Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

In this and other iterations of my blog, I’ve written about the kinds of responses I’ve gotten from Apple when it comes to warranty repairs or similar kinds of service. I mention it not because Apple offers something others don’t, but because they’re so good at it, at least in my experience.

Here’s the latest example. Yesterday afternoon, I discovered the left earbud in the set that came with my iPod, which I purchased 18 months ago, was dead. At about 3:30 PM, I went to the Apple support site and requested a replacement set as part of the iPod AppleCare I purchased last year. This morning at 8:51 AM, the DHL delivery person arrived at my door with the replacements. I’m pretty impressed by that.

Some reader of this entry is thinking, “That’s no big deal. Company X did the same for me when I needed a replacement part. So what?” That’s all fine and dandy Ñ I’m not asserting that Apple is the only company able to respond so quickly. I feel compelled to point this out because there are so many bad service departments, so many companies that do an awful job of dealing with customers (Volkswagen enters my mind), so many companies that are a serious pain in the ass to deal with. Unhappily, those companies seem to be the norm. Good experiences are more rare, and when one happens, I’m happy to point it out.