
God, how I hate those pretentious, Yuppie snobs that work at the Apple store.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my Ipod. It is one of the best 3 gadgets that I have bought in the past 10 years. I just can’t stand the whole Apple-Geek mentality that goes along with it… its like a weird little nerdy subculture. They are all such a band of know-it-alls, and I want to punch them all in the face.
Case in point:
Last week, I noticed that my Ipod’s battery was starting to wear out too often, so, after 4 years of using it pretty much EVERY day, I figured it was time to get the battery replaced.
Now for those of you who have never experienced the joys of buying an Apple product, you probably don’t know the hoops you have to jump through to do something that should be as simple as replacing a battery.
The first thing to know is that you cannot change the battery on your own Ipod. You have to pay to let THEM do it, or else your warranty expires. Oh yeah, and it costs 70 dollars, too! Yeah, that’s not TOO much of a racket, is it?
But it gets even better. You might think that you could just walk into an Apple store, hand them your Ipod and 70 bucks, and get your battery replaced. If you thought that, however, you’d be dead fucking wrong.
First off, you need to make an appointment through their website! Their technical department is called the “Genius Bar”, and at the time of your appointment you get to sit at a techie table and talk to some Izod-wearing preppie douchbag.
To make things better, they don’t actually “replace” your battery. No, that would be far too fucking normal. They take your Ipod, and then give you a refurbished Ipod with a new battery. Then you can take somebody else’s old shitty Ipod home, where you get to re-install all of your 1 million songs back onto it.
As an Ipod owner for 4 years now, I KNEW all this. And yet, I found myself last Friday trekking out to my local Apple store to wade through the bullshit and get my new Ipod.
Or so I thought.
I made my appointment, and got there at the 10 minutes-early “recommended” time, where I proceeded to wait for 25 minutes before a chipper Asian girl called my name, and walked me over to the Genius bar.
I handed over my Ipod to her, and she attempts to turn it on.
“I haven’t charged it in a week”, I told her. “The battery is currently dead”
“No problem,” she told me, “We cant honor the warranty unless we see that the unit is actually working, so I’ll just plug it in and charge it now”
So, she proceeds to plug the Ipod into a charger, and starts making all sorts of weird faces.
“What’s wrong?”, I asked her.
“We can’t honor your warranty. This Ipod doesn’t work.”
“Yes it does, I just used it 2 days ago”
“Well, it’s not charging. I’m sorry but we can’t honor the warranty if it’s not charging”.
“It charges. I have charged it every week for the past 4 years! It just fucking charged last week. Believe me, it charges”.
Then this bitch turns my Ipod over, looks at the charger on the bottom of it, then smugly looks at me and says,
“Ah, I see the problem. You see this little bit of green on your charger? That’s called “oxidation”. THAT’S why this unit isn’t charging. I’m sorry sir but we can’t honor the warranty.”
That’s about the point where I exploded.
“Listen, I KNOW this thing charges. Do I need to take it to my car and charge it myself?”
“You could do that, but then you will have to reschedule for another appointment.”
“Are you fucking kidding me! I’m on my lunch hour here!”
I was about to absolutely POP, when I saw it.
“Hey Chicky, I know I’m not a ‘Genius’ or anything, but with the little technical background that I have, I’m FAIRLY certain that the FUCKING POWER PLUG NEEDS TO BE PLUGGED IN TO AN ELECTRICAL OUTLET FOR IT TO CHARGE ANYTHING!!”.
That’s right… the plug was just dangling off the end of her workbench, not plugged in.
“Oh, yeah”, she says, and plugs it in. “Oh ok, yeah there we go.”
THERE WE GO?
Not “Oh Sorry”, or “My Bad”, or even “Hey, I’m a fuck-up”….
….Just “There we go”.
Want to know the BEST part?
She then took about 15 minutes to punch all my serial number info and shit into her computer, and then proceeded to tell me:
“I’m sorry, but we can’t give you a replacement unit. Our store is closing for a month, starting tomorrow, for renovations. We don’t have a replacement in stock and won’t get one in until we re-open.”
AND SHE COULDN’T HAVE FUCKING TOLD ME THAT WHEN I FUCKING WALKED IN?
It seems to me like the word “Genius” doesn’t quite mean what I THOUGHT it did…..