My Awesome Apple Experience

I’ve recently enjoyed a fantastic Apple experience and I’d like to share it.

When I bought my iPod Touch last November (2007) I noticed that on occasion the screen flickered and lost colours quite randomly. I took it into the iStore at the Cape Town V&A Waterfront and was told that unfortunately I’d have to bring it in “when it was doing it”.

Somewhat annoyed, I gave up until early August when while on the drive to UCT it started it doing it more than ever before. Already late for my lecture (traffic) I drove straight to the iStore to show them. Literally as I walked into the mall the issue subsided. Pathetically I went to tell the guy on duty of what had just happened, but he seemed uninterested. Frustrated, I gave up and left.

Then last Thursday night I got fed up with it. I had been happily downloading apps from the AppStore and surfing the web with Safari when I noticed that the screen had gradually been dropping colour depths over the previous 10 minutes and had now started flickering very noticably. I pulled out my camera (Canon 450D SLR, of course) and start photographing every single problematic screen I could find.

I then bashed out an 8-page PDF consisting of a letter to Steve Jobs and labelled photos of the problem. Soon it was on its way to steve@apple.com and sjobs@apple.com. That was Thursday.

Late Monday I receive an email:

Dear Mr. Keller,

Thank you for your email to the executive offices of Apple. Your email
concerns an issue that we believe would be better handled in a phone
conversation.

Unfortunately, your phone number was not included in your email. I have
summarized the contents of your email in case number [removed] .  If you have not yet resolved the issue, please contact me at [removed] extention
[removed], Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.  and reference the above case number.

Thank you for taking the time to write.


Kind regards,


[removed]
Executive Relations EMEA
Apple Sales International
Hollyhill Industrial Estate
Cork. Ireland.

Directors: Cathy Kearney (Irish), Gary Wipfler, Jae Allen, Peter Oppenheimer and Timothy Cook (United States of America).

Wow! So the executive office of Steve Jobs in California must have noted I was in South Africa and forwarded it to Apple International in Ireland. I replied with my phone number as by the time I received the mail their office had closed.

The next day (Tuesday) I received an international phonecall from Hélène. We discussed the problems I’d had with the device and local service and she expressed disappointment that Apple didn’t have an official presence in South Africa. She asked that I take the device to the local iStore along with her email address and phone number, and she would take care of it.

Armed with my PDF documents, I went to iStore this morning. I was lucky to be served by an incredibly efficient techie who gladly took the PDF docs, email from Helene, my iPod and informed me that I should receive a brand new one within 3 days!

I’m just amazed at how efficient Apple and Apple International is. Timothy Cook really runs a fantastic division and I can’t imagine any other company being this awesome.

Long live Apple, inc.

Update: Got a phone call today (Thursday) to fetch my new iPod Touch. Just got it home, and its great! Seems like they’re now using a new LCD… feels much clearer, brighter, and crisper.