This guy doesn't like the Genius Bar.
To be able to properly criticize the Genius Bar you have to understand a couple things:
• The bar is not really considered a source of income for the store. Yes, it is the glue that holds it together, but I don't think it's where the money is. I have no real knowledge of how much is made through the bar, but it's probably small.
• Retail space is expensive. What you do with that space is important. Apple picks the highest-end malls for their stores, so they have to make very foot count. Because of this, there will never be enough Genii available. We opened our Jordan Creek store with three, and even though they did an awesome job, it was never, ever enough. Ok, maybe Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. it was enough. There will always be a wait. The ability to sign up for a time at home is totally innovative and saves a lot of headache. Apple probably needs to do a better job promoting this (but, if you've ever walked into an Apple Store, there is almost no "helpful" signage - who to make checks out to, how to sign up for an appointment, where to check out -- especially true on Apple brand hardware boxes. Almost zero helpful information on the box. The best you can hope for is a picture of everything that is included in the box, but even then that doesn't always happen [I'm looking at you, notebook power adapter and when we sold firewire power adapters they were simply labeled "Power Adapter" -- no mention of Firewire... and this is when some iPods wouldn't charge through Firewire] I could write a whole other entry on this alone... )
• Even if an Apple Store, especially one our size, could hire more Genii, there would be no place to put them.
• This guy is complaining about an iPod with corrupt software. This is something you can EASILY fix yourself from home with a restore. So, he's complaining about something that he doesn't even need to be there for.
• It's not always the Genii's fault for the line going slowly. You do get customers that overstay their "free troubleshooting" welcome. There was a guy in the other day that was bombarding one of our Genii with question after question. The Genii actually had to sit down with him (another limitation of the store redesigns -- with four Macbook Pro's across the back of the bar, Genii can no longer "belly up" to help customers. They can try, but it is awkward.)
But he is right about one thing. The number of iPods coming to the bar is just going to keep going up and up. A couple years from now if they don't expand things even more I predict they will have to push back the 48 hour sign-ahead time.
Posted by alangage at September 20, 2007 08:23 PM
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