Marketing Vs. Customer Service

The Steve Jobs marketing machine is something to behold. I can think of few product launches that have matched OS X Leopard, or the iPhone. Microsoft’s Windows XP is perhaps the closest I can come, but Windows XP had the advantage of replacing Windows 98 and Windows ME. By way of analogy, if you start offering Evian instead of Sand in the desert, people will come. Leopard wasn’t replacing a crappy OS, it was simply enhancing it, and at 6:00 on October 26 people were lined up like lemmings for hundreds of feet in a line that twisted its way through half of University Town Center Mall.

My story starts earlier than that though. That afternoon I decided to finally replace my old PC with the drool-inducing, sleek and sexy iMac. Since Apple switched to the Intel processor, and VMWare began offering Fusion, Apple has become a legitimate platform for the Windows world. Now I can have a “Unix” (BSD, actually) based host and all the power that entails and still develop for and run my Windows applications. So at around noon, I went to the Apple Store to pick up my iMac. Things began to go wrong right away.

First, Apple refused to sell anything Leopard until after 6:00PM. I suppose I can understand not selling the stand-alone OS for those who are upgrading until 6:00, but someone buying a new computer should get the latest OS. Apple’s stance was that until 6:00, Tiger was the latest OS. OK, I can even accept that. I am, however, an instant-gratification sort of person, so I bought my iMac and spoke with the manager about coming back and getting the OS later that evening. I explained that I would not pay the $9.95 upgrade fee, as it was silly to take my $2,000-plus dollars and then extort me for another ten bucks. She agreed to handle it as a refund/re-purchase and waive the restocking fee. It was still a little annoying though – for the sake of Apple’s marketing machine, I would have to make a special trip back to the Apple store and wait in a long, long line simply to get what I should have gotten with my new computer purchase.

But the story does not end there – upon my return, I was told that I had to purchase the “box” version, as only new computer purchases included the new “slip-in” CD’s for the computers the stores already had in stock. If I had brought my whole computer back, instead of just the receipt, they could have taken my 5-hour old computer back, and exchanged it for one new in a box with the slip in CD. Since I assumed everyone would be sane, I just brought the receipt and was told they could do nothing for me.

Let’s look at this carefully. If I had brought my computer back, Apple would have had an opened item on their hands, and given me a new computer with the slip-in CD. If they did it my way, all they would have had to do would have been to hand me a slip-in CD and they would not have had to bother with the open-stock iMac. Inquiring about this, I was told they had no more slip-in CD’s, as they had only received enough for the stock on hand. Let’s just ignore the fact that my iMac WAS “stock-on-hand” when the store opened that day…

The end result of Apples marketing, for me, was that I had to jump through hoops and (thanks to my instant-gratification gene) spend an additional $100 to get my iMac and OS Leopard on October 26^th. Making a customer who is spending a couple of thousand dollars make a special trip back to is bad enough, but I can just about let that one pass. Making a customer then pay an additional $100 on top of that is just insane.

To be fair, I could have had my Leopard needs handled on-line, and the latest OS would have been mailed to me, and I would not have had to make a special trip. However, that would not satisfy my instant-gratification demon. But there are plenty of people like me out there – just look at the lines in front of the Apple stores during these product launches.

But complaining just contributes to global warming. It’s better to offer a solution. Here’s how it should have been handled – assuming Apple would not bend at all on the 6:00 deadline:

• A Customer who bought an iMac anytime in the past thirty days is simply handed an upgrade CD. The stores should have had them in stock to handle those needs.
• Failing that, the manager should have had the discretion (dare I say “empowerment”) to discount a box version of Leopard.

That’s it. It’s that simple.