Apple Store Customer Support Fail

Over the years I've had a number of Apple computers, iPods, and more recently, iPhones. Based on the support sites I've looked at, I've been quite lucky. I've never experienced a significant hardware failure, the closest being a two-CPU Mac Pro that stopped booting from the first drive bay for some reason, but was perfectly content to boot from the second. No big deal. I even own one of the original G5 iMacs with the exploding capacitors, and have had perfectly good experience with this unit.

Therefore, it was with some embarrassment that I mulled over the non-functioning bluetooth feature on my wife's new (well, two month old) iPhone. Every time you switch the bluetooth setting to "on", it obstinantly flips back to the "off" setting. She had already been to the AT&T store where we purchassed the phone; they ran through the usual steps: (a) reset the phone, (b) restore the phone. After playing with it myself, I noticed that the Wifi features were not working either (not seeing or connecting to the home network, or anywhere else I tried). AT&T basically washed their hands of it, instructing us to visit the Apple store who had the technicians to resolve the problem.

And so today I found myself waiting for an Apple Store employee to take notice of me. I stood near the Genius Bar, watching as an elderly lady was shown how to construct a colorful, yet tasteful newsletter in Pages. Another guy was busy being indoctrinated into the dark arcana of connecting a camera to his Macintosh with a USB cable. Still another person was learning how to post pictures to their iWeb page, and seemed to be deeply suspicious that the 'Genius' was trying to play some sort of trick on them.

I finally flagged down someone walking by. "Can you help me?", I asked. She peered over my shoulder before answering, making sure she wasn't missing out on a potential buyer hovering near the 27" iMacs. "Um, sure."

I walked her through the problem with the phone, and asked if someone could take a look at it? Or maybe could this malfunctioning unit just be swapped out for a working version?

No, and No.

"Did you try resetting the phone?", she asked. Yes.
"Did you try doing a full restore?" Yes.

I explained how the AT&T store had already done that level of troubleshooting, and had sent me to the Apple store to resolve the issue. According to the clerk, however, no one with any troubleshooting skills would even glance at the phone until I made an appointment with the "Genius Bar" staff, first available slot being sometime next week. It didn't matter that the phone was malfunctioning NOW, and that we did not live in the area and were going to be stuck with the malfunctioning phone until we got home.

And so I fumed as I watched one customer having her new iPhone activated (no appointment necessary!), and another person sidle up to the bar to be dazzled with the complexities of red-eye removal, and a flock of Apple staffers swarmed the mulling over a MacBook Pro. Meanwhile I and my in-warranty, malfunctioning iPhone was sent packing.

And so I still fume.