Apple 4th Street — Attraction in Berkeley

TL;DR: If you plan to go to this store you "should make an appointment first," as one staff member helpfully told me after waiting over an hour for service they said only have a wait time of 25 minutes.

Once I actually got service, the employee was very sweet. However, that was only after an absolutely absurd check in process and wait time. I would give the staff member who helped me six stars, but this review is about the store.

Long Version: (Times are approximate, +/- five minutes) I walked in at 5:45pm yesterday with the intention of trading in several devices to then use the credit to purchase an iPad Air. At check-in, they said my wait would be 20-35 minutes. At 6:35, a staff member came over to tell me I couldn't sit at the table I was at because it was for the genius bar appointments only. There were at least three open tables, and zero seating in the rest of the store. He then pulled up my check-in and added a note about the table I was at because the staff "wouldn't be able to find me" in the no man's land between genius bar and the demo unit tables.

At 6:50, I went and found a staff member to ask what my wait time might be because it was now more than double (almost triple) the original estimate. The gentleman could not find me in the system, but said that sometimes meant a staff member had been assigned to me and just hadn't found me yet on the store floor. After he walked away to check, another staff member (I believe the original lady who checked me in) said "walk-ins are just like that sometimes" and that I "should make an appointment next time."

After a few more minutes sitting at the table, a woman who I presume was a manager or supervisor came over to assure me they hadn't forgotten me but it would be another 15-20 minutes because there were two people ahead of me. Fortunately, this time the estimate was true. At 7:10 a very kind gentleman came and helped me through the process. They even had the exact iPad model I wanted in stock, so I was able to walk out with that instead of having to buy it online and wait another week to receive it. However, I did not walk out of the store with my business complete until 7:50. I take ownership of 20 minutes of that time due to confusion and inattention on my own part, however 7:30 is still absurd.

The most outrageous part for me though, is the lack of communication. I am incredibly angry to have lost my entire evening to this. My plans yesterday were fluid. Had they told me it would be over an hour wait, I could very easily have gone to get dinner and come back. But, because I had to wait an hour and a half to even START my transaction, I had to cancel all other plans I had last night.

I admittedly do not know what might have caused this. Maybe it requires a specialized/genius bar technician to process trade ins. Maybe it's covid precautions, as several businesses have moved to appointment only to control customer flow (however they typically have this posted at the door, and do not offer walk-ins at all.) Maybe the system glitched and lost my place in the queue. Maybe I got put in a lower priority queue for non-purchase customers since I forgot to mention I wanted to buy an iPad at the door. Hell, maybe their sales tactic is to starve and exhaust their customers so that they can take advantage of their clouded judgement. I know I am most certainly wondering whether the upgrade was worth all of this, and that I will likely never purchase another apple product. I was already one foot out the door due to poor service at other stores and the prohibitive costs, but this experience has pretty much sealed the deal for me.

Regardless of the reasons though, don't come here without an appointment, since "walk-ins are just like...

Without a doubt, this the worst customer experience I have ever had with Apple.

On June 2nd, I order an IPad Air online to be shipped to the store. (Supposedly to arrive on the 6th). The 6th came and went, so did the 7th, 8th, etc... on the 12th, I get curious and see why I cannot pick up my iPad yet, it's been shipped to the store and I know that this Apple Store has iPads in stock (exact color and space size that I ordered). Before I head to the store, I call Apple customer service to make sure that my IPad is there and I am told it arrived.

I head to the store, ask one of the employees to see if they can get my IPads, and I was told no, it's not ready for pick up yet. To their credit, I admit I didn't have the email yet saying it's ready for pick up, but I'm getting a bit anxious since it was supposed to arrive the week prior. I call Apple support again while I am at the store and ask them why my iPad is not ready for pick up since I was told that it did arrive at the store. They tell me that the iPad arrived on the 7th, so it should be in the back. The customer service rep then asked me to give my phone a manager at the store to see if they can get to the bottom of this.

After about a half hour and some back and forth, they store told the customer service rep on my phone that the box is empty and my IPad (the one I already paid in full) is missing, the manager hands the phone back to me and then heads off to grab another iPad. (The manager never told me directly that the iPad was missing). Here I am thinking ok, so they can probably swap it for one they have in stock, but no.

I'm still talking with the customer service rep and I get the following options. 1. I can buy an entirely different iPad and wait to get a refund for the one that went missing, or 2. I can wait for a replacement to be shipped to the store in a few days. I took option 2, since I wasn't in the position to buy 2 iPads and wait for a refund to my card.

Now on the 17th, I still don't have a my iPad. I see a change to my online order that a replacement is being shipped, but there is no further updates there.

I will say this, the online customer service reps are trying to get this to work out and they said they would ship an Apple Pencil pro with the iPad as sort of a sorry for the trouble, so I will give them credit there. Yet, this whole experience has been exhausting, I've spent several hours on the phone with customer service reps at this point and the store didn't mention the iPad was missing until I went in person and asked. If I had know it would be this much trouble, I would have bought...

Five stars for customer service: everyone there is polite, helpful and knows their stuff. Shout out to all the bilingual employees! I hope y’all are getting a pay raise because y’all are doing the work of two.

My experience with feedback:

I visited this location three times. I made an appointment to fix my phone and they didn’t have the parts, so they had to order them meaning I had to come back. It’s easy to tell a customer to come back a different day but if there was a better system in place to make sure the parts are there prior to our scheduled appointment, this could have been avoided.

My feedback would be, please ask prior to the appointment what we’re going in for and order all the parts before we arrive because I felt that my scheduled appointment was pointless.

I came in the following week to drop off my phone, all went well, they had it ready in a few hours. I had insurance so I paid a minimal fee which was great. I noticed my phone had a low battery life and I told the person who helped me that they should charge the phones prior to returning the phone to the customers, she agreed, and said there weren’t enough charging stations. So I would recommend more charging stations.

Not the end of the world, I was happy to have my phone back but when I got to my next destination I realized I had to reprogram my phone and I am not tech savvy so I had no idea what to do. I followed the steps as best I could, until I couldn’t get past a certain point where a verification code was to be sent to me, that u never received. I called customer service, and they gave me instructions, but we were unsuccessful with activating my phone.

Feedback: before letting a customer walk out of the store, please ask them if they need help setting up their phone. Because now, what I had to do was come Back the following day to get this fixed when it could have easily been addressed when I got my phone back.

So I reluctantly came in the following day, on a Saturday (supper packed) and I was able to get my phone activated. Mind you, I was there for over two hours and had to continuously add money to the parking meter. It was unfortunate I had to come back multiple times to get my phone fixed when it could have been done with one visit.

Again, Everyone who worked there did a wonderful job with customer service, I just hope that changes are make to improve this matter for...