I used to think this was a tad better than other Apple stores, which isn't saying a whole lot. At least at this store, you can sometimes get in and out quickly, and parking isn't too bad. I've also had helpful sales and support representatives in the past.
Our experience a couple of weeks ago really changed all that. My girlfriend made an appointment for a battery replacement on her phone. We show up at rightand of course, have to wait for the oh so important "genius" to plug a phone in to something to tell us what we already know: the battery's useful life is over. Gee, you really educated us there Mr. Genius.
Then, we're told they don't have the battery in stock, BUT we could drive to Cherry Hill Mall (a really tranquil place at Xmas time) or Center City Philly (no traffic going there in the late afternoon, and parking is a breeze!) if we wanted it today. Um, then why did you take an appointment for a 6s battery replacement today? That would be like making an appointment for an oil change to be told they're all out of oil!
Never fear, said John. He will email a confirmation of our visit today, and then will notify us when the battery is there and ready to be Installed. The email would arrive right away, and we were good to go. No apologies for the misleading information or the waste of our time, but oh well.
Well...hours and hours later, no email arrived. So my girlfriend called, FOUR times. She got hung up on twice. The third call, the line provided was "well the store is really busy so sometimes they don't answer."
Call #4, a call center representative finally routed us to Emily at the actual Marlton store. Emily said "the only way to get the store directly is from the call center." She also offered absolutely no apologies or explanations, no offer to make things right, absolutely nothing. Hey they're Apple, I guess they don't have to?
She did say she'd send an email, (the one that was supposed to arrive hours ago) to confirm the battery replacement. To her credit, that did eventually arrive.
In short (TL;DR): if you're a current Apple customer who wants to get anything done here support-wise, prepare to waste an unnecessary schlep to the store and multiple follow-up phone calls (with a few hang ups thrown in) for the privilege of...still waiting/being left hanging to get your issue resolved. read more