I took a trip to the Genius Bar last week. I made an appointment for my daughter’s boyfriend’s iPod Nano, which suffered an untimely death six months after he bought it.
Replaced… for free… no questions asked.
While I was standing there I asked about my new 3Gs, which was making a little knocking noise when I shook it.
Replaced… for free… no questions asked.
(By the way, the new one is making the same knocking noise. I think it wasn’t the switch bouncing around, which is what the Genius said he thought it was. I think it’s whatever is being used for shake-to-shuffle. Something about how that’s handled in the new 3Gs seems to be little noisy.)
And, yes, while I was there I made some purchases too. Not Griffiths’ $173.90 worth, something closer to a third of that, but the fact remains, I spent more than the zero I was planning on spending when I entered the store.
But what’s beyond genius is how easily Apple is willing to replace bad hardware. Compare this with the 3 Sony phones I had to have replaced by AT&T because the keys were breaking and it’s obvious why Apple has no parallel when it comes to customer satisfaction. The AT&T exchange made me feel criminal, not to mention that it seemed like I was handing over one of my testes as collateral for the guaranteed return of their defective unit. Apple’s exchange made me feel like I was a valued customer. It also makes me feel like Apple is standing behind their product.
What could be more genius than that?