Phoneless
Two weeks out of warranty, my iPhone 1.0 becomes a turnip.
Cost to replace an out-of-warranty iPhone 1.0 with a refurbished version of the same model: $199.
Minimum wait time to receive the $199 replacement at the 57th Street Apple Store: two hours. That’s 120 minutes, folks.
Can I leave and come back? No.
Cost to replace my old iPhone with a new model: also $199.
Minimum wait time to receive the new model at the 57th Street Apple Store: one hour.
I don’t want the new model but one hour is better than two.
Alas, though I’ve got a dead phone, I also have a hungry toddler. I can’t wait here that long.
The Apple Genius recommends that I make an appointment and come back.
First available appointment? Tuesday.
Today is Saturday. My phone, my connection to the world, is dead. I can’t replace it at the Apple Store unless I devote the afternoon to the project.
Lightbulb: AT&T stores sell iPhones. There are AT&T Stores all over this city. I don’t have to wait in this airless giant gerbil cage all day!
Availability of iPhone at nearest AT&T Store: nil.
How about at this other AT&T Store? Nope.
Or this one? No iPhones here either.
A tropical storm hits New York, ending my quest, sending me home soaked and phoneless.
I will have to go back to the Apple Store some other day, and queue as if for Madonna tickets.
I love this phone, but I’m starting to have my doubts about the company that makes it.
Tags: apple, iphone, applestore, scarcity
Filed under: Apple, Design, iphone
Makes me sort of glad I don’t have one.
Try the 14th Street store tomorrow – 2 weeks again I walked in at 9:30 and was #4 on their line. I was in and out in 45 minutes (I did get a 3G). It’s the store I go to the least here in NYC, but have always had the fastest service.
I’ve been questioning Apple quite a bit recently myself. It seems like since releasing the iPhone they have their hands in too many cookie jars and they’re not maintaining the quality that we’ve come to know from them, nor are they able to keep secrets like they once were due, mostly, to the number of partnerships they have with other companies. It just seems that Ol’ Steve is losing the edge that once made him, and Apple, great; a few top notch computers, and three great DMPs.
This makes me glad I live a mobile free lifestlye. I don’t have a kid not am I married so obviously your need for one differs from mine. I had an iPhone until it went belly up on my and I gave up on Apple replacing it for me.
Good luck with everything! I’ve been following the event all day on Twitter it was definitely interesting to see the outcome.
Maybe you should compare Apple to other sellers and providers of products and services… Would they be able to provide with what you want or a better product within the hour? Sometimes perhaps, but not always.
I do sympathise with you, but Apple is not way out of line here…
Jeffrey – go without the kid and to a store where you can wait indoors :-)
The problem with the wait is AT&T, not Apple.
No warranty, no phone… I guess you’ll buy AppleCare next time, eh?
BUT they gave me a new phone last spring when I complained about the weak signal of the Apple Bluetooth Headset…
Stories like these are the very reason I am trying to cut back on my dependencies on new technologies. The James Burke series Connections keeps ringing in my ears.
Speaking as someone who has a MacBook Pro that’s just had it’s third logic board installed (in a computer only a year old), and an iPhone 3G – a gadget I’ve been waiting 2 years to own – only to be massively disappointed with both its software (slow, buggy) and hardware (connectivity and battery issues), and similar Apple Store Genius Bar incidents, I whole heartedly agree. For a company I use to love, it has fallen very far in my estimation these last 12 months.
I will recommend apple care to the end of my days. Especially for any portable. worth every dime…
I second Steven. Apple is getting spread way too thin.
Jeffrey, the store @57th street is a big tourist destination. Plus, it is Saturday. A wait is no surprise. You want instant gratification? Buy a phone that is far less popular.
Bummer about the iPhone 1.0. What exactly happened to it that it’s now a turnip? Physical damage, or just a complete crash of the battery?
Best Buy will start selling iPhones tomorrow.
The top third of the screen no longer responds to the touch. This means you can’t close Safari windows. Ever. Once you have six Safari widows open, you can never close them, and can never visit other websites.
You also can’t Google anything.
You can’t enter a user name and password to log into a service like Flickr (via Exposure).
After restoring the software in a futile attempt to fix the problem, you can no longer enter an additional email account (like GMail, without which you can’t stop spam). You can’t enter your GMail account because you can’t enter your user name and password, because the fields on which you would enter that information are in the top third of the screen, and the top third of the screen is dead.
You can take a photo but you can’t select it to view it, because the top third of the screen is dead.
You can’t send an email because you can’t fill in a person’s name and email address, because the part of Mail where you do that is in the top third of the screen.
You can’t send a new text message to a person, because, after typing a few letters of their name, you have to SELECT them, and you can’t select them, because the place where you would do so is in the top third of the screen.
Someone can call you and you can answer. You can also go to “Contacts” and pick someone and call them. So technically it’s still a phone.
You can view six websites in Safari (whichever six happened to be open when the iPhone turned into a brick).
You can use the NYTimes application but you cannot read the first story because the first story appears in the dead part of the screen — the part that does not respond to touch.
You can’t change any setting that appears toward the top of the screen. For instance, you can’t change brightness. Not ever. Because brightness is at the top of the screen, and the top of the screen is dead to the touch.
You cannot use Twitterific (an iPhone app for Twitter). The launch button is dead.
You cannot use Hahlo (a web app for iPhone for Twitter). You can read other people’s tweets in Hahlo but you cannot post a tweet, because the button to post a tweet is toward the top of the screen.
You cannot switch tabs in Hahlo to view people’s profiles, etc. because that functionality is also located toward the top of the screen, which is useless.
You cannot post a tweet even in mobile Twitter.
You cannot post a tweet via SMS because you would need to select Twitter’s mobile number from your address book, and the selection field is located toward the top of the screen.
I could go on but you get it. The phone retains just enough functionality to be a tease, but not enough to be of use.
You aren’t kidding. Place is a nightmare.
But Apple hasn’t seen fit to open a store closer to where I live.
And apparently the AT&T Stores either don’t stock the iPhone at all, or else they take your “order” for an iPhone and then you wait days and days for it.
This isn’t right. Apple has the genius to conceive and execute a brilliant phone product, but not the wherewithal to produce at anywhere near the demand. If that’s a strategy, it’s a customer-unfriendly one. If it’s not a strategy, then it’s a great front end with no back end, and that’s no more effective in retail than it would be on the web.
Weight time is too heavy to contempleight.
I went through the same ridiculous song and dance at the soho store last weekend. Love the phone, think the UI is genius, and the app store is incredible but still I hate the company… As I had an hour to sit around and had a good book it was not horrible until I realized that the 7 staff members standing around talking about their evening plans could have been reassigned to sell iphones… there were 15 people in line, only about 4 staff were selling iphones, the rest stood around… is this supposed to make me feel special, that the phone I got is so incredible that I had to wait? Because if so, it didn’t work, it just pissed me off. Apple needs to do a little “user interface” work on their customer experience at the store.
“My phone, my connection to the world, is dead.”
I was going to post a, probably luddite sounding, message, but then I thought “How have we got to this point?
Our mobile devices can connect us to the whole world instantly. This is really cool!
The question I have to ask is: “If I can blog and comment with people around the world and not interact in ‘meat-space’ with my neighbour two doors down for days on end, where is the social benefit in that?”
I have mobile connectivity for work (mandated), it gets turned on at arrival and turned off at departure. My life is not so artificially complicated that I need to be connected all day, all the time.
I spent a week this summer at a cottage with “zero” connectivity. public phone only, no cable, hardly radio/wireless reception, it was wonderful. I took a lot of pictures, read a few books, had communal meals and interacted with friends and family in a really positive way.
Why I only took one week is a question of my addiction to be connected.
I won’t make that mistake again.
I have found the “Off button” and it has set me free.
Steve.
If you think Apple’s customer service has been dismal in recent years since they became the synonym of cool worldwide, try to imagine how those of us daring enough to have an iPhone operating overseas (in a country that still gets none of the official blessings from Apple to do so) feel about it. It’s a game of chance, and I’m fully aware of it. This iPhone of mine goes toast and so will the $400 I spent on it. Local Apple retailers won’t help, of course. I just hope that day doesn’t come too early. However I’m already having issues with the headphone jack and the speaker…
Now, no one went and put a gun to my head to pick up an iPhone, obviously. I just picked one because I’m quite invested in the Mac ecosystem at this point, and it just made sense to replace my aging cell phone with something that could perform hand in hand with my computer. But I have to agree with the fact that Apple has become a living contradiction, with service and QA that are not being up to par with the cool looks and promises they make. They are wanting to be all things to all people and we know how well it has worked for others that have also tried in the past.
This is total crap!
I had the same issue with my MacBook Pro when it developed a fault at 2 weeks of age. Time to fix: 3 days. No loaner available. Machine came back with the same fault and a new fault. 3 more days. Came back with a third fault.
Apple are pushing their various pieces of kit into the corporate world. Apple support is a hell of a lot better than many other places, but they still do not understand the needs of corporate customers (i.e. anyone they relies on their Apple gear for business).
There was a happy ending though. Apple sent me a replacement machine (the latest 2.4gig model) without forcing me to return the old laptop first.
They *really* need to have a separate support plan for business customers.
Last January my wife’s G5 iMac suffered from the well-documented bulging capacitor problem that plagued this, and other, models. It was exactly 15 days out of warranty. Arghh!! I called the Fashion Valley (don’t laugh) Apple store and using my technique of sympathetic-polite-relentlessness I gently wore down the Apple employee who finally agreed to let me speak with the store manager. The store manager must have been too busy because she authorized the employee to make an exception. Whatever they did fixed the problem and we’re hoping to get another 3 years of use as we pass it down to our kids. My plan was to wait until Apple releases its new computer revs this fall to replace the older G5 but with your story and many others I’m going wait a bit longer to see. Will these recent rotten Apples spoil the whole bunch? Steve needs to remind Apple shareholders that if they don’t reinvest capital in maintaining quality, the recent growth they’ve enjoyed so much will be stunted. If I were you I would insist (nicely, relentlessly) on an exception. I hope you get satisfaction from Apple.
“Minimum wait time to receive the $199 replacement at the 57th Street Apple Store: two hours. That’s 120 minutes, folks.”
I actually only waited 5 minutes at the 57th Street Apple Store last Sunday at around ~4:00 PM.
Jeffrey,
I can ship you a 1st Gen iPhone on Monday if you’d like. It’s a replacement phone for the CEO of the company I work for. As luck would have it, she dien’t want to wait (where I had to contact Apple, have them send a box, ship said iPhone, etc…)
So, she sent me to the nearest AT&T store to get her a new 3G iPhone…. and her replacement 1st Gen will return on Monday. I’ll ship it if you like. Shoot me an email and give me an address, and it’s yours!
Scott
Jeffrey, do I understand correctly that you did not have AppleCare? If so, why? It would surprise me, based on everything else I hear from you?
stop whining….
Despite your issues, Apple actually leads the computer industry in terms of customer satisfaction.
Apple scored an 85 in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (by the University of Michigan’s National Quality Research Center) this past quarter — which is not only a high for Apple, but a record for the computer industry. Meanwhile, its competitors have actually slipped in customer satisfaction for the same quarter.
No doubt you are frustrated, and clearly Apple is far from perfect. But I’m not sure you can find an example of a computer company that outshines Apple in terms of customer satisfaction in this day and age. As disappointing as that is…it appears to be the reality for the time being.
if you care to venture over the bridge / through the tunnel, AT&T stores in jersey have a steady stock of 8gb black 16gb white and some times the 16gb black. I had a very similar issue three weeks back and out of sheer principle i refused to go back and make an appointment at an apple store, an appointment to give them money… so i called up 2 local AT&T store and both have plenty in stock. This is typical for NJ stores.
Apple has had shoddy tech support / service for a long time, and long before the iPhone was released. This is nothing new.
I hear everybody knock on Apple in regards to the iPhone. As I have yet to have a problem with my iPhone 3G I cannot comment. However, issues with my MBP, Wireless Aluminum Keyboard and 30GB iPod were all handled quickly and professionally whether at the Genius Bar or via telephone. My point is: I think it would be fairer to condemn those at the company responsible for the iPhone than to blame the whole company.
On a side note I do agree. Booking appointments at the Genius Bar at stores in major metro areas is obnoxious. Good luck getting an appointment the same day, or even next day. I am lucky to live in Chicago and have the “privilege” to drag my butt to the other two Apple Stores in the suburbs where I can usually get an appointment on the same day.
I also forgot to mention that I love Apple Tech Support when you go to the store. If the product costs less than $100 they usually just give you a brand new item and let you walk out of the store.
I guess it is cheaper to just swap out products than to actually find out what is wrong with them. I am referring to the mysterious cause of why certain keys just stop working on the Wireless Aluminum keyboard. See:
[...] Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : Phoneless Web design insights since 1995. Personal site of Jeffrey Zeldman, publisher of A List Apart Magazine, founder of Happy Cog Studios, co-founder of The Web Standards Project, co-founder of the Event Apart design conference, author of Designing With Web Standards. (tags: ping.fm) [...]
Had an iPhone, sold it before the 3G one was released. Now I’m waiting for the Android powered HTC phone and I think you should too ;)
Exchanging my bricked iPhone was the first experience I’ve had with in-store customer service from Apple. Look, I know they’re busy, but the “make an appointment with a Genius” service model is kinda ridiculous, especially for instances where their product has completely died on you (that’s called an “emergency”, Apple — look it up). I let them know my complete dissatisfaction with their system, and lauded the very nice employees who have to play along with it, on the survey Apple sent me.
As follows, a comment a posted to a different site that’s much in line with the sentiments expressed here:
–
MobileMe? What? Oh, wait, I’m not a fanboy.
Soyeah. Macbooks encased in plastic poorly suited to real use (I haven’t had a smudge-free display but for about two hours total since I took the thing out of the box last December). And there’s the stripping in the l/r corner below the keyboard. Yummy. Why, Apple, do you design something so pretty and then make its outsides from cheap-assed plastic that attracts crud, hmm?
I’m hard on keyboards, so the day I get the machine, I call the nearest Apple Store. Trying to budget, right? “How much will it cost me to replace the keyboard as a matter of course, and can I schedule the service in advance so that I can do it in a single trip?” The answers: “We won’t tell you until you come in, and no.” Bastards. Your ass-covering, I do not need it. That by itself made me instantly hostile to Apple at a level I’d never experienced before, especially since the auth’d svc. ctr. that’s local to me is run by first-rate grifters.
I will need to make that call again soon, and I estimate that it will take about sixty seconds before I need to escalate.
Chapter The Second: I recommend an iMac to a teacher friend of mine for a long list of reasons that don’t need to be repeated here. She goes in to buy it, armed with the part number for the machine in question, since I knew that the CSR’s would do their level best to exploit any ambiguity in the situation. She buys it, puts it together, and two weeks later I start getting it properly configured…
…Only to discover that the inline optical drive is a paperweight. So I need to pack it back up and she gets to expend an entire afternoon getting it replaced. To their credit, when she said “I’m walking out of this store with a computer that works, or none at all,” they blinked. She wasn’t bluffing.
She was not-bluffing because when she first bought the machine she also intended to use the proffered discount toward a printer she’d picked out while still considering which computer to buy, only to discover that it was out of stock. When she asked when it would be back in stock, all she got were excuses.
She got the printer at Fry’s instead, spending about $50. more than she would have at the Apple Store in light of the discount.
I get that too many people are so narrow-minded and clueless you need to lead them, but generally speaking smart people despise being treated as if they should consider it a privilege to be someone else’s customer.
How did Apple forget that?
Jeffrey, you are paying the “early adopter tax”. Me, I can wait for “the cool” until it becomes a commodity item. Also, by that time, you will have a choice of carriers, all the missing functions will be included, and the price will be lower. Yes, there will be a new cool thing by that time but again, I’ll wait. Oh, and one more thing: always purchase the extended warranty by whatever appellation.
First post from new 3G iPhone. Replacement took 15 minutes at AT&T Store at 43rd and Lex.
Apple is indeed _way_ out of line here. Things break. I get that. But a) it’s unreasonable to insist that a customer stay on premises for the duration of a two-hour wait and b) I don’t give a damn how busy the genius bar (can you say that and keep a straight face?) is, a special-case appointment can be made for a special-case situation. Those geniuses have no empathy whatsoever when they say, “Sorry dude, lots of people ahead of you. See you in about 60 hours.”
Thanks, everyone, for discussion so far.
Bought 3G iPhone and AppleCare Protection Plan. Sadly, unable to register AppleCare Protection Plan.
Registration of new iPhone (which happened the first time I synced) was supposed to provide a space to enter AppleCare Protection Plan but didn’t—maybe because this is an upgrade of an existing account.
So I went online to Apple Support: AppleCare Agreements and manually entered the Apple Care Protection Plan agreement number and the iPhone’s serial number. But Apple’s website refused to process the Support Agreement. The error message read: “Sorry, but this phone has not been activated.”
The phone has of course been activated. Maybe AT&T didn’t tell Apple about it yet. Or maybe Apple still thinks the phone number belongs to the old phone that stopped working two weeks after its warranty expired.
So since the automatic registration process didn’t support Apple Care Protection, and since Apple’s website failed to process the Apple Care Protection registration, I called Apple’s toll-free support number to do the thing with a human being over the phone.
But there’s an “extended wait” to speak to a human being, and “you might want to call back later, because the extended wait could take a ridiculously long time. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
So I give up.
I’ll try again tomorrow.
Anyway, the new phone works.
Good thing I live in the middle of nowhere, where I cannot get any network signal or I’d have one and probably be in the same boat. Only difference is, it’s a 2+ hour drive to the nearest Apple store.
Makes me damn glad I don’t have one.
Good luck getting this rectified Jeffrey.
Wow, the 3G iPhone is too big to fit in the custom iPhone dock I bought for my previous iPhone.
It’s not that I mind having to go out and buy another dock. It’s the thought of perfectly good products being dumped into landfills every year.
It’s okay for Apple to update its product line—the company has to do that—but it’s not okay to deliberately make accessories (like $99 docks) obsolete every year. Doing so fills the earth with non-bio-degradable garbage. That is not environmentally responsible.
I had a myriad of problems with my iPhone 1.0 and it took forever to get help for it. I constantly had to give up on the phone due to there ALWAYS being a longer than expected wait time, I had to make ridiculously late appointments with Apple Genius people (the closest store is an hour and 10 minutes away) and it was overall a pain in my ass. I eventually got a replacement, and of course it’s still buggy as all hell, not to mention my house is apparently made of copper mesh wiring and blocks cell phone signals.
Bang on about the dock, Zeldman. My 3G iPhone didn’t fit my 1.0 iPhone dock either (had one at work and one at home.) Cost isn’t the issue, needless waste is.
I’ve lived through this exact same story, minus the downpour, luckily.
I still have one bad iPhone 1.0.
For what it’s worth, you can pick up a decent 3G-compatible Maxell dock with USB, Firewire, audio and power cables for $19 ($13+$6 shipping) from http://store.everythingicafe.com/maxell-ipod-charging-station/52A142A1970A.htm. $13 sure beats the $29 Apple wants for their overpriced dock, which apparently doesn’t include any cables.
Forgot to mention; if you need an AV cable, you can pick one up at http://store.sleepers.net for $20 vs. Apple’s $49. I figure if I’m going to get nickled & dimed, I might as well figure out how to spend less of them :)
I’ve always wanted an iPhone since before they came out but to be honest I wont buy one because I like my current phone service provider.
[sarcasm]Wow, I am really surprised to hear this![/sarcasm] I don’t believe it’s any coincedence that your product died two weeks after the warranty ran out. They know how long their junk lasts. And then you went and bought another iPhone. Too funny. That good old “turn the other cheek” mentality, eh? Time to face the facts: Apple hardware blows.
Let’s all pray you were way off on this prediction.
Bravo Zeldman…Bravo.
I know the frustration…this happened with my 1st generation IPOD that somehow had a “glitch” and I would stand and wait…watching all the people that seem to not have a computer at home, check their email at the Apple Store – WTF?
iPhones, like hearts, will never be made entirely practical until they can be made unbreakable.
:(
Jeffrey, I adore you, but I cannot pity you for purchasing Apple v1.0 hardware. As a technophile, it was tough not to pick an iPhone up. But I survived. I endured. And so can you.
@Wiley:
*Applause*
Very nicely done!
Jeffrey
I am thinking this is a problem in major cities. My cousin lives in upstate New York and had no problem going in during the day and purchasing two iPhones on the spot. New York City however never has them available! Good phone, terrible business strategy!
I have been frustrated with technology’s continued use of consumers as their beta testers at what seems to be a great financial cost to the consumer and an undeniable and irreparable price to the environment and our cultural health. Yes, landfills are filling with toxic components. But look at the mindsets of human beings who need to purchase the latest trend, encouraged even more by the lifespan of these trendy beta products.
Industrial designers, physical interface designers: PLEASE THINK AHEAD and design intelligent physical devices that can withstand time and use, that can be updated, have batteries replaced/refreshed, and not just throw out and get new.
This has been a complaint with the car and appliance industries for decades. It appears that the profit margin is given far more weight than the sound judgement margin.
My family made an iPhone 3g purchase this past wknd. Already, there is a problem that “No SIM card installed” and we have to get service. :(
I purchased my iPhone 2 mos before the 3g came out. I’ve had no real problems, apart from some software latency. I guess my twice the price bought me enhanced quality. I waited as long as I could, for a user-tested model I felt confident in. This is my first cellphone ever. I am certainly not an early adopted. Instead, I listen to and watch people who are.
I always thought apple care, like phone insurance and many other computers ‘extended cover’ was for the careless, clumsy or clueless.
I dropped my latest phone not long ago, and as I picked it up – unharmed – I remember thinkng that If I did that with the new iPhone I planed on buying this month, I might be so lucky.
I’ve love to know, honestly, if you feel that the screen has had a helping hand in it’s untimely demise, or if this is genuinely bad form on Apple’s part.
Lets face it, we’ve all pulled the ‘it just stopped working, honest’ face in front of store clerks, in the hope of a somewhat undeserved reprieve… promising ourselves we’ll be more careful next time…
Tell us the truth Jeffrey, should we all get apple cover, or just keep our phones away from famous bloggers?
The moral is:
1) You only need a Nokia 2210 – it’ll last for 20 years and it’ll call and send texts with zero problems.
2) Apple hardware is pretty-looking rubbish: eMac screen, ipod battery life, ibook power leads (literally) going up in smoke.
Resist, citizens!
My sister in law is currently having issues with her iPod. She bought one about 2 years ago. 1 year later (ago) it died, and she had to by a brand new one to replace it. A few weeks ago it died, less than a year after she bought it. Yesterday she brought it to an Apple store to have it fixed, but they replaced it, probably with a refurbished one. Today, less than 24 hours later, it died, and she now needs to go back and get it replaced again. Judging by this pattern, she shouldn’t be able to leave the store without it dying this time.
When my iPod Nano 3G dies (and it will), I’m going to buy a Zune. I like Microsoft better than Apple anyway. I love my iPod Nano though because it was a wedding gift. But I still think Apple sucks.
Jeff, stop whining. It’s one of the hottest products on Earth right now. The fact you had to wait an hour or two to get one is not unreasonable. You’re doing the very unappealing American thing of being ME-CENTRIC. Which in a 6 billion+ world, just doesn’t make sense.