackpad in a store because there wouldn't be enough time with Christmas fast approaching. The customer support guy put me on hold for a minute and then told me that in light of the Holiday Spirit they would send out a trackpad with express shipping free of charge. I could return the magic mouse if I wanted or keep both.
Fed Ex ended up dropping the ball on the express shipping, but still Apple stepped up and made my day! I ended up giving him the magic mouse for Christmas and then the trackpad a month later for his birthday.