Apple Store South Hills Village and an iPhone4 Experience

Saturday night, I drove to Pittsburgh to connect with my best friend in the whole world, Willie, and some of his family. Sunday morning as I was departing, I realized-"Hey! I'm not that far from the Apple Store, and I've been having some sound issues with my iPhone4. Maybe I can have someone at the store take a look at my phone before my next round of travel." And so I drove to the Apple Store in the South Hills Village Mall in hopes I could get a timely genius bar appointment and discern what was causing the issues with my phone.

I was able to get an appointment with a genius within 10 minutes of arriving. As I described my problem, a clicking sound that sometimes occurs while using my Skullcandy Full Metal Jacket headphones, we attempted to troubleshoot it while in the store.  The first suggestion was a backup and restore of my phone. I backed up all of my apps, and when attempting the restore, my phone failed to be restored. The genius at Apple replaced my phone. But that wasn't the end of the story.

I had iOS 4.3 on my backed up phone, and the new phone was running iOS4.2.1 so the first dilemma was updating the phone's operating system.  After this, we restored the contents of my old phone to the new phone.  Then, this new phone kept restarting every 2-3 minutes. So we restored the phone again, and started the process from the beginning again, only this time, we launched all of the back ups as a sync to a new phone.  Everything seemed great, and I left the store to do a little shopping around the mall.

Twenty minutes later, I pulled out the phone (which was fully charged) to make a call, and it had turned itself off.  Thankfully I hadn't left Pittsburgh yet, and I could make one more trip into the Apple Store.  The folks at the genius bar were really understanding, and they said that they had never encountered such an array of set-backs with the phone before. I responded that I hadn't either. ;) They then proceeded to bring out another phone, and began the process from the beginning for the third time that day.

All in all, the whole process took about five hours, and I watched dozens of customers get their problems with computers, phones, ipods, and ipads answered during my time at the genius bar. I'm glad I had extra time to take care of any potential issues before leaving, and the staff in the store were incredibly helpful as we worked toward a solution to the problem of my phone.

I wanted to share this because it was an incredible day of quality customer service. I deeply appreciated the time the Apple geniuses (Tom and Haley) took to help me out. I know that when a problem doesn't make its resolution quickly, it can be tiresome for all parties, but the team at the apple store did an incredible job.

If you have a problem with a piece of Apple Technology and you are close to an Apple Store, I highly recommend scheduling a visit to the genius bar.  The staff are friendly, patient, and incredibly helpful. They do all that they can to help customers make the most of their technology.

Lately, I've been finding myself really appreciative of great customer service. Too often we hear horror stories and complaints, but I think we should make it a point to highlight and applaud companies when they do an exemplary job.

Have you had an incredible experience in customer service? I'd love to hear about it, and I encourage you to share it with others too!

Morgantown Endodontics and My Root Canal

Sunday night I had some ice cream and fresh strawberries for dessert with some friends and it triggered some pretty intense pain for me. So much so, that I was calling everyone I knew to see what I could do to alleviate the pain. I had about an hour’s worth of excruciating pain which slowly began to subside after I took some Ibuprofen. I had an appointment scheduled for today at 8AM, but if there was any way to move my appointment forward, I wanted to do it.

I called the folks at Morgantown Endodontics Monday just as they were opening, and told them about my predicament. They were amazing! They worked me in for a root canal just a few hours later. They took before and after x-ray’s of my teeth, and so I asked Dr. McBride, my endodontist if I could those images emailed so I could share them on my blog. He had them emailed to me just a couple hours after our surgery was finished.

To me, the whole process was utterly amazing. Any time I mentioned to others that I had scheduled a root canal, they cringed and said good luck. I am thoroughly happy with my experience. Dr. McBride and his assistant explained every step of his work, and I made sure to ask plenty of questions before a rubber dam was placed around the tooth in question. I just wanted to understand the process thoroughly. Until my surgery, I really had no idea what a root canal was or what it’s effect would be.

Why did I need a root canal? Earlier this summer I had a tooth that got cracked while playing soccer with some friends. One day later, the broken piece of tooth came out of my mouth. When I went to a dentist, they were trying to salvage the tooth and clean it up before putting a filling in, but decay had gotten too close to the pulp. The preparation process had caused a bit of nerve trauma in the tooth, and had increased its sensitivity to hot and cold exponentially in the days that passed sense the dental work.

Above is a photo from before the surgery, and below is a photo from after. The really bright spot in the image is the temporary filling put in to my tooth. You can see two dark spots going down the center of my tooth. Those are the nerve fibers. They make our teeth sensitive to hot and cold, and when a tooth has decay near to the pulp, this nerve fiber becomes VERY sensitive to hot and cold, and is why we experience toothaches.

I imagine that in the past root canals were very painful. Essentially, the endodontist drills a hole through the tooth into the pulp and continues to clean out any nerve fibers that may be in the long thin canals that run down the middle of the roots of tooth. Before the advent of anesthetics, and without some of the amazing technologies available today, the drilling and cleaning process would probably generate a lot of heat and since the whole process deals with nerve endings, it was probably VERY painful. Even in my situation, one of the canals crossed through the jawbone, and so Dr. McBride needed to apply anesthetic directly through the pulp of the tooth. (I only felt a momentary pinch).

After he cleared the canals thoroughly, he inserted a biocompatible rubber filler to replace the nerve fibers. You can see in the second image that the canals of my tooth’s roots are filled as well as the pulp chamber. You will also notice a dark spot in the middle of the tooth. Dr. McBride explained that this was placed in the tooth under a temporary filling to mark that the work had been done so when I go visit the dentist in mid-October, they can see the work that has been done.

If you ever need a root canal, I highly recommend Dr. McBride and the staff at Morgantown Endodontics. They are thoughtful, professional, friendly and they keep you informed every step of the way.