Apple Kahala — Local services in Honolulu

6/10/24, I went to the Kahala Apple Store and bought a new iPhone 15 plus and was totally pleased with it. On 6/13/24, I went at 10am to turn in my iPhone SE as a trade in. The kid who was “helping” me was bragging about how he’s been with the store for 3 1/2 years, but an Apple employee for 14 years. I was getting very concerned as I watched him rushing through all the screens, only to watch in horror as he said, “oh oh”. He had deleted everything on my new iPhone and I mean everything 🤬. He said he could get it back and asked me who my cellular service was with. I told him Consumer Cellular and watched his mouth drop. He didn’t know what to do. I asked him if he had done this to another customer before. He said, “a couple of times”. It was all I could do to control my anger by looking away in disgust.

Indy Mendoza Jr, a manager came to help and we used their phone to call Consumer Cellular to restore my phone and electronically install a new SIM card l. But Indy couldn’t access my email because my iPhone was dead 💀.

I had to drive home and get my iPad and return to the store to access my email and let them figure out how to install the new eSIM card. It took a while, but I was lucky that I had everything backed up to my Cloud account. Otherwise, all my contacts, calendar, and everything important would have been completely lost. Indy and another manager, Jara, worked on my phone until 4pm, 6 hours after I walked in at 10am. Both Indy and Jara said they have my contact information and would be contacting me to offer an accessory or something to try and make up for what they did to me.

What should have taken 15 minutes, took 6 hours that day. I had to return home and fight the traffic back with a water main break a block before the Mall. I couldn’t make the appointments and visit my 98 year old mother, much less call anyone to explain what happened, let alone the deal with the amount of stress and anxiety from the whole experience.

Two days later, I noticed my McAfee security wasn’t working, and I had to have one of their specialist take another two hours deleting and reinstalling their app on my iPhone, iPad and laptop.

Still, my phone was not working properly, my voice mail needed to be reset by Consumer Cellular, and I still wasn’t receiving certain calls from people trying to get ahold of me.

The following Thursday, I went back to the Kahala store to speak to Indy and Jara who never called to follow up what they promised. They weren’t there, and a senior manager, Nicole Lute, said she had heard about what happened and would have them call me by Sunday.

The following Wednesday, I called the store because no one had called me and I was feeling like they were Ghosting me. They weren’t available but Nicole emailed me saying she had called me three times and my phone immediately went to email. I was holding my phone in my hand the whole time waiting for them to respond, but my phone didn’t even ring. I checked my call log and her calls didn’t even show up as missed or anything.

I called the store and finally was able to speak to Nicole. I told her I have been way more than patient and even more, tried to be understanding, but I have never been treated as badly and feeling ignored by anyone else in my life. I was ready to file a complaint with the local consumer protection office, Apple, and Yelp. Nicole requested that I come in the next morning and she would personally take care of everything.

The next morning, she had to have a specialist work on my phone so that calls to my phone would ring and work with Consumer Cellular to properly set up my voice mail. It’s still not how it was before but it’s good enough for now.

After more than 15 hours of my time, stress, frustration and being totally inconvenienced, my iPhone is still not working like the day I bought it from them. Nicole gave me a car charger, and a magnetic charger as a way of making up for what they did to me and my phone, but I preferred that they didn’t screwup everything on my...

As background information, my new MacBook was incredibly slow and showed a constant error insisting on an Apple restart. So, as a normal person, I TRUSTED an Apple store's GENIUS bar to help. I went down there and were greeted by a DECEIVING behavior from the so called geniuses. Although they posed great behavior and professioalism, it was a hoax. A few minutes past and a genius came over to "help". He looked at my computer and ran constant tests which were pointless to say the least. I was starting to lose my patience with him as nearly an hour gradually pasted. After all his useless acts to help my computer, he gave up and CLAIMED that I have physcially damaged the hardware itself. I could not believe it as I was always careful with this insufficent $1500 product. I doubted it. He then gave me two options. One, to send it all the way to Apple's headquarters and repair it there for an insane $500 cost. Second, to buy a completely NEW $1600 laptop that would likely be in the same place I am in the following years. He also took advantage ( I do not blame him as he is trying to do his job) of my situation to capatalize to spend more money. In the end, I went back home and told my 10 year old daughter about my situation. She was concerned and asked if I updated it recently. I told her no as I am not an avid user of this laptop or keep up to date with the new software updates. She helped me update it and in about two hours, I am here writing this review about how terrible and lack of proper intelligence the GENIUS bar was.

I spent two hours, about one month with a garbage laptop, to be told by a GENIUS that he could not fix the problem and insisted on spending more of my money, when my 10 year old daughter fixed it with a click of three buttons.

THANK YOU GREATLY FOR THE LACKLUSTER HELP FROM...

Just fix what you BROKE!

Around August i received and email from Apple stating that my MacBook Pro had a battery recall and that the replacement would be free. I made an appointment and took my computer in, in early August. Everything seemed easy and went well. I picked up my computer up about a week later. During the battery replacement process they replace the keyboard and the trackpad, not too bad right?

First issue I noticed was that the right arrow key only worked sporadically. I called the store up explained the issue and took it back in. Took about 15 minutes, but they got key working.

Later i noticed a second issue, part of the trackpad doesn’t fully click, feels like there is something stuck in there. Took it back again. 10 days later, i understand they are busy, i get a call from the store saying that they cant fix the trackpad because there is water damage and they dont repair anything with water damage. I just wanted them to fix the part that they broke.

So somewhere between them taking my computer and getting to the repair water somehow got halfway down the inside of my computer an caused some damage.

They recommended a $1475 fix or that i could by a new MacBook Pro. Go figure.

So now after a FREE battery replacement i now have a broken trackpad, and have been without a computer for a total of 17 days, i need a computer for my job.

I would recommend the Waikiki store and i should have gone there in the first place. Repairs are much quicker and i probably wouldn’t be in...