Prodigal customer service from Apple

By , published on 22 August 2009

But there was a problem.

Something in the internals wasn’t quite right. The cursor started dancing around the screen as if it were possessed.

Damnation. A faulty mouse in our house.

This is where the convenence of online shopping turns into hassle: when you have to return a defective purchase. Indeed, because it’s such a relatively small ticket item, we very nearly didn’t bother. The endless waiting on the phone, navigating the automated call system, praying to find a human being to talk to, explaining what the problem was, convincing the customer service rep that it really was faulty when it arrived and not because we dropped it, repacking and returning, claiming the refund: It just all felt like more hassle than it was worth. We’d just pop into the Apple Store the next time we passed, we told ourselves, and cough up for another one.

But then we reconsidered: What the hell, we thought, we’ll give Apple a call and see what happens.

Well, what happened was Prodigal customer service.

It took only about 30 seconds to get through to a real, live customer service representative and once we did, he immediately apologised for our inconveniance, told us they’d ship out a replacement to us straightaway and that there was no need to worry about returning the faulty mouse.

Now, of course, we’re sure it wouldn’t have been quite so simple if this had been our MacBook Air we wanted to return, but still, Apple deserves credit for easy, friendly and, most of all, pragmatic customer service. Top marks Apple.

Wireless Mighty mouse

Article

Prodigal customer service from Apple

Tired of wires culttering up our otherwise pristine desk, we ordered a wireless Mighty Mouse from Apple’s online store a couple of weeks ago to pair to our iMac. When it arrived, as usual with an Apple product, set-up was painless: it was paired and up and running within minutes. But there was a problem. [...]

Author

Our editor-in-chief, the self-proclaimed "greatest wit, raconteur and bon vivant of our age", borders on delusional. Over the years, The Fool has squandered more money on fast cars, Swiss watches and electronic gadgetry of all kinds than he – or his bank manager – cares to remember. Come nightfall, he can invariably be found stumbling out of Dukes mumbling “just one more Martini; I could have handled just one mmmmm… [thud!]”

Visit website

Contact
via Twitter
via Email

5 Responses to “Prodigal customer service from Apple”

  • a_tiwary

    22 August 2009

    this is not funny. Wonder how you managed to remain calm.

    • The Prodigal Fool

      2 September 2009

      I think you’ve misunderstood the post. What we were saying is that all the negative things you normally associate with returning goods you’ve bought online didn’t happen. Instead, Apple simply sent out a replacement without even asking us to return the original item. We’re congratulating them on excellent and pragmatic customer service.

  • The Prodigal Fool

    21 September 2009

    Quick update: the replacement mouse arrived. It works perfectly. Thanks, Apple!

  • [...] We’ve been using a wireless (and button-less) Apple Mighty Mouse since the summer and – though we’ve always liked it – we’ve never really given it much more thought than that. The Magic Mouse is different. Very different. It brings multi-touch to the party. [...]

  • [...] A few months ago we praised Apple for its superb customer service. After developing a fault with our Mighty Mouse, we called the company for support. They [...]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Patrons

Patrons
Advertisement
Advertisement

Designed at Richard P Chapman Design Associates