So my net connection problems are all the AirPort Extreme’s doing. Apparently, it randomly decided to disallow m from connecting to this very site. If you google “airport extreme blocking one site,” other people seem to be having this exceedingly rare issue.
So I take my ass down to the apple store hoping for an exchange on a six week old router, show them the discussion thread on the support forums, explain every single step I attempted in solving the issue, and explain how my time and email are too valuable to try and fix some rare Apple bug.
The staff girl talked with the genius upstairs, who had never heard of the issue and wanted to check it out.
Fine, I say. Oh, but they are booked for the rest of the day. Can you come back tomorrow.
What. The. Fuck.
I’ve already made on trip to your store for this rare issue. Now you want me to make another trip because your support queue is filled with people who can’t get the fucking iPods to work?
This is the biggest issue with Apple support. Giving everyone personal support is great, but if a customer says your product is broken, then don’t make them have to come back to prove it. Provide an exchange or facilitate sending it off to support. It literally doesn’t take a fucking genius to tell me what I already know. The thing is broken, fix it, give me a new one, or let me be. Lacking the ability to trust or handle customers other with anyone other than the three trained assholes dealing with iPods and people who don’t know how to use mail.app is not an acceptable excuse.
Teach you to buy from Apple :-p
Actually, I friend of mine got an Airport Extreme hoping it would solve his other router problem thinking “apple just does it right”. Well, it didn’t solve his problems either.
So far when it comes to routers http://dd-wrt.com is your friend. Get a router that supports dd-wrt then download and install. It’s 100% configurable and supports way more features than any standard firmware including things like
Chainable routers (connect 2 routers to share wireless wirelessley)
Configure multiple virtual routers, for example on running WPA2 (secure) and another running WEP (insecure for DS) and a 3rd (unsecured) for guests
And many many other things.
I have 2. A Netgear WNR834B v2 ($80?) and a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 (bought in Japan) and I’ve had almost zero problems since I switched the firmware compared to before where I seemed to have to reboot them once or twice a week amoung other things.
Yes, but they need to be able to watch their favorite episode of The Office on those iPods
And what’s the deal with the store concierge people? What a waste of salary that is. Do they really need to pay someone to be crowd control for the genius bar?
I feel yer pain, JP. You even made an appointment for the first visit, right? When I went to Shinsaibashi Apple Store, I knew my machine had a problem — I just wanted to drop it off, have them fix it, and charge me money. “Oh, you’ll need to talk to a genius, and the next appointment is 5 hours from now.”
I said, “No, I don’t need a Genius to tell me that my computer is broken. I need someone to give me an invoice for a repair order, and to call me with an estimate. I’ve made time this afternoon to come here; I have NOT blocked out the majority of my Sunday to wait to talk to a service technician regarding a plan of action for a machine I know is broken. I don’t want advice, I just want it to be fixed, and I know that’s not going to happen immediately. I’m absolutely certain I don’t want to wait 5 hours to have someone tell me that they can’t fix it today. That’s a given.”
About that point, The Big Crazy must have been shining in my eyes, because the concierge started looking REALLY stand-offish, BUT another staff came over and said they could look at it immediately.