I gave it a week to let me thoughts coalese and to make sure that I wasn't over reacting, and I've…read morecome to the conclusion that if I could rate this place a zero, it would still be too high; giving it a one gives undue credit to it. I'm not an Apple Store afficionado, so this may be a common experience, but it's made an indelible impression on me that will keep me from ever passing across the threshold again.
I was diagnosed with hyperacusis and my audiologist recommended I buy some headphones with a flowthrough audio option, so I bought some Beats Studio Pros in June. With them, I got the Apple Care Plus or whatever the "If anything happens to them, you're good" insurance is. About two months later, they failed. No biggie, they're covered. I go to the Beats page to look for where to take them, and the Apple Store was #1. I work at 63rd and May, so it's not a big side-quest to run by on the way home at night.
I go to their website to see when they're open, and it states that I need an appointment. I go to schedule one, and there are -zero- appointments in the week in advance you can see. I figure this is obviously a glitch, so I call the store to see if I can get an appointment that way, and the guy who answers listens to my story and tells me that no, you really can only see a week at a time in the scheduler, and no, there are zero appointments available. BUT, since all I was doing was dropping them off (the dude tells me that they don't do anything to them, and even Apple doesn't fix them, they just send them off to be refurbished, and then send you a refurbished pair the same style and color about a week later) and since literally all I was doing was using the Apple Store as a UPS drop point, I could come up and drop them off and just sign the form.
Awesome. I work 11 hour shifts, and there was literally no way I was going to be able to take time off of work in order to (checks notes) "get an appointment to literally hand a pair of headphones to someone."
So I head over after work, only to be told by some kid that the door that yes, I needed an appointment. I explain that I'm just dropping off the headset.
Doesn't care, I need an appointment.
I tell him that I literally called that day and was told that I could drop them off without an appointment, and this little skid mark says "Yeah, you and about half of the rest of the people who just wander in." He said it so under his breath that it took me a minute to process his snipent comment, and in the mean time he says "You have to have an appointment so the genius bar can hook it up to their sensors and determine if they're going to fix it here or if it's bad enough that they need to ship them off to be fixed.
That, friends and neighbors, was an outright lie. I'd already confirmed the story of the man I spoke with on the phone, when my kid told me hers had done the same thing, and wherever you take them they just send them off.
At that point I just said thanks and walked out. I drove to the BestBuy in Norman on the way to my house, walked in, was asked if I had an appointment, explained what was up, and was told no big deal. Five minutes later I sign a form and they shipped them off to swap for a refurbished pair. Literally five minutes is what I expected, what I was told to expect, and what the reality was. It didn't take a "Genius", just someone smart enough to use an iPad to jot down my AppleCare number and get my signature.
I now understood why they have cops in the store.
