The Apple Store – What a place! We went there to address a problem that Kelly’s 7 month old iPod Video (30G) was experiencing. It would not hold its charge longer than an hour which was quite annoying during workout’s and when you want to actually listen to music.

After entering the rather crowded store, we were directed to the “Genius” desk to have our issue addressed by a pro! Once we got the attention of someone who worked there, we were informed that the “wait” to speak to one of these @#$%* Genius’ would be about an hour and that we’d have to make an appointment! Apparently the Genius’s missed the class on “Scheduling and Staffing” since they had to resort to making getting in front of one of them akin to getting plastic surgery; “So tell me what you don’t like about yourself, errrr…your iPod; Sure we can help, let me schedule you in, Oh – I have an opening here….can you make it?”…….OK – maybe it wasn’t that bad……LOL.

Nonetheless, we scheduled our procedure/appointment and walked around the mall for an hour to kill some time. Upon our return, we were told that we could leave it for a few days to be tested and that we’d “Possibly” get a new one. Well after the Genius guy looked at it for all of 2 minutes he realized then and there that the problem was quite pervasive and simply said, “We’ll just give you a new one now”…..and 4 minutes later, we walk out with a brand new one!

Now that’s what I call “customer service”! I mean, if this had been a product from Best Buy or Circuit City, we could have brought it back in 9 minutes after paying cash for it and they would have had to have criminal background checks ran on us before we could even hope to be considered for putting in a request for a replacement that may or may not come in 4 – 6 weeks. In any case, Apple scores BIG in my book for attention to detail, customer service, and relatively hassle-free interaction with it’s staff; Maybe they did make it to “Scheduling” class that day!

I can truly say that an experience like this leads me to believe that the next computer I buy could be a Mac!!