State of Apple Support

Recently the XS Max decide to fail with an error message that “Face ID is unavailable until the iPhone cools down”. The phone gets warmer than usual and battery drain faster. No problem, get it to Apple to check it out. After one day, I was told that the Face ID component have failed and they are unable to replace it as it’s glued to the motherboard and therefore, they have to replace the motherboard. Cost of replacement - around US$800, the cost of a new iPhone. It’s ridiculous, I said no thank you and took my phone back.

I used the online chat (via the Support iOS app) to chat with Apple Support again to complain and the advisor said that a senior advisor will call me back. They never did. I went online again and was told that they will call me back and this time I told the person that it’s 6pm on Friday and asked if he’s sure they will call? He said yes and scheduled a time at 7pm for me. The call never came. I got online again and was pretty frustrated and Support was unsure why the people didn’t call me, even though it’s obvious to me that it’s after office hours where I was. Anyway, I told online Support to please share this chat to the person and have them call me on Monday. He said that he’s not able to share the chat - what??? Are they not using Zendesk or something (ya, probably in-house built)

Anyway, suffice to say, I am pretty exasperated by then with Apple Support even though everyone I chatted with was extremely pleasant. It’s like they are running on some archaic Helpdesk system.

And to be honest, I do not think my Face ID component is at fault. It’s probably the battery or some other parts that’s heating up. And I’m worried whether the phone is going to be a fire hazard or not. I will talk to the senior guy on Monday and I hope I get someone wiser.

How’s your experience with Apple Support?

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I can’t remember a bad interaction with Apple support in about 18 years. Many have gone above and beyond in that time.

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They are very pleasant and strive to please. I find it strange that they don’t know about the opening hours of where I am located, nor can they pass the incident ticket to their “senior advisor” who is only phone based. Sounds to me like two different organisation. Perhaps the online chat support is a out-sourced 3rd party company :man_shrugging:

I’ve only used Apple support twice. Both experiences were pretty negative.

One was for a sleep problem that we had with both of our iMac Pros a few years ago. We’d put them to sleep and then they would power back up - except without the fans running. As you can imagine that caused rather severe heat problems. I tracked this down to an issue with the Ethernet on the machines. I called support, got passed on to someone more senior, did the whole thing with supplying logs multiple times and was promised a response multiple times. Crickets. Maybe there was something weird about the way I had the power saving/wakeup stuff configured? I couldn’t tell and it seemed that they couldn’t either. They claimed at one point when I followed up that it was likely due to traffic on the network, but the sniffer that I used didn’t show any of that. I ended up buying a couple of inexpensive external Ethernet adaptors to solve the issue. It was easier than working with Apple Support.

The other was for a 2013 Macbook Pro that developed a swollen battery. I was wondering why the trackpad had stopped working, opened the case to look at it, saw what was happening and took it in to the Genius Bar at an Apple store. I’d been told when I made the appointment that they had parts there. When I arrived they didn’t (“we get so many of these”). They had to ship it off, at an additional cost on top of the repair, and then wouldn’t ship it back to me when it was done - even though I lived hours away. I had to make that long drive again. In addition, the “Genius” that I worked with treated me like I’d committed sacrilege by actually opening one of their holy relics. The whole thing left a really bad taste.

So, overall, really not impressed.

Yeah, this! In my case, not only they told me that I had to pay the price of a new phone to replace the motherboard (for the faulty Face ID component), when I said no thank you and wanted my phone back, they charged me a fee. They called it a diagnostic fee! Oh come on… you are just telling me that my Face ID component failed, which was the first reason I brought it in in the first place. And I had to pay a fee even though I came all the way to let you check it.

Bad taste indeed.

Was the phone still on Apple Care. If so they should have given you a replacement then and there itself.

In my case when ever I have approached the Genius Bar for out of warranty repair issues, they have diagnosed the issue and never charged me.

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No, I don’t have Apple Care. Sigh!

Just left the Apple Store to replace the battery of my iPhone and iPad, but they refuse to replace the battery of my iPad, because they think it’s still too good…

I remember support going above and beyond many years ago. But that’s no longer the case.

I’ve had only bad to average experiences in the recent years, regarding issues like curved iPad Pro, kernel panic, app store refunds for scamming apps. Now I just don’t expect much help from them at all.

My brother and his wife ordered 13s at the local Apple Store – they were not in stock so they were shipped. They opted to trade in the old phones. The new phones arrived, the shipping packages arrived and they packaged up the old phones. Before they sent them, they double checked the tracking numbers on the packages for the old phones to make sure they were the same as the numbers in the emails they received from Apple. The tracking numbers did not match. After hours on the phone with various people at Apple Support trying to reconcile the differences so they could safely send the return phones and get credit, the final Apple rep they spoke to decided the problem could not be solved and — without asking – promptly cancelled the trade in and the discount.

That would make me very mad! What’s happening at Apple? Too successful, too fast?

That’s crazy. I don’t know if policy changed, but I just went in this week for a new battery on a 2015 MBP. I tried to prep them as much as I could, noting in the appointment this was for a new battery. They still wanted to diagnose, and still had to ship it. The “Genius” offered for them to ship it to me at no extra charge. I only live 25 minutes away, but that was still a bonus. They quoted 3-5 business days, took it in Wednesday morning, it was almost back Friday evening.

I say almost back, because it was sent FedEx, and for whatever reason they’re horrible in our area. 0 for 10 in scheduled deliveries, items delivered next door (suburb homes with easy to see addresses), they deliver but don’t tell us when to expect it. This delivery was promising (it was over shipped over night, not the usual Ground), and tracked well until they passed the initial scheduled time of before noon. They attempted delivery after 5p, but no one was home, nor could I pre-sign. We are more than frustrated at FedEx in this house. Apple Support has been hit or miss. This one went well, but there have been other other times where it’s been weird, but I don’t use them that often.

We’ve found FedEx deliveries to businesses to be more reliable than personal this year, based on work which has been having various laptops repaired. One reason is that business deliveries will never slip to after hours, at least not ones requiring a signature. I think individuals (at our company) might just start having their personal repairs shipped back to the office.

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Personally with Apple products I treat them as “built well when you get them, but no support included”. Why? Because if there’s ever an issue with an Apple product I’ve had, and I take it to the Genius Bar, there’s a 99% chance the support staff tell me things I already know.

I’m sure there are times where Apple Support is really, really helpful. But in my experience, they’ve never been helpful, whether I’m buying something new or looking to fix up something older. Not in a malicious way, more out of some sort of vague incompetence. :man_shrugging:

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Living in a country with no Apple Stores, the service you get is down to which company you choose and, I’m sure, also down to who you speak to on the day. But… I suspect it’s the same with Apple. Some go above and beyond, some don’t.

For hardware issues I’ve had an OK run of just a few issues sorted, some in warranty, some out. But for software problems… well… I’m still waiting on a fix that took over a year to diagnose and is now 7 months on from when they acknowledged the fault. The best part? They refuse to tell me when it will be fixed. They even refuse to tell me when it has been fixed, so for all I know they think they’ve solved it but it’s still a problem for me.

That is very strange to my mind. I have never had anything, in over ten years beyond ‘over and above’ the call of duty from support staff. Always bending the stick in my direction re warranties and so on to be frank.
I have to say this, you are quite sure it was Apple Support you were talking with? I know that sound bizarre but this is so out of character that I am suspicious something weird happened.

Well how often do you need to contact Apple support? I have over ten years done it maybe five times.
It seems you are using them a lot more than average. Again I can’t suggest reasons for that, you might just be unlucky I guess.
I wiill point out that the ‘standard stuff’ is often what one needs to do. Nearly all my issues with Apple have been ‘user error’ in fact, problems with networks and so on not directly related to Apple. I am nowadays very careful to spend some time looking for those before I phone Apple.

I have similar experience. The Support app in iOS is chat and they said they will get their senior advisor to call me. It has to be Apple Support, right? Unless, as I suspected, they have outsourced it to some third party company.

This is what I deal with most of the time. I deal with Apple Resellers, who I often fought with because they charge for everything. Have a hairline scratch (voids warranty) on your phone, case scratched your phone same thing voids warranty, a small peel off your iPad keyboard (voids warranty)—they won’t run diagnostic as it is already for replacement (cost around $200-600). I found an enterprise-level supplier of Apple who entertains regular Apple customers and the service was the same level as going to an Apple Store.

But, I also had a bad experience with Apple Store. When I had to wait for a month because one of the iPad Pro died (while still under warranty) and since we are scheduled to fly to Hong Kong in a month, I arranged everything with Apple Support to make the experience faster when I get there. Because gets what, the Apple Reseller wants to charge us for a replacement fee (half the cost of the iPad Pro) because there’s a hairline scratch (only noticeable in the light) from its iPad folio case. I already have the necessary documents from Apple Support through email that the replacement is free and they’ll take the device and hand me a new one when I get to my appointment in Apple HK. When I got there, the manager was rude (this is HK it’s probably just my tolerance level), told me they had to ship my device first to a factory in China for diagnosis and come back in a week. She doesn’t care that I have all the proper documents and Job Order numbers from Apple Support that state, I can trade my dead iPad Pro with a replacement. I told her we’ll just be in HK for 5 days and I can’t wait for a week. I then have to call some higher up from Apple in China to sort it out because it is appalling that we pay the same as everyone but we get such bad service. That’s the only time that they replaced the iPad in-store. They apologized and honored the documents I had and the Job Order that came from Apple Support. We spent our entire afternoon in Apple Store that day. Not to mention, I paid $120 on my phone bill from having to call an Apple rep in China.

How do you get to contact someone at the higher up? I am actually surprise to hear that the experience in an Apple Store is equally bad. This is what’s happening when they grow too big and had too many customers. If only the stuff they build these days have less problem, then there will be less hassle for us to face.