stuart midgley

Well, I just made my first visit to the new flagship Apple Store here in Sydney.

There’s no doubting that the design of the store is magnificent. The layout, the design, the quality of the shopfittings are all excellent - just what we expect from flagship stores. There are, however, three annoying problems that I noticed - and from listening to the comments of the people around me, I wasn’t the only one.

1. It’s H O T inside!!! This has been noted on by other media earlier in the week and I have to agree - the store is an oven.

Sitting, waiting to see a Genius it just got hotter, and hotter, and hotter. All around people were taking off their jackets and sweaters. It must have cracked 30 degrees celcius in there. Either the air con is not powerful enough or the temperature in the store is turned up really high.

Why the temp would be deliberately that high I can’t imagine, so it must be the power of the AC. If it’s that hot today, in the depths of winter, then it will be increadibly hot in summer. With all that glass - and a glass roof on the atrium as well - they are going to need to do serious work on their AC or their staff will start collapsing come January. Hard to believe that Apple would miss something that obvious but I can’t think of any other explanation.

2. The genius bar booking system is hopeless. I went up to a concierge and made a booking. 50 minutes later I’m still sitting there watching people who came after me, who the concierges missed, being put instantly to the front of the queue after they complained about waiting. While I sat there and waited even longer.

The concierge on duty changed so there was no one there to remember that I had been waiting. The screens with names and appointment times were working but not being used - the first concierge told me ignore them. Neither the first or the second concierge could tell me how much longer I’d have to wait. I asked for an approximation three times over the 50 minutes - I got told ‘soon’ each time. That’s not very helpful.

To make the wait more annoying, the Genius bar has spaces for 20 geniuses yet they only had 10 working. Why would you have half your staff off on the first Saturday after the grand opening??? Do they know how annoying it is to sit there waiting, thinking about how the owners of the store were too cheap to staff it properly?

3. They don’t know how to handle people that well.

So finally, after 50 minutes, I approached the concierge and told him to take my name off the list because I didn’t want to wait any longer. Suprise, suprise, I was instantly offered a genius, but by then I didn’t want to stay there any longer. The heat was unbearable and I wanted to ride my motorbike home before it got dark. I told the concierge and the genius that I wan’t interested any more and headed for the stairwell.

They then followed me the sixty feet to the stairwell trying to get me to go back to be served by the genius! Their language was appalling - “So you don’t want to see a genius?” in a ‘what’s wrong with you?’ tone, when they should have been saying “sorry you had to wait so long while we jumped people into the queue ahead of you”.

‘Get stuffed’ was my mental thought, although I didn’t say it. I did say that I’d been waiting 50 minutes, that I’d had enough and that I’d be going back to my local Apple store in future where they actually want to serve me.

Having escaped this dual salesperson attack I made my way down the stairs to the iPod level. Just as I made it around to the next stairwell to head down to the ground floor I feel someone tap me on the shoulder. It’s another genius, again asking me ‘don’t you want to get your device looked at?’. Well, yes, I’m thinking, but not by you. Where do they get off touching customers? Don’t they know how invasive that is?

Finally, after telling him NO for the 3rd time, I get down the final stairs and out onto the street. Freedom and beautifully cool air at last!

Someone really needs to tell those people how not to upset their customers. Organisation, phrasing statements and questions the right way and not being agggressive in body language are all really important in sales and they screwed up on all three counts today.

I’m sure the store will be a raging success but I for one won’t be going back.