Apple -- I don't get it

I hate to think that I'm too old to "get it." After all, I can field-strip and reassemble a PC in five minutes blindfolded, and I've spent a good deal of time in Second Life, though my First Life is generally more compelling and enjoyable. Still, I seem to have become a dinosaur.

It all started with my daughter's iPod. When she visited home recently, she said that it was broken. When pressed for detail, she explained that it had stopped holding a charge. "Battery," I thought. When plugged in, it showed either the Apple logo or a battery charge icon but refused to respond otherwise.

No problem. I traded her my old iPod, a video version that was actually newer than hers, for the broken one and ran down to the Apple store at Fashion Valley over my lunch hour to drop it off at tech support for a battery change. I knew they'd charge me for labor and a new battery and that it was possible that they'd just swap out another unit for mine. All that was fine with me. I just wanted to drop it off.

Well... I got to the Apple store and was greeted at the door by a friendly young lady who immediately offered to help me. Great! I asked for the Repair Department. She frowned for a moment, possibly listening to instructions in her earpiece, then smiled and said, "We don't have a Repair Department here."

I told her that I just wanted to drop off an iPod for a battery change; she brightened further and chirped, "Then you want to make an appointment with Tech Support." I said, "No, I just want to drop it off for repair." She frowned, stared off into space again, then smiled and said, "Let's see what appointments are available."

She led me to a table with a Mac laptop, then opened a browser window, saying as an aside, "You can do this from home!" At the Apple Fashion Valley site, she found that there was an appointment available in just two hours if I wanted to wait. I allowed that I had to get back to work and JUST WANTED TO DROP THE IPOD OFF FOR REPAIR. Sorry, didn't mean to shout.

She thought about that for a moment, then offered to help me make an appointment at another store ten miles away (in the wrong direction). She seemed confused when I said, "Sorry, that won't work," and left.

I like Apple products. I had one of the original Macintoshes, have owned thee or four iPods, and have a 1G iPhone. I understand that in the World of Tomorrow, the store is just a place for yet another social network, where you go to hang out and text your friends standing next to you. That's fine with me. Does it really make sense, though, to have to make an appointment just to have a "technician" agree with you that something is not working and accept it for further test?

There's a paradigm for repair that's evolved over hundreds of years. You go to the repair counter, show the gear to an intake person, describe the symptoms, and leave it with repair instructions and a price estimate. If the repair is more complex than expected or will cost more, they contact you for authorization to proceed. They tell you when it will be ready, and you pick it up. It's fast, easy, and well-understood. It works for shoes, buckets, horse harnesses, automobiles, appliances, and most electronics.

Why doesn't it work for iPods? Do I really not get it? Or is it Apple who doesn't get it?

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Update 7/28/08: I went online to Apple and went through the steps to request a battery replacement. With information in hand, I shipped the unit off to Apple via UPS, which cost about $8.00. Apple, in turn, replaced the battery and shipped the unit back to me. Unfortunately, they sent it via DHS with a signature required, and it arrived on the day that my wife and I left town for a week. DHL dutifully left a note the first day, tried a second day, held the unit a couple more days, then shipped it back to Apple.

It seems that you can't waive delivery signature on the second go-round, so I sure hope I'm home when they try to deliver it again, probably next week. I've got an idea: how about if they accept it at their repair department at the store so I can pick it up when it's done...