{"id":446,"date":"2010-04-18T17:54:26","date_gmt":"2010-04-18T22:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/?p=446"},"modified":"2010-04-18T18:24:37","modified_gmt":"2010-04-18T23:24:37","slug":"customer-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/2010\/04\/customer-service.html","title":{"rendered":"Customer Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

After six months of dutifully refreshing the buyer’s guide at MacRumors<\/a> every day, Apple finally announced the upgrades I was waiting for last week. Woohoo! Well, except that now I’m poorer. (Apple’s next innovation should be inexpensive merchandise.)<\/p>\n

So everything was going swimmingly, and I went to bed with visions of Mac-ish sugarplums dancing through my head. Particularly Mac-ish webcams and SD card readers and multi-track mouse pads. And Adium<\/a>. And 10-hour batteries. Oooh the 10-hour batteries.<\/p>\n

Oh, right, batteries. I’d heard somewhere that they weren’t end-user replaceable any more, and while the website says they’re supposed to last the “average user” 5 years, I’m not really an average user. I’ve typically gone through batteries quite a bit faster than battery manufacturers expect. And then I’d heard someone mention that you could buy some service when you first purchase the laptop that will cover you if the battery dies early. Better call about that, because I don’t remember seeing anything like that as an option when I placed my order.<\/p>\n

So, the next morning, I dialed the customer service number.<\/p>\n

Or, I thought <\/em>I’d dialed the customer service number, but the voice on the other end was telling me about distinctly non-computer-related services. Services that require you to be 18 or older to call. Services that, had this been on the web, “safe search” would have kept from showing up in my ill-advised Google search. It took me longer than you’d think necessary to process what I was hearing and the options available to me were I to press 1 to indicate that I’m old enough to participate in these services without making the, er, “customer service personnel” on the other end into felons.<\/p>\n

Surely <\/em>I’d dialed correctly. I squinted at the phone’s read-out while the automated voice waited for me to get over my cold feet and press 1. The number looked right. Every one of the last four digits was correct and in the right order. I hadn’t dialed 866 or 888 instead of 800. And then I saw the problem. 4s and 7s are very close together on the keypad, and I’d dialed 646 rather than 676.<\/p>\n

That’s when I realized the automated woman on the other end was reiterating the services she could make available to me. Ack! I hung up quickly and considered disinfecting my hands. And the phone.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Apple, Inc (by me)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Instead I very very carefully dialed the Apple customer service number. This time the voice on the other end welcomed me to the Apple customer service line and informed me, “I am an automated system that can handle complete sentences. So tell me, how can I help you today?”<\/p>\n

“I have a question about the macbook I just ordered,” I told him, wondering just how good this sentence understanding was.<\/p>\n

“I can tell you about your recent order,” Mr. Customer Service responded cheerily, and proceeded to read off the items on my recent order and their order status.<\/p>\n

When prompted, I told him that of these three items, I had a question about the Macbook.<\/p>\n

He then proceeded to tell me about that order, and its order status, and asked if I had further questions.<\/p>\n

“Yes, I have a question about the Macbook’s battery,” I clarified, wondering why I kept up this pretense of speaking in complete sentences to a computer.<\/p>\n

He then proceeded to tell me about the Macbook order again, just as cheerily as the first time but with no new information, and then asked if I had further questions.<\/p>\n

“Customer service representative,” I said, dispensing with complete sentences entirely.<\/p>\n

“If you just said something, I didn’t quite catch that. Please speak a little more loudly,” Mr. Customer Service suggested.<\/p>\n

“Customer. Service. Representative.” I enunciated clearly and loudly.<\/p>\n

“I’d be happy to connect you to a customer service representative,” at least he didn’t seem to have had his feelings hurt. “One moment please.”<\/p>\n

When the connection went through, the human on the other end of the line said a couple of sentences that sounded like they should have made sense to me. They sounded exactly like sentences, and I could even tell which were the dependent and the independent clauses, but I couldn’t wrap my brain around the actual content of the sentences.<\/p>\n

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t understand any of that.”<\/p>\n

“Oh, you must have dialed into the Spanish line by mistake. But don’t worry, I can help you anyway.” And she proceeded to tell me that I’d luckily and unknowingly already signed up for the service that would cover me in case the battery isn’t up to my abuse.<\/p>\n

I wonder why Mr. Customer Service thought I would like the Spanish version. I suppose he thought that if, despite his advanced sentence-understanding capabilities, I hadn’t been able to make him understand me, I must have been speaking another language to begin with. Or maybe his feelings were <\/em>hurt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After six months of dutifully refreshing the buyer’s guide at MacRumors every day, Apple finally announced the upgrades I was waiting for last week. Woohoo! Well, except that now I’m poorer. (Apple’s next innovation should be inexpensive merchandise.) So everything was going swimmingly, and I went to bed with visions of Mac-ish sugarplums dancing through … Continue reading Customer Service<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-me-and-my-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":450,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions\/450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}