The Apple stores are intended to provide a superior customer experience, but it doesn’t always turn out that way. A visitor to the Regent Street (London) store reportedly brought in his iPod for a problem recently, and the staff worked hard to fix it to the man’s satisfaction. However, the customer didn’t feel his problem had been adequately solved. He reportedly picked up a Genius Bar stool and waved it about, and then destroyed four MacBook Pro laptops with it before he could be subdued. His bashing also seriously damaged the display table, leaving a large hole in the top. Metro Police officers arrived to arrest the man and take him to jail.
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Talk about fussy!!! If it wasn’t for the iPod, i bet the guy would of been a microsoft worker.
Those genius bar stools aren’t cheap either! they’re custom made for Apple at $2000 a piece!
thats a wonderful way to find yourself a $8,000 lawsuit.
I was there, the dude lost his nut smashed three macbook pro’s and not to forget the table, however the stool was in one piece.
There’s nothing in the MMPI about “white Genius Bar stools”. It asks about “black tarry looking stools”. I wonder how this is reflected in this guy’s profile.
Probably (obviously?) high Ma & Pd scales! :)
Man did I read that title the wrong way. It wasn’t until I read the article that the title then made sense.
I wonder how he actually “destroyed” the laptops, broken screen, F-ed up keyboard, dented casing, busted optical drive?
-Brian
i’m so enmbarrised to be british some times…….
for £250 tops this guys ganna have to pay out nearly 7 grand !!!!!!!!
what a plonker …..
(will be appearing in Big Brother next year)
Haha I wish somebody too a video and uploaded it to youtube. Thats hilarious
Was it Steve Balmer?
I was in the Regent Street store today, and saw a big hole in one of the tables that had MacBooks/MacBookPros on it. The hole was covered by a piece of thick perspex that had been placed on it. I was wondering what all this was about, now I know!
It’s not the laptop the guy needs to worry about its the dam table he busted up… That table is worth 10 MBPro laptops! I feel for those guys in retail the !@# they have to deal with.
Oh I believe it, seen it many times. I’ve seen iPods and computers trashed by owners out of anger or by accident and I or other MGs would have to tell them that it was not covered by warranty or the unit in question was out of warranty. The customers would often go ballistic at the bad news!
Sometimes I could calm them down, sometimes management would have be called in to do the job. I’ve seen many customers walk out of the store screaming, cussing at us for something that was their doing to begin with.
When I first read the headline, I thought you meant fecal material…
That’s hilarious. Even more so than the cost of Apple’s furniture. $2000.00 for that black stool? What a rip off.
Obviously not the best response on the part of the guy to frustration, but Regent Street is a particularly frustration-inducing Apple Store. I don’t know how much is standard practice and how much of the following is special to London.
I went in late last year because my MacBook was toasted. You have to make a reservation to get a guaranteed appointment at the Genius Bar. Reservations don’t open until midnight the day of. If your computer doesn’t work, you can’t log in to reserve a slot without going to an internet cafe or finding someone else’s machine, neither of which are open at midnight, somewhat catch-22ish. You can’t reserve by phone. And because of the dearth of Apple stores in London, the queue is long.
So you have to show up and wait. The teenage girl they have as maitre’d (or whatever you call her) is especially rude, threatening customers to put them at the back of the queue if they don’t kowtow. This is made worse as the store is inadequately ventilated/air conditioned (as is all of London). They can’t just take your machine and get back to you, you have to wait for them to look at it.
Prices are too high (well this is London).
The geniuses were fine I suppose, but after trying and failing to boot up, (which I could have told them) they just took the machine for more detailed inspection and it took two weeks for them to get back to me.
The store is of course much better at selling you stuff.
Whoa! That is not good at all, should have found the Dell store and took out his anger there! ;-)
First off, the ol’ “If my computer doesn’t work, then I can’t make an online reservation” thing is so played out. I used to hear it all the time. It is as if the only computer in the whole world is the one that needs repair. Library, work, friends, family, neighbors… etc. Like with a car you leave at the shop to be repaired, you must find alternatives to getting home and about town.
As for the jerk who rightly got tossed in the clink over an iPod, this behavior is not at all surprising. In my past experience I have been threatened, harassed before and after store hours and even had physical altercations (the guy who slammed his keyboard on the Genius Bar, shattering it and running out of the store was a particularly good one, if not for the fact that his keyboard WAS under warranty and he would have gotten a brand new one, then for the fact that he was mere feet away from small children in the kid’s section of the store- keyboard pieces nearly hitting them.
It is not how that things should always go the way of the customer, but that things should be resolved.
“The store is of course much better at selling you stuff.”
Um, yeah. It’s a STORE. They SELL stuff at stores.
:P
i really don’t see why people bitch about the concierge system. how else are the stores suppose to control the chaos of psychos coming in assuming they’re the only ones in the world with problems and deadlines? plus, where are the microsoft/dell/sony stores with their one-to-one support bars, and in most cases 48-72hr turnaround time?
consumers better check themselves. just because people work at a company they’re pissed at doesn’t give them the right to treat the employees like subhuman-slavery. chill the hell out before you go out in public people!
“i really don’t see why people bitch about the concierge system.”
Such a typical fanboy response. A user posts an account of his support experience that points out a couple of reasonable deficiencies with it and instead of addressing those criticisms, the fanboy challenges the user’s right to complain! I especially love this line:
“plus, where are the microsoft/dell/sony stores with their one-to-one support bars, and in most cases 48-72hr turnaround time?”
To paraphrase: you may have received less than ideal support at the Apple Store but what grounds do you have to complain because other companies whose products you don’t even own don’t have stores of their own!
Peter Lee:
Just to clarify: I am not sure that waiting an hour or so for instant, on the spot FREE support is “less than ideal support”. If a customer wants, they are free to check in their computer like every other computer repair shop. This will increase the time of repair, but they need not wait in the store. The anger or “fanboy” response more than likely comes from the frustration of people wanting INSTANT support when they come in for help. It is just simply not possible to give every person that instant help, therefore they must do what every other service oriented business does to help everyone who needs help: get in line. When I go to the most popular restaurant in town and it only has so much room to accommodate those who want to eat there, the wait could be hours. The Apple Store is very similar. most Genius Bars seat five or six people. So that means that there are five or so people that can be helped at any given time. Everyone wants free support, but no one wants to pay with their time. If it is a repair, they may simply check it in for repair or… gasp… go to another Apple Authorized Repair Center if the wait at an Apple Store does not work for them. Of course, CompUSA was famous for its two week turnaround time on repairs… but who is counting
:P
go to a dealer instead…they accept phone calls and are happy to make a buck or two for doing your service…
The AppleStore is not the only game in town my friends!