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Steve Jobs Personally Resolves Customer Complaint

Posted by samzenpus on from the steve-jobs-my-dishes-need-to-be-washed dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Consumerist recently published a story about an Apple customer who went through support hell with a broken Macbook. After escalating the issue up the support chain, and a month wait for his Macbook, the guy gave up and simply wrote Steve Jobs a blistering flame-mail. So, was he surprised when Jobs' executive assistant responded back the next day! He got both a brand new Macbook, as well as his old one to copy the hard drive. The guy also responded in a comment, and he turns out to be a slashdotter! He even wrote a journal entry here about the story."

7 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. Did I miss something? by Xest · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds more like Job's admin staff dealt with it than Jobs himself.

  2. Flame Mail? by Piedramente · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't believe what he sent would qualify as a flame-mail. It seems to be a well-reasoned and cool-headed response to a support nightmare. Kudos to Steve Jobs for fixing it for him.

  3. I wonder if Jobs ever sees these emails by rolfwind · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sure he has a staff of secretaries that screen everything and is well versed by now how to take care of these relatively unimportant problems (unimportant to Jobs - I imagine that guy is busy with other, more pressing matters). Though it might be a good idea to have the CEO of any corporation see the failures of his organization every so often.

  4. MIT by Any+Web+Loco · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Key reasons for Jobs' response...

    "I am also an IT Manager for one of the labs at MIT"
    and...

    "...your company will lose ... my purchase recommendations to graduate students, professors, and support staff at MIT"
    1. Re:MIT by Valtor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed, but they had to actually read the whole email to get that. Which is news by itself IMHO.

      --
      "Sockets are the standard networking API, also useful for stopping your eyes from falling onto your cheeks" zeromq.org
  5. This might be a special case by canb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well the author of the mail certainly has not sent a flame mail. On the contrary, it is very level headed and well reasoned. However, I do believe the fact that he has been an apple customer for over 30 years and that he's an IT Manager at MIT with the ability to sway the students' and staffs' buying preferences (which he makes sure gets conveyed in the mail) had an effect. I doubt if I had been in the same situation and written a similar mail, would get a similar response. Overall, I applaud the author for doing the right thing.

  6. Re:Personally? by Scutter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I personally think that makes a very strong statement about Mr. Jobs's commitment to superior customer service.

    Hmmm...I can't seem to find the page on Apple's website that explains how to escalate your problem past the Customer Service monkeys when you can't get it resolved. How is that superior customer service? I think the problem is that we're so used to crappy service that when we get *any* service at all it's considered "superior". I, for one, am not about to applaud Apple for "going above and beyond" when the thing that necessitated it was a complete failure of the system in question.

    --

    "Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"