As I have been using my iPhone a lot on the road I have been considering replacing the battery. I was fairly sure this would be an expensive process and I probably wouldn’t actually do it, but I thought I’d ring Apple just to check…
So I got on the phone and got thru the options menu to a real human – albeit one from a foreign country who is getting paid peanuts and who doesn’t quite understand the inflections in my voice. Not her problem, but one of the things I find frustrating about this outsourcing of labour.
I began by asking if I could find out the cost of a battery. She responded by telling me that she needed to get some of my details first. I gave her my phone number, provider and then a bit more thinking it may be a brief process. 13 minutes later I interuppted to say ‘I just want to know the price of a battery!’
Reading from her ‘script’ she advised me that she needed to gather information so that she could assist me more efficiently. She wasn’t going to be deterred…
In the middle of this Sam had a meltdown so I had to put her on hold.
Eventually after getting serial numbers, IME’s and my favourite colour… I discovered a new battery will set me back $139.00
I got off the phone unimpressed that I had spent 15 minutes getting a 5 second response.
Then today I got an email from Apple (obviously why they were gathering my data) asking from my impression of their customer service…
Well…I told them… Now lets see if anything changes!
I have been trying to get my wifes mobile brought over to my account so we can get free calls between us for about 4 months now. First i called optus and they said they would email me a form which i can take into an optus store with id and it would be done. The email never came. So i went to a store, the gave me a form, but i needed my wife to be there too, so we came back a few days later, they photocopied id, and said it would be done. I called optus about 3 weeks later who told me they hadn’t gotten the forms from the store, but they would follow it up with the store and call me, which they never did. So i went back to the store and they couldn’t find the forms, and said i should just fill in another one, but not having my wife with me, i didn’t have her id and would have to come back again. So i called Optus to complain, and they said they would look into it and call back which they didnt. More recently i called and said they really should be crediting me for all the calls between our phones, which they said i needed to talk to the store manager about as it was his fault. He of course said they don’t handle billing or refunds…..still havent got the phones on the same account either by the way.
so in other words, i feel your pain, but i doubt things will change with these companies…
Roo, unfortunately I’ve heard nothing good about Optus customer service and hope I never need it.
Optus sucks
Unfortunatelu my son has discovered the joys of “penguin Club” and we keep getting shaped.. so I rang Optus to get upgraded…only to be told that if we did, and used our limit, we would then get charged per mb download. So I asked when our contract is up, in one week….
ONE WEEK cant come quickly enough… Optus see you later!