Apple gave me new AirPods Max. They’re still stupid.
So a couple of weeks ago, I made an article explaining how Apple eventually lost my pair of AirPods Max after waiting for a month. So I decided to get back on the phone with Apple on the following Monday after my article. After waiting on the phone for 30 minutes, I get connected to a tier-1 service advisor who asked for my Repair ID so that he could look into the situation. Great. I gave him the ID, and he said that he “can’t find the repair.” I was flabbergasted. I explained that this was the third time I’d called asking for a replacement, and he was shocked. He heard nothing about a replacement. So, he puts me on hold for roughly 15 more minutes. I then hear that he’s speaking to a “senior customer relations advisor.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean. I was then put on hold for another 15 minutes. At this point, I’m losing patience and hope, and almost thought about hanging up on the phone and contacting Apple executive relations. It’s really that bad.
But, after waiting for a little bit longer, I was connected to the same senior customer relations advisor. Great. Now she’s very apologetic and understanding of the situation, and was glad to assist me. She first said that the reason my repair was delayed was because “they had an error diagnosing the issue, and there are no replacement AirPods Max available/in-stock from what we can see…” Well first of all, how do you just leave your customers who pay you thousands and thousands of dollars every year hanging because YOU don’t have a replacement? And second of all, why didn’t anybody tell this to me? So I was unsatisfied and asked “did you lose/break the headphones?” She responded with “that could be a possibility, but I can’t-I don’t have that information at the ready…” Whatever. But, she immediately canceled my repair request and said that she’d ask for a replacement directly from the Apple Store, and that that request would hopefully go through by Friday. I was confident that everything would be fixed, and I received my replacements on Friday like planned. Right? No.
So I hang up and wait for an email confirmation with some tracking information. One slight problem… I didn’t receive any. I had information that my repair request was cancelled, but nothing else. So I waited Wednesday, nothing. Thursday, nothing. Only Friday did I send my advisor an email that I haven’t received anything, and that I was promised headphones that day. She emailed me back a couple hours later saying “I’m still waiting to hear back about our request. There are no updates to provide, but I wanted to let you know that I’m following your case closely. I’ll contact you as soon as I have new information to share.” I was quite dissatisfied with this answer, but there was nothing else I could possibly do. I was SOL. So I wait a couple days, and I’m delighted to see that I have a package coming from Apple for delivery for Wednesday of the next week. So I wait and behold, a new pair of AirPods Max. Boy was that difficult.
So in total, I spent 6 weeks waiting, 5 hours on the phone, sent 10 emails, and had to write a lengthy article about it. I don’t know about you, but that’s not the Apple I remember, and frankly it’s not customer support I expect from a large, world famous company. Apple always, always used to give their pro customers top-tier support. But now, we’re just normal consumers that get below average customer service that happen to spend thousands of dollars on overpriced premium tech. And that doesn’t sound very Pro to me.
