I spent 47 minutes on the phone yesterday with a customer service rep from Apple. At least 25 of those minutes was on hold. Listening to a single piece of crap music. Over and over and over and over…
While the good news is I finally got Apple to listen to me for a moment and start the process of fixing my laptop, the bad news is that I am now insane and can only hum this one tune. Tune. That’s a good word. Good segue.
Hey Apple, how about this… If your customers are waiting so damn long on the phone to get actual help from you (I spent about 3 hours on the phone with you this week), why not turn this problem into an opportunity and hawk iTunes while I am waiting. Run the “iTunes Radio Network” on the phone. Let me listen to the song of the week. Promo me about how easy iTunes is to use. Tell me about the affiliate program. Let me listen to the top 10 or 20 downloaded songs of the day (clean versions of course).
Even if you are trying to sell me something while I wait, it is far better than being subjected to the mind-numbing electronica that would make Kraftwerk apologise to me out of the sheer abuse to the genre.
As far as my web access situation goes…
Verizon still sucks. I realised today that there is a web interface to my Verizon email. I had forgot about it since I never use it. I was able to log in under my “old” account ID and password. So much for my account being wiped out. Verizon lies. Well, more probably one area of Verizon doesn’t speak at all to the other area. I bet the have 15 different customer databases, none of which talk to each other.
Apple sucks less now that they are helping me, but I would still describe the voice aspect of my phone experiences as “surly.” It will be up to 15 days before I get my laptop back (once I am able to send it which better be today dammit). When I had the last rep on the phone, I should have said, “Do you know what a blog is? I am currently using the web to tarnish your company’s reputation. I know you don’t care, but I do. It’s important to me. You know… the paying customer?”
Doh. It just gets worse and worse.
For those arriving from MacSurfer, the rest of the story is here and here.