Last night, I was horrified to find my iPhone cooked. Seriously, HOT to the touch and completely unresponsive. As soon as I determined that the phone wasn’t going to wake up, I went online and scheduled myself an appointment at the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store, a simple and smooth process.
I was anxious all morning and afternoon without my trusted iPhone. I ran through all of the scenarios: maybe I would be without a phone for a week while mine was repaired; maybe I would have to pay to fix it or worse, replace it; maybe they wouldn’t have any in stock for replacement. (There is a new version of the iPhone coming out in the next month or so. The iPhone is out of stock everywhere in the US.)
So I got to the Apple Store a little early for my appointment, checked in and waited for about 5 minutes until they were ready for me. I explained what happened and took a look at my phone and confirmed that it was cooked. They opened a drawer, pulled out a replacement iPhone and swapped out the SIM card. We plugged the new phone into my laptop machine and the restore happened gracefully. My phone reauthorized with AT&T, my contacts, calendars, bookmarks, photos, podcasts and such synchronized and I was ready to go. I signed some simple paperwork to acknowledge the swap and I was on my way.
The whole process took less than 10 minutes. No loaner, no fees, no questions. Just a shiny new phone. I was ecstatic.
I purchased a new screen protector for the phone and during the checkout, the Apple rep saw that I had a .Mac account. So, he asked if I had any suggestions for the .Mac service. We talked for about 5 minutes about my years with .Mac and that I’ve been mostly happy but I felt that the service needed to step up to the plate. Mostly, I use it to sync between multiple machines. My suggestion was that .Mac members have their iTunes Store purchases automatically backed up to your iDisk without taking up any space. In other words, no need to manually backup purchases as I could always download the tracks again from an authorized computer.
In short, I had a one-to-one conversation with an Apple employee interested in my suggestions. And right after they had amazed me with their customer service.
I have a post tomorrow about making big promises and then over delivering. Today, Apple over delivered on its big promise.
I was already a loyal Apple customer, but today proved why.