I broke iTunes.
Yes, I brought Apple’s incredibly sophisticated system to its knees, armed with only a credit card and a keyboard.
I recently bought a game for a friend’s iPad – did the usual “send an email with the code” for his b’day. Easy peasy, right?
Wrong. Long story short – after hours on the phone with iTunes, my friend gave up. Apple escalated the “bug” way up the techie food chain. When asked (finally) if they could simply give him a different code – the answer was “nope” - due to technical error. They HAD to fix that bug!
I finally emailed and asked for a refund. I got it, but only after I had to send them a copy of my electronic receipt with the order number (that they – ahem – generated in the first place.)
My friend reports that Apple claims the bug is finally fixed. But my friend doesn’t have his game and Apple is out ten bucks.
Here’s what they should have done.
When my friend first called – they should have issued a new code. If there was a problem with that code, they should have issued a credit to be used for something else.
They should also have given my friend the option to stay on the line while they tried to rectify the issue right then.
Concurrently, if I asked for a refund – it shouldn’t have required my sending them their own info, and having to dig through their web site to find a way to make the request, since I couldn’t – duh – reply to Apple’s “Do Not Reply” email that included my receipt.
Apple – “cool” company that it may be – did exactly what so many “uncool” companies have done for decades. They focused on fixing their internal system problem…instead of fixing the customer’s problem.
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Unbelievable! Seriously I don’t believe it!
Ok, so maybe I believe it but I have worked with iTunes issues in the past and although it is designed to have a slight delay, it works very easily.
1) Find the entry in your history.
2) Click the report a problem button
3) Click the link to report that item
4) Describe the problem (normally a drop down item.
5) You will have a credit the next day or the file will be added to your download queue.
They tend to be quick to just take care of any issues through email, now I have never tried the phone so your milage may very.
Thanks, Doug.
That’s all well and good for a technical problem but I still shouldn’t have to hunt around when they sent me the receipt in the first place. (one thing for it to “work” another for it to work for the customer.)
The real issue was the way they dealt with my friend.
I also suspect they’re a victim of their own success (who could possibly want to return an Apple product?
so they didn’t plan from the start for things such as returns and issues.