Getting customer care right most of the time is a very hard thing to do, but it’s fundamental for the success of any company. Apple can afford to charge a lot for their computers for three reasons: 1) Beautiful and (usually) reliable hardware; 2) An excellent, stable operating system like Mac OS X; 3) (In theory) Excellent customer care.

If any of these three starts is missing, it becomes hard to justify the premium price. If Apple’s customer care becomes equal to or worse than that of Dell, I’m afraid many people would just consider spending much less on an equivalent, top of the line PC.

Apple should be particularly careful when placing “power tripping” employees in charge. One rude customer service employee can alienate hundreds of customers in a year, which in turn could lead to losses reaching into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

An Apple Genius is not expected to be an EE graduate from MIT, with an MBA, of course. But a friendly attitude, the ability to show empathy to customers, and a rational/logical approach when it comes to solving technical problems are bare minimum requirements for a person who wants to work in customer care.

I sincerely hope that ultimately Apple will be able to fix your MBP issue, as they should. And I hope they consider having a talk with their “lead genius”.

It’s worth noting that you only hear about such stories when they mess with the wrong people, such as you and I. But you have to wander how often does this kind of shoddy customer care take place that we don’t hear about. How many people are not even aware that they have been screwed over by their know-it-all “genius” of the day?

Let’s hope that these complaints will help Apple realize that they need to improve if they want to keep their customers (happy).

PS: I was pleasantly surprised to find a comment from you, JDOG. I’m a fan of your work, and truly enjoyed the first season of The Pick-up Artist. In an industry that isn’t short on “questionable characters”, it is refreshing to see your emphatic approach and professionalism. I’m glad you stopped by, albeit due to an unpleasant Apple encounter.

I met a particularly arrogant chap at the Tucson La Encantada Apple store. Keegan Allen, is the so called Lead Genius. He obviously dislikes anyone who has a higher technical education than him, because if you even hint at the fact that you know something technical about an apple product he becomes defensive in his manner.

Perhaps that is because as a pima county graduate (qualifications not actually stated on his linkedin profile http://www.linkedin.com/pub/keegan-allen/8/310/27) he feels inadequate.

The apple customer service “experience” is definitely hit or miss, often takes far too long to see anyone, even with an appointment, and is run like a disorganized airport check-in.

Long time mac user since 2000. If I’m going to spend over $10,000 on apple products then you should care what I think. Apple should take note and care about their customers, especially when we can post the information online these days in a matter of minutes to thousands of people. I am NOT happy.

Following the replacement of the logic board for a macbook pro, it has misaligned ports, no serial number, can’t back up to time machine, and over heats. On the phone the customer service technician was very helpful, and said that the installation of the new logic board, which was carried out in-store, was not a completed job.

Our friendly ‘lead genius’ took exception to the fact the it was an incomplete job, and disagreed.. prior to running a tool to set the serial number. A step required to complete the installation, which can only be carried out by apple service technicians. So find me the logic that states the installation was ‘complete’ Mr. Keegan.

My experience in other computer chains has been far, far worse.

My only problem is that there is a waiting list to see a “Genius”.