A reader writes: "I wanted to get my sweetie an iPod for Christmas. We have an Apple Store in our city, but I wanted to have it engraved, so on December 2nd I ordered one from Apple's online store. The order promised to ship the engraved iPod in '1-3 business days.' Plenty of time for Christmas, right?"
"Well, three business days came and went," the reader writes. "Checking on my order through the website still showed the exact same information. Finally on the 12th I called customer service. The rep checked and after some difficulty determined that my order was stuck somehow. As I understood it, the order was supposed to move from the web system to a separate order-processing system, and that simply wasn't happening. He offered to put me in touch with the payment processing department, but I didn't have time right then so we ended the call there. I called back the next day and got a different representative. This one found the same thing and said he'd send a message to someone to look into the issue. I should get an e-mail within 12 hours when my problem was fixed."
"Needless to say, I never got that email," the reader writes. "I called again the next day, got a different rep, and went through the same thing. He told me to wait another day. I responded that I'd been told that yesterday and what would they say tomorrow when the problem still wasn't fixed? After some more conversation he admitted there was just nothing he could do about it. I eventually spoke to a supervisor, who was also powerless but at least offered a possible explanation for the problem. Apple's online store allows you to split payment between two credit cards. I'd done that, and one of my cards was a special gift card given to me by my employer. It's issued by Amex and works like a regular credit card, but apparently Apple's store has problems with it. The supervisor implied that they've seen this kind of problem before."
"Anyway, the next day I decided that if I wanted to have something to give my wife, my best bet was to buy an iPod at retail and skip the engraving," the reader writes. "This meant canceling the web order. I tried doing that through the web site, but naturally that didn't work while my order was in limbo. So I called customer service yet again. This time the clerk offered to cancel the order and then transfer me to phone sales so I could place a new order. She sent some kind of message to have the order cancelled and said I'd get email confirmation within 24 hours. Then she transferred me to phone sales, but I thought better of it and hung up while in the phone queue."
"Naturally, I never got the confirmation email," the reader concludes. "And the web site still shows my order as shipping in '1-3 business days.' The local Apple store says they have plenty of iPods in stock, but I don't imagine they offer engraving which is a disappointment. And of course, I get to look forward to that day when my order unsticks itself and they send me another iPod. That's when I'll get to learn about their return policy on engraved iPods. Could be next week, could be six months from now. Who knows?"
Read and post comments about this story here.
5:22:53 PM 
|
|
