iPhone! (or Why The Apple Store In Chatswood Sucks)

Run With The Crowd Much?

My lovely little Sony Ericsson bought a farm. Just in its 24th month of its contract too. You seriously wonder about these phones they sell you on contract. I won't go into the details but basically the phone I've loved and cherished bit the dust and so it was finally time to go join the Apple-Throng and get an iPhone.

My retail Apple Products supplier of choice has been Maccentric in Chatswood for no good reason other than I've been going there for years, but it turns out Apple doesn't let these Apple stores sell iPhones. Only the Apple stores and phone company outlets can sell them.

So it was off to the Apple Store in Chatswood Chase. I must have waited 20 minutes to get the attention of one of their sales people and that person was whisked away by some other customer and never finished explaining things. Another dude started talking about what it's like working there with another customer across one of those demonstration benches from me.

Turns out the dude and the salesperson talked about cars, dogs and then the fact the salesperson was working there for the second day and how wonderful it was to work for the Apple Store. You could have gagged me with a spoon. Dude, this is your second day! Serve some frickin' buying customers, you toad!

Eventually I got the attention of yet another salesperson who as then taken away from me by another irate customer. "For Fuck's sake!" I muttered and walked out.

I ended up going to the Testra shop to buy my iPhone and had them switch over my SIM card and add the data pack on to my bill. Not hard. Even a tired old un-tech-savvy kind of dude could see me through. It was much less frustrating than the Apple Store experience.

It's not the first time the Apple Store's been like this - it's always like this. In the end I've had to pretty much snatch what I've wanted off the shelf and grab a sales person and wave the boxes in front of their faces to get them to serve me and let me pay my money and get out of that place. It's singularly the worst retail experience I can think of.

Which explains why I keep going back to Maccentric for my Apple paraphernalia. It's not because Maccentric are particularly excellent, it's because the Apple Store in Chatswood is AWFUL. It's retail, it's not that hard, but they make it look like it's the Hadron Collider. What in Steve Job's name are they doing in the retail business when they can't even do this stuff right?