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!

I now have an iPhone4

Well, last Wednesday I took the plunge and bought iPhone 4. I haven't used all of the features yet, but so far I'm really impressed. My old phone was an iPhone 3G that was given to me by my best friend in the whole world, Willie. I used it pretty heavily, and it served me well for blogging, tweeting, emailing, phone calling, and more during the time I had it, but the last few months it wasn't quite working up to par. I talked with a number of people before taking the iPhone 4 plunge, and all agreed that regardless of proximity sensor, antenna, and other issues that iPhone 4 would be a massive improvement from my old phone.

So far it's been great! I had a brief scare on Friday when the phone didn't turn on. I took it to the apple store to check for possible tech problems, but it was an easy fix with a reset. So far I've only had a couple of issues with dropped calls, and on one of those occasions it was directly related to the way I was holding the phone. I'll probably take advantage of Apple's generosity and apply for their iPhone 4 case program.

Right now my big issue is the proximity sensor. Sometimes I mute calls or put people on speakerphone when the touchscreen touches my face. Again, I can make adjustments and prevent a repeat of the problem.

Anyhoo, I have really enjoyed the privilege of being able to have access to this phone. Is it for everybody? Probably not, but this phone's predecessor was a huge help to me over the last several months, and I'm sure that iPhone 4 will be a great tool for managing my schedule, responding to emails on the go (when necessary), and even serving as a great telephone.

Who would have dreamed that there would be day when we would carry our phones around with us? Who would have dreamed that we would be able to have video phone calls on these portable phones? Who would have dreamed that a telephone would have a more powerful computer with more memory than the standard desktop of ten years ago?
Beyond this, who would ever imagine we would live in a world where people communicate by text, email, tweets, phone, and more?

It's pretty amazing how much technology has advanced in ten years. What do you think about smart phones, and all of the portable technology to emerge since the year 2000?