Steve Jobs Personally Resolves Customer Complaint

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."

Did I miss something?

[Xest (935314)]

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

Re:Did I miss something?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you missed something, RTFA:

While I received the reply from Jobs' assistant, Jobs himself came around and personally transfered the data from my old laptop and the new one - only using himself as a computer telepath-to-tcp/ip router.

After fixing my laptop, Jobs made me a cup of tea & rescued my cat from a tree it had been stuck up for several weeks (using telekinisis). He also fixed a leaking tap, did my old filing & satisfied my sexually frustrated wife. Thanks Steve!

Re:Did I miss something?

[Gerzel (240421)]

Well I think the confusion here is over the concept that the assistant came to help.

You see there is more than one Steve Jobs and thus his "assistants" are in fact copies of himself. Thought Apple was outsourcing manufacturing to China or somewhere else? Nope, just a cover ploy to hide the fact that they have a manufacturing plant filled with Jobses.

Re:Did I miss something?

[Captain Splendid (673276)]

filled with Jobses.

All dressed in identical black turtleneck sweaterses, my precious.

Re:Did I miss something?

[Jtheletter (686279)]

He also fixed a leaking tap, did my old filing & satisfied my sexually frustrated wife.

Damn, that new multitouch feature is amazing!

Are you guys talking about Steve Jobs?

[elrous0 (869638)]

Did I ever tell you about the time Jobs took me out to go get a drink with him? We go off looking for a bar and we can't find one. Finally Jobs takes me to a vacant lot and says, 'Here we are.' We sat there for a year and a half -- until sure enough, someone constructs a bar around us. Well, the day they opened we ordered a shot, drank it, and then burned the place to the ground. Jobs yelled over the roar of the flames, 'Always leave things the way you found 'em!'

Re:Did I miss something?

[elrous0 (869638)]

People should also RTFA (no, I'm not new here). This wasn't just another customer. He specifically mentioned that he worked as an IT lab manager for MIT and threatened to start bad-mouthing Apple to students and advising against university purchases. That's more likely to have caught their eye than just Steve's selfless desire to help out a customer.

Re:Did I miss something?

[elrous0 (869638)]

My other /. ID is actually a negative integer. I was a homeless guy living in the building that would eventually become /. headquarters. I was there two years before Taco.

Re:Did I miss something?

[Jellybob (597204)]

I may just be lucky, but my 1 year old MacBook has survived admirably. It spends a lot of it's time loose in my rucksack, and other then an accident involving a bottle of water in the same bag, which shorted the battery, it's had no problems at all. I'd imagine that most laptops take issue with having their battery left in a pool of water for several hours, so I'm not going to hold my own stupidity against it.

It has also survived being dropped from standing height, and having a glass of wine spilled over it.

All that, and it'll run Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. It really has been my dream web development machine, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend one.

This is my first Apple machine, and since buying it I've managed to persuade work to swap my aging PC for a shiny new Mac Pro, which is quite simply a beast.

What if

[otacon (445694)]

How cool would it have been if Steve came to that guys house and rang the doorbell and said "I didn't appreciate the tone of your letter, it was very hurtful." and then just left.

Steve keeps it real; mum's the word

[ratsnapple tea (686697)]

You know, some of us have known for a while that Steve replies to his email, or at least a small subset of the torrents he probably receives every day (a couple [msu.edu] of public examples [oreillynet.com]). He's answered a few of the questions I've emailed him over the years, too, and I'm just a regular Slashdotter Joe.

But the more publicity he gets for doing it, and the more people actually try to email him, the less likely he'll be to read and respond, and the less personal it's actually going to get. It's obvious from the numbers. Part of me hates myself for saying this, and I acknowledge that it's elitist as all hell, but I sort of wish these guys (the ones "in the know" about Steve's responsiveness over email) would keep it to themselves. Because if Steve stops answering his email, that's another piece gone of the old Apple spirit.

Of course, I suppose we must all eventually succumb to inevitability—but there's no harm delaying that end, while possible. So please. Enough. Let me suggest we simply appreciate Steve for keeping it real, and not trumpet it all over the blog-o-spierre.

I completely agree

[maynard (3337)]

I really wish I hadn't BCC:d the Consumerist now. That was a mistake. I did it because I was angry and didn't expect any kind of resolution from Apple Corporate. I really didn't believe that even if Jobs read his email he would take action to resolve the issue. And now the whole shebang is posted to slashdot. Along with his email address. What a mess.

My situation was extreme. I do NOT recommend emailing Mr. Jobs until fully exhausting the Apple support chain. If you have a problem, ask for a supervisor. If the supervisor can't fix it, ask for "customer relations". Call your local Apple store before sending that email (I did). And finally, after a month of hell, if all else fails, well... do a google search and find his current email address.

But please don't waste the dude's time. I would have the same opinion regardless of the CEO or company.

Flame Mail?

[Piedramente (1063240)]

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.

You can bet somebody got reamed...

[Mr. Underbridge (666784)]

...and now has an asshole that's about 3 bore sizes larger than it was last week. Yikes.

I wonder if Jobs ever sees these emails

[rolfwind (528248)]

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.

I've done this kind of thing myself before

[jimicus (737525)]

I've looked up the details of whoever's in charge and contacted them directly before. Or, more accurately, got the name of the managing director, called head office, asked to be put through to "their office" and spoken to their PA.

On the plus side, it's fantastically effective. A call from anyone at that level - or even their PA - will often go to the head of customer services very quickly, and get the issue resolved in far less time than trying to work your way up through a call centre staffed with people who quite frankly don't much care about any individual customer's complaint.

On the minus side, it's not something you'd want to do terribly often - particularly not with one company - as it would rapidly lose effectiveness. And if you find yourself in a position where you've got to do this more than once, even for separate incidents, maybe they don't need your business that badly anyway.

MIT

[Any Web Loco (555458)]

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"

Re:MIT

[Valtor (34080)]

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

Let's not overlook the phrase, "raison d'etre"

[StressGuy (472374)]

You start using foreign phrases and shit like that and it just oozes class.

Now, we wait for the Slashdot follow-up story....

[StressGuy (472374)]

"So, I installed the WGA update and it mistakenly identified my OS as pirated....after two months of trying to resolve the issue through technical support where I was repeatedly assured that, '...we understand problem...send you SUPER DELUXE answer....next day....you betcha!', I finally contacted Steve Ballmer himself. Amazingly, he showed up at my house the very next day!.....and threw a folding chair at me.....so I bought a MacBook"

[DISCLAIMER: every word of this is BS (duh)]

This might be a special case

[canb (792889)]

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.

Re:Nice, but

[otacon (445694)]

Steve Jobs is a deity, He came, he was killed (removed from the company) and returned again with salvation for Apple (iPod, iMac, generally making Apple cool)

And if ...

[gr8dude (832945)]

That can't be Steve Jobs! I heard Steve Jobs is 12 feet tall and shoots lightnings with his eyes, and if he were here, he would fix all your laptops with firebolts coming out of his arse!

Re:Letters to the top always produce some effect

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

I also heard a story about the CEO of Virgin Atlantic (charles bronson?? or was he an actor, God I have bad memory for names) traveling with the public or playing the role of a flight attendent/steward and listen to customers. One Indian guy had ordered vegetarian meals and it was not available. Charles was playing steward on that flight. He made an unscheduled landing at a nearby airport and rented a limo to take the passenger to an expensive Indian joint and flew him first class to complete the journey.

Thats Richard Branson. He does that kind of thing because it gets in the news and it is much cheaper than paying for advertising. He is a similar kind of charismatic leader, though.

Re:Personally?

[Scutter (18425)]

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.