To Whom it May Concern at Apple:
Three years ago, when I dropped my trusty Blackberry 7130c into a pot of water, I was immediately honest with AT&T and RIM. My first call was to AT&T because I had purchased the phone through them. They offered me a deal on the newest Blackberry, but the lady also suggested I call RIM directly and see if the phone could be repaired. I think she was also suggesting that I "change" my story and neglect to mention the part where I dropped the phone into the water. I didn't neglect; I told the lady at RIM exactly what happened and she laughed. She told me to wait 3 days before I bought anything and let the phone dry out. If it didn't work, they would still warrant the phone and send me a new one. Her exact words: "We cover that."
Three days later and expecting the worst, I put the battery back in the Blackberry 7130 and turned it on. Imagine my surprise when my email started downloading. Fifteen minutes later, a customer called me on the phone and I was using the phone to do what I had bought it for: making money.
If you're surprised or amused by this story, I suspect it is because Apple would never warrant their phone for being submerged into water, mainly because if the fragile iPhone were ever dropped into water, it would likely die a fast, electronic death from which it could never recover.
Let me be clear: I do not expect Apple, or any other electronics manufacturer, to warrant their products against submersion or unreasonable exposure to water. What I do expect when an expensive product is still under warranty and has a history of problems is the benefit of a doubt.
My iPhone has been problematic since day one. It had a funny vibrating problem; that is to say, it would suddenly start vibrating violently and keep going until the battery ran out. I shouldn't use the word "funny" because I found nothing amusing about it. The phone locked up often. These were the reasons for my first two tech support calls, and after the second I was told that, next time, I should take the phone to a Apple Store to be examined.
Which is what I did 30 days later when the problem occurred again. I was told that the firmware had been corrupted, and they re-loaded it. If I had another problem, I should bring it back.
Problems from that time on were minimal until today. Last night I went to bed and plugged my phone into the charger. My wife, coming home late from work, woke me up to say my phone was vibrating. I told her it was just getting email and went to sleep. When I woke up to go to work and grabbed my phone, it was dead and warm. I called Apple, explained the problem, and tried a few of their tests. I was told the phone was dead. Really? I hadn't noticed.
She scheduled me a time at the nearest Apple store to meet with, and I quote, a "Genius." I thought she was being funny, but then I walked into the Apple Store to wait for my turn at The Genius Bar. For a 3:20 appointment, I waited thirty minutes before being graced by a conversation with one of the Geniuses. I don't claim to be a genius myself, but I was not impressed.
"It doesn't turn on, " he said. Ah ha! Truly a genius. I explained my problem and how I had awakened to find the phone dead. He looked at me. "Did you get it wet?" I said no. It was on the counter, where it goes every night. It was on the charger. I went to bed, and when I woke up, it wasn't working. He glared at me.
"You got it wet, " he said, and he pulled out a magnifying glass. "There's green on the contacts. That means they got wet." Then he handed me back my phone and glared at me, as if I was supposed to apologize for wasting the time of one of the geniuses. As if oxygen or moisture in the air couldn't cause corrosion. He tilted his head, as if waiting for me to plead his forgiveness. Since he wasn't saying anything, I said, "So what do I do now?"
He said I could give Apple $199, and they can fix it. But it won't be covered under warranty.
And at that point I looked at "The Genius" the way "The Genius" was looking at me: like an idiot, like a liar. I told him I had decided to pass. That I had a Blackberry I could re-activate, and it had never given me a problem. That this phone had been nothing but a problem since I got it, that this was the phone's fourth tech support issue, that I had to stop what I was doing at work to come down to the Apple Store, that the phone was more hassle than it was worth, and I left.
I returned to work, where I pulled my old Blackberry from the IT cabinet, caught up on work, and then I went to the AT&T store. Without an appointment, at 6:00 in the evening at one of the busiest malls in my state, I was immediately attended to. This courteous twenty-something did not have a t-shirt proclaiming him a Genius, but you may want to ship him one. I started explaining my problem, and the attendant plugged my old phone into a charger. I said I would need the number transferred off the phone, and he handed me a blue card. "Your number is on there already, " he said. I explained that my company required I keep my old number, I couldn't get a new one, and he nodded. "You don't understand; I already put that number on the card you're holding. Don't lose the card." I waited 10 minutes for my old Blackberry to charge up, put the new SIM card in, and viola! I had a working phone, my old phone number, and it hadn't cost me $199. It cost me nothing.
I respectfully submit the following arguments: That it is a bit egotistical to advertise your employees as geniuses when your products are documented as faulty. They are not geniuses with computers, and they are certainly not geniuses with regard to customer service. But, more than that, I put to you that assuming the worst about your customers will cause them to assume the worst about your company. I did not drop my iPhone in water or get it wet, and I would not have denied it if I had; I used my iPhone normally and carefully.
I was a loyal Apple customer when I woke up this morning to find my dead iPhone, and even when I walked into the Apple Store I still had every confidence that the situation could be resolved. I own two Apple computers, I have an iTunes account, I had an iPhone, and my wife has an iPod. Since leaving the Apple Store, I now have a resurrected Blackberry which has so far doubled the life of the iPhone and is going strong. My old iMac wasn't worth keeping, and my new music production software runs perfectly well on the Windows XP machine my company provides, which was half the price new of my used Mac. My wife can keep her iPod, but I'll be closing my iTunes account once I pick up my new Zune tomorrow. All in all, it will take six hours of time and $199 for a Zune to eliminate Apple from my life completely.
Now there's $199 well-spent.
I will never buy an Apple product again.
Very truly yours,
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