A tale of a dead iPod
As we make our way through our daily lives each of us wears many different hats. Spouse, parent, consultant, co-worker, boss, etc. In the society we live in we all share one common hat and that is consumer.
As a consumer most of us have come to expect good if not great customer service. When a company fails in it’s obligation to us as consumers and delivers poor, bad or even rotten customer service a vast majority of us will relate that bad experience to family, friends and anyone who will listen to our story.
This is NOT one of those bad customer experience stories – as a matter of fact it is totally the opposite – it is a testament to what good – no make that exemplary customer service is and how delivering exemplary customer service can make a huge difference.
This tale begins last week; my youngest daughter placed her iPod in her schoolbag and after school pulled it out. It wouldn’t turn on. When she arrived home she was in tears as her iPod appeared to be dead.
We put my advanced search skills to work (you knew there had to be a search angle someplace right?) and came across dozens of posts about similar situations. We tried a few of these solutions to no avail. Finally we decided we had done as much as we could, so we turned to the pros.
Using those search talents again, we found iRepair.ca. On Saturday we headed down to see if they could fix it. They had a great offer. If they diagnosed the problem and we decided not to have them repair it after getting their estimate, they would give us between $30 and $90 credit towards the purchase of a new one. Definitely a win-win scenario.
We get down to iRepair.ca and the young guy behind the counter plugs in my daughter’s iPod.
“It’s gone. You should take it back to Apple as it’s under warranty.” He said we needed an appointment with the Gurus at the Apple Store, and he could make the appointment for us, which he did right there on the spot.
That was it, no charge for the 3 – 5 minutes we were in his shop. Excellent customer service from the guys at iRepair.ca (494 College St. Toronto – 416-324-2764). We still had the dead iPod but there was a glimmer of hope on the horizon thanks to iRepair.ca.
Sunday we headed down to the Apple Store at the Eaton Center for our appointment. We arrived about 10 minutes early for our appointment and I was pleased to see my name was second on the list to be called. It proved to be great timing as the person ahead of us was called and wasn’t there, so we were up next.
“Krystin” called us over and we explained what happened to the beloved iPod. After plugging it in and confirming it was indeed not functioning (I don’t think she used the term “dead”) she said she would see if they had a replacement in the back.
Two minutes later “Krystin” was back with a replacement unit. Another two minutes later I was walking out of the store with one happy 13 year old and a brand new iPod. We actually left the store before our scheduled appointment time. The entire adventure was completely and utterly pain free. It was one of the best customer service experiences I’ve had with a corporation the size of Apple.
Kudos to the guys and gals at iRepair.ca and Krystin and the other gurus at the Apple Store in the Eaton Center for making this a very pleasant experience. In this day and age of poor to rotten customer service it was a pleasure to have such a great experience.
