{"id":54964,"date":"2013-06-09T10:00:50","date_gmt":"2013-06-09T08:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=54964"},"modified":"2013-06-09T10:03:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-09T08:03:00","slug":"why-are-tech-consumers-treated-like-idiots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/54964-why-are-tech-consumers-treated-like-idiots","title":{"rendered":"Why are tech consumers treated like idiots?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you know that if you’re in the US, or anywhere with an actual Apple Store, you can take in your broken Apple product and, if they have stock and you signed up for Apple Care while the device was still under warranty, you can get it swapped out for a brand new or refurbished unit within an hour? Apple also plans to allow trade-ins of old iPhones for a discount on an upgrade<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I know that seems like a pipe dream because South Africans may not know what that kind of service feels like. If you have a crappy TV that you bought at GAME, you have to take it in, book it in to the repairs department and then it gets sent away for a repair under warranty. If you’re lucky, four weeks later you’re back to watching your reruns of Futurama and making Han Solo dance with Jabba the Hutt on Star Wars Kinect. Four whole weeks.<\/p>\n

We’re used to ineffectual leadership, being treated poorly at the service centre counter, and we’re complacent and seemingly happy with this arrangement.<\/p>\n

Does it really need to be like this?<\/h3>\n
\"Poor<\/a>

Poor service levels forced these people to get creative.<\/p><\/div>\n

We’re shocked when we get good service, angry when its bad service and mildly annoyed when it hovers in between. Either we don’t do enough to make ourselves heard, or some companies really just don’t give a hoot.<\/p>\n

Our local service industry doesn’t appear to work on some honor-bound code – as a customer in most stores, you may be paying the salaries of the people working in the store, but when the time comes to make a return you still have to go through a lengthy process that allows them to validate who you are and only get to fixing the issue when your broken tech gets sent to the right person.<\/p>\n

Understandably, the company doesn’t want to get scammed, but is that any good reason to impose unreasonable time frames for a repair on legitimate customers? I hear stories from friends and forumites of month-long waits for phones from cellular providers (sometimes with nothing being done), no service from local retailers, courier fees to get your laptop repaired under warranty by an approved repair centre, and Blackberry handsets that aren’t repaired but merely replaced with a refurbished unit.<\/p>\n

Apple is the tech industry’s MacDonalds<\/h3>\n

\"Broken<\/a><\/p>\n

Apple has silently been rolling out on-site repair services to their stores across America. Right now, most stores will be able to repair or replace the home button, microphone, loudspeaker, and battery on-site. In July, Apple’s planning to train their technicians to be able to perform further repairs to the camera modules, the circuit board (or at least proper replacement techniques) and other repairs to the phone’s inner hardware.<\/p>\n

If you have an iPhone 4, 4s or the 5, you can get specific parts of the phone repaired on the spot, also within an hour and you can spend the that waiting time waiting playing Fruit Ninja on the display iPads, or having coffee and a muffin at the Starbucks across the street.<\/p>\n

If you’re subscribing to Apple Care, all that gets done free of charge, within an hour from when you booked the device in. In future, American customers will also be able to replace the screen and casing for just $149 (approx R1,500). Its no wonder people buy Apple if they have good local support – that support is miles better than any other tech company.<\/p>\n

For bonus points, Apple Care also warrants replacement of your device twice in case of accidents you may have in future. If you break it, you can walk into an iStore and literally half an hour later you have a new phone syncing all your contacts, photos and Justin Bieber albums from iCloud. I caution people buying into the Apple ecosystem for the first time but I have to admit, it’s really simple. [Ed: I also caution people about buying Justin Bieber albums.]<\/p>\n

“Welcome to Walmart. Get your crap and get out!”<\/h3>\n

\"Walmart<\/a><\/p>\n

Jeff Dunham, a ventriloquist puppet master and one of the best comics of this decade, said the above line when conversing with his alter-ego Walter. Walter was noting how Walmart and America in general does business. All the chocolates are by the tills, every thing is within reach and its really easy to find what you need, avoid the mutant people that you see photographed at Walmart<\/a> posted on the internet, and get out and back to life as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

MacDonalds bases its entire service model on the five minutes you wait to get your food in the drive-in or the shop counter. If you’re waiting more than five minutes, you’re taking up space and stopping other customers from purchasing at the store. In a sense they’re herding you like sheep – but do you think people really mind?<\/p>\n

The knock-on effect is that service levels have to improve to keep the company earning money. Apple wants its customers to feel good about buying the brand, so they get them sorted out as quickly as possible and let them be on their way – on their way to whatever they’re doing, where they’ll mention how good their experience was at the iStore. A company can spend billions of Rands on advertising, but word of mouth and customer loyalty is what really keeps the bucks rolling in, because those people fight your battles for you.<\/p>\n

Can South African companies do the same?<\/h3>\n

\"Vodacom<\/a><\/p>\n

Obviously good service is within our reach. There are many bad apples out there but the companies that really shine are the ones with the people who do try to make the process of parting you with your money as painless as possible. They understand that you, the customer, don’t want to know the real nature of the problem – you’d just like it fixed so you can carry on using it.<\/p>\n

But specifically when it comes to items of a technical nature, there are many companies and individuals who take their time with getting these things done. Companies, likewise, don’t always see the value in increasing the size of their support and repair staff because you can wait for your R19,000 Alienware laptop to be fixed…right?<\/p>\n

A general habit I see with people in the RMA process with broken PC parts is that they send it in, go buy a replacement part and then try sell the part they get back under warranty. Not only are they out of pocket, but they’re potentially stuck with something they can’t use. That’s not the way it should be, and there are easier ways than that. Its up to these companies to realise how much they’re punishing consumers and its partly the job of the consumer to notify them of that.<\/p>\n

So what if I’ve had bad service?<\/h3>\n

The first thing you can do is call a manager or supervisor. In many cases these people are trained to deal with your problems and will be able to help you out. If not, their higher-ups will. If you ever receive shoddy service, go up the chain of command.<\/p>\n

An additional resource is a popular local website, Hello Peter<\/a>. Its given consumers a louder voice by putting everything to their name in a service record that’s indexed on the internet. If you ever need to research a company, see if they’re on Hello Peter first and see if they respond. If they value their reputation, they definitely will.<\/p>\n

You don’t have to be subject to bad service and you don’t have to put up with it either. You can take your business elsewhere and you have the power to affect the businesses’ reputation if you receive bad service. Keep this in mind and don’t back down.<\/p>\n

More MyGaming features<\/h3>\n

The Last of Us: the best game this generation?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

SA game devs \u201ccan definitely compete\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Wolfenstein: The New Order \u2013 robot Nazi chaos overload<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

SA Animation School advice for aspiring game devs<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most companies just don’t seem that concerned that you’re a living, breathing human. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"featured_media":54965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[959,10262,10261,21],"class_list":["post-54964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-apple","tag-consumer-activism","tag-customer-service","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/208"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54989,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54964\/revisions\/54989"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}