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May 12, 2006

Two Cheers for Apple

Back in January I picked up an iPod, a decision I've been thrilled with ever since. I listen to it almost all day, with earphones when I'm working out in the morning, over my car radio thanks to a nifty plug-in, and at work through some portable speakers; it's a terrific product. Unfortunately, on Sunday mine died, possibly due to hard drive failure. Not wanting to be without it for any longer than necessary, I went to the web site (the iPod actually had the address on the screen, as well as a symbol diagnosing the basic problem) and went through the troubleshooting procedures. Those quickly came to the conclusion I needed to send it in for service, so I went through the service request process until it hung on step four of six. Annoyed, I called the tech support line. The tech told me that I was not eligible for tech support, but when I explained my problem with the web site to him, he put me on hold to talk to his supervisor and then took the information himself. Wednesday the box to ship it back to Apple arrived, and yesterday I put it in a DHL box. When I got home from work today there was an email waiting for me to tell me my iPod had arrived at the support center, and a link so I could check its progress. Looking at about 5:30 my time, it told me the problem was being diagnosed. No surprise, since it just got there. I checked again around 7:00 to make sure that the link I'd saved in My Favorites would take me back there and now it tells me that the issue has been identified and that product replacement is pending. While I'm sad that the iPod apparently has died, I'm pretty darn impressed with Apple's product support. Other than the hangup trying to get the service request processed on the web site, the entire experience has been virtually painless, and I can't help but be impressed with the speed with which Apple has addressed the problem. If only Apple made a tablet PC, I'd be darn likely to return to the Apple system.