Last week, I needed to buy a new Mac Mini; I zipped down to the local Apple Store. In general, the Apple Store sales people are almost too helpful — they would be, except they’re all so cute. It’s like a whole store full of geek puppies.
This time was unusual — there were no greeters at the front door, and I finally had to buttonhole someone just to get on the waiting list to talk to a sales person. After probably a 20 minute wait, I finally saw someone, bought my Mac Mini (which is a great little computer, by the way) and was gone. The next day, I got an email from Apple asking for my feedback.
I told them my story, which as a tale of retail woe is really not that big a deal.
I just got off the phone with “Franklin”, the store manager. He was very apologetic, and as a final gesture he offered me a discount on my next visit.
Compare that to IKEA, which did finally respond to the “Dante’s IKEA” article — with an email saying “Gee, that’s a shame.”
The furniture nazi says “No stools for you! One year!”
NEXT!
Ah, they’re the “Apple of your i.”
Apple sells an image. They need to maintain their fan-base in order to sell them overpriced electronics. An iPad is just a Netbook, but costs 4X as much. For quadruple the cost, I had BETTER get good service.
IKEA sells furniture at prices barely over that of Wal-Mart (and sometimes less).
People don’t shop at IKEA for the “experience”, they shop their to save money. I shop at Wal-Mart about every other day, and the “service” is crap, but they save me money and I get what I need.
IKEA? You expect service from IKEA?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/new-revelation-ikea-used-east-german-prison-labor_592707.html
Did Apple give you a free optical drive since the stupidly forgot to add that to the mac mini this year?