Mr Johnson would do well to visit the Genius Bar at the Apple Store in Soho, New York City -- supposedly its their busiest.

While the techs working there are very knowledgable and patient, the problem is getting to them -- the wait times are truly horrible. I can't imagine the Four Seasons making you wait an hour or so when ordering a drink.. Sure3, there are a lot of Mac users in the neighborhood, and heavy traffic is to be expected. But whatever method the Maestro reservation system is using to predict appointment times needs to be seriously recalibrated.

Maybe a separate mini-bar for iPod questions...


-p

Even though the staff at Apple Stores are not paid commission, the stores each have quarterly sales goals and Apple recently began paying bonuses to the staff of stores that meet or exceed their targets.

Apple is not the only, nor the first, store offering free technical support on a walk-in basis. Many "mom & pop" computer stores have done this for years. On a larger scale, Micro Center has offered this service for many years before Apple even had retail stores. Plus Micro Center's Tech Support usually knows what they are doing. They have to be well trained as they also function as the top-level tech support (and repair) for all in-store systems. You won't always find a Mac guy there, but it is still a nice service.

A friend of mine bought a DOA Airport Express. 1hr of hold/diagnostic time on the phone, verdict: it's DOA - take it back to the AppleStore in Emeryvile. 2 hour wait for the genius bar "Sorry, yea it's dead - but we can't replace it with one of the hundreds we have in stock here - we have to order one, we'll call you in 2 weeks" The do actually call within 2 weeks, replacement ready to pick up. We head off to the store on a Saturday, first mistake. Store is packed with looky-loo shoppers. a "1 HR" estimated wait for the GeniusBar - apparently the only person who is authorized to handle the paperwork. They give us a pager and suggest we roam the mall and have lunch. We come back after an hour - there is still an estimated 45min for the genius. We politely corral one of the employees and explain that all they need to do is swap this for the unit that's been already ordered and shipped and suthorized for replacement by the genius last time he was there. Sorry - no dice, you'll have to wait. We wait another hour! Getting increasingly annoyed but never impolite, I think we finally started to attract the attention of the other shoppers and someone at the 2 hour 15min mark deigns to go in the back and look around and see what he can do (people had been promising to do this for the last 45 minutes) He finally comes out and hands my friend the replacement box. Total time from when he stepped off the sales floor to the hand off 30 and 64/100's of a second. That's it. Done. Thanks for shopping Apple. A total customer time outlay of almost 5 1/2 hours for a 30 second fix when they sold the broken product in the first place. When i was trying to explain to the woman at the store that if you bought something defective at Macy's - they wouldn't make you wait 5 hours to exchange it - my plea fell on deaf ears. "this is company policy we have nothing to do about it and no input on changing the system" And then started giving off major attitude that we would dare complain about the policy or having to wait. It was, hands down, the WORST retail experience of my life. I called customer relations and politely opened a ticket, in the vain hope that it would find its way to the right folks.

Good luck trying to talk to a "genius" there. My friends live 2 hours away and went there in the morning about a dead iPod. They were told they had to make an appointment, the earliest was 5PM, and they couldn't guarantee availability of the guy at appointment time.
My friends were not impressed... and left without the iMac they were practically ready to buy. I wonder how many time this scenario has repeated over there. They need to hire a lot more people, and tell them to leave their attitude at the door.

apple.com/support/discussions

TONS of awesome geniuses there . . . been there for years!

:]