Apple Brandon — Local services in Brandon

My 4 month old iPhone 7 Plus had started leaking this thick, black, and sticky substance out of one side. Apple Support told me "Use gloves when handling it and use it as little as possible." They suggested I take my phone in for a walk-in and get it looked at. So I stuck my phone in a zip-lock bag and drove 45+ minutes to Brandon as early as I could the next day.

I came in around 11am and was told I had a 45 minute wait time and they would text me when they were ready for me. I thought, 'far enough, I did come in without an appointment.' I went to walk around with my two small children (ages 2 and 3) and my special needs 11 year old son to kill some time. I received a text about 15 minutes later saying they were ready for me. I got another text as I was walking in the door, about 7 minutes later, telling me that I hadn't checked in yet. Funny how Apple doesn't like to wait. After checking in, big surprise, I had to wait almost a half hour to be seen. The gentlemen I spoke with seemed knowledgeable but a little condescending. Honestly, I can't really blame him. Here is a very tired looking woman with kids in tow, holding a iPhone in a zip-lock bag. Not my most shining moment I'll admit.

He told me that it was the sealant meant to keep the phone water prof and it wasn't anything serious. I asked why it had started leaking and he said something along the line of a possible manufacturing error. He told me it will be about 2 hours to fix and offered to schedule an appointment for another day. I explained to him that it was very difficult for me to get child care and I live some 45 minutes away. And lets be honest, 2 hours to have a phone fixed for free is nothing to complain about.

2 hours came and went. Okay, they looked busy, I'll wait another half hour for the text telling me my phone is done. After the half hour mark (2 and a half hours after handing over my phone) I stepped up to a young lady at the store entrance. She asked me if she could help me. I said I was just curious on the status of my phone. I gave her my first and last name upon her request, and she suddenly became short with me and said "it's not done yet" and she turned to walk away. I stopped her and asked if there was an ETA or some timeline on it and she just looked at me and said, "no" and walked away. This set me back a bit and I was shocked as to how rude this woman was being. I shook it off and went on continuing to keep my kids calm and happy.

After another half hour, the kids had enough (now 4 hours total). I came back to ask if my phone was done, fully prepared to tell them that I'll just come back the next day or so to pick it up. The same young woman greeted me and I gave her my name and asked if my phone was ready. She was again very short and rude with me and told me they did not have a phone in my name, even though she was the one that just looked up my name earlier. She called the back asking for a phone matching mine and then asked if it was in another name. I told her the phone was purchased in my fiance's name, but was registered and checked in on my name. She then said my fiance's name and I confirmed that was his name. She then gestured to the back and said, "talk to them in the back" again, she turned to walk away. I said "I dropped off the phone in my name" trying to figure out why the name attached to my phone had changed in a half hour. She was just like, "yeah, okay" and continued to walk away. Her rudeness set me back again but I stopped myself from saying something because I had my kids with me. The guy who gave me my phone said that it was all fixed but looked like it was opened once before sounding more like a accusation then an observation. I told him it was never opened and left. Why risk voiding the 8 months left on the warranty?

I would give more stars if it wasn't for the rudeness of the woman at the entrance, the name change attached to my phone, and the feeling of being suspected of tampering with my phone. I would rather risk driving threw miles of construction on I4 to get to the...

Subject: Formal Complaint – Poor Customer Service and Hygiene at Braddon Store

Dear Store Manager, I am writing to formally lodge a complaint regarding a disappointing experience I had at your Braddon store. I believe this matter requires urgent attention, as it reflects poorly on the standards expected from your business.

During my visit, I observed a male sales attendant behaving in a very disrespectful manner toward customers. He was speaking in a foreign language via earphones while working, and continued to do so even when interacting with someone who appeared to be a personal acquaintance. This behavior was unprofessional and showed a lack of regard for the other customers waiting to be served.

When he did serve customers, his demeanour was dismissive and unwelcoming. In my case, I decided not to proceed with a purchase due to the unpleasant interaction. I then used the store's restroom, which was in an extremely poor condition — it smelled foul and appeared to be unhygienic and poorly maintained.

Afterward, I returned to browse the food display and selected a traveller's pie and a 250ml V drink from the advertised special for $5.00. I also took two small sauce sachets from the display nearby and placed everything in a paper bag. At the counter, I was charged $6.00. When I questioned the price, the attendant told me the sauces were $0.50 each. I pointed out that this was not clearly advertised and appeared misleading, as it gave the impression the sauces were included in the meal deal. His response was dismissive and rude.

At that point, I declined to purchase the food and asked to pay for fuel only. I had already spent approximately $130.00 on fuel, and this interaction left a very poor impression.

Additionally, the sales attendant himself appeared unkempt — he had noticeable body odour, unpleasant breath, and visibly dirty hands, which raises serious concerns about hygiene standards in your store.

This experience was unacceptable. I urge your management to take the following actions:

Review and reinforce hygiene and grooming standards for all staff.

Provide customer service training to ensure respectful and professional interactions.

Ensure pricing is transparent and clearly displayed, especially for promotional items.

Maintain clean and sanitary facilities for customers.

Lastly, I want to highlight that I, like many customers, have options — and this experience has made me seriously consider not returning to your Braddon location. I hope this feedback is taken seriously and leads to immediate...

Dismissive, condescending, rude and disrespectful are how multiple employees, including the lead/supervisor, acted toward me on multiple visits. There seems to be more of a priority to churn out appointments than to actually assist customers with their issues. If you purchased your Apple product from another location, their first instinct seems to be to just return it at your point of purchase instead of figuring out if it actually needs to be returned. My family and I made three trips to this location in the past month with zero real assistance. Most of the employees I interacted with never really seemed to care or show compassion about what any of the issues were. “Just take it back to Target” or “I would take it back to AT&T” was always their go-to “solution”. On our first trip, we brought our new iPad Air and Apple Pencil 2 in because we couldn’t get them to connect. Instead of troubleshooting the iPad or Pencil, an employee just told us to take it back to Target and spent less than 5 minutes with us. After driving around to multiple Targets to find another, the new one still didn’t work. Maybe if the employee had taken five more minutes to assist, she could’ve easily advised us that the pencil actually wasn’t compatible with our iPad and we actually needed the Pencil Pro. She easily could’ve made a sale and made our day, but she wasn’t concerned. It’s absolutely my fault for purchasing the wrong one, but I would expect an Apple “genius” to easily catch that for me. Prepare for the little manager to have an attitude and be aggressive immediately, no matter the problem. I had a separate issue outside of the pencil and my brief interaction with damon felt like he made up his mind about me before even meeting me. “This conversation is done” is what I think he assumes is his ‘finishing-move’ as he eyeballs security the whole time, but it’s really just his way of not dealing with things. People that act like him and some of his employees make you easily want to purchase an Android product. I will gladly drive out my way to a different Apple Store in the future. I wouldn’t trust these same people to actually fix...