Apple Eastview — Local services in Town of Victor

Be very wary of this store's "Genius" bar.. specifically the woman named Piper -- I caught her telling me a pretty ridiculous lie -- in the most straight-faced, condescending manner I've ever witnessed. I have been a fairly devoted fan of Apple products for most of my life.. and I have had no problems with the company until now. I walked into this Apple store to a friendly greeting and I was connected to the "Genius" bar within 15 minutes. This was great. Piper was to help me and I explained I was unable to charge my iPhone 5 due to a broken charging port/dock connector -- I was fairly certain this was the issue based on the way the issue evolved.. I'd also looked it up in several areas online and discussed it over the phone with multiple electronics repair shops. Piper, like an over confident doctor, didn't even hear what I said but instead started brushing the charging port and telling me the issue was pocket lint (I had already inspected it with a pen-light and cleaned it at home).. She seemed very surprised when the phone still failed to charge after 5 minutes of haphazard brushing with some oversized plastic bristles.. I again asked if it could be a dead charging port... 5 more minutes of idle chatter while she wiggled the brush around in an obviously distracted, ineffective manner.. still not charging. " Let me take it back to the 'geniuses' in the back room to see if they can open it up and see any problems. Piper came back to us after about 10 minutes with a very fake look of remorse and defeat.. "I'm afraid you phone isn't going to make it.. they opened it up and there's quite a bit of damage.. looks like a lot of red dust inside" [During our 15 minutes of idle chatter we had explained to Piper that we'd just gotten back from a trip to volunteer in Africa and she had already asked if it had been really dusty]. I started really doubting Piper's veracity at this point as I knew my phone had been safely tucked away for the duration of the trip. I asked if I could see the "red dust"... "sorry, but no -- anyone who handles the phones back there has to have a special anti-static bracelet" ( I have no idea why that would prohibit me from just seeing the inside of the phone). Piper acted as though she had just announced the death of my family member, her face stricken with pity and sympathy for my difficult situation. BUT she had a solution! She offered me a new phone for only $300! But things weren't adding up or feeling right in my head... I told her that I had spoken to a few electronic stores and they had said it was an easily replaceable part they could fix for $40 or $50 dollars. At this point Piper became pretty snippy and made it clear the discussion of options was over.. "Apple does not consider this a replaceable part, and if you try to replace it we will not offer you a $300 replacement anymore.. because it won't be the original phone." ...this was confusing as she had just announced the phone was hopelessly trashed and would be tossed out rather than receiving any possible repair work. So -- I took it to a repair shop the next day and they opened it in front of me and tested everything.. there was NO dust inside. The phone worked perfectly except the charging port/dock connector was dead -- a simple inexpensive fix. Apple has earned it's great reputation through incredible products, but does it really need to lie and create such unfair business practices to make even more money off of it's...

As a loyal Apple customer for over a decade and a technically savvy user, my recent experience at the Eastview Apple Retail Store has left me extremely disappointed and concerned about declining service standards.

My MacBook Air M2 suffers from persistent, unexplained reboots that interfere with both my graduate studies and my professional work - issues that remain unresolved despite active AppleCare+ coverage and multiple visits to this location.

The Genius Bar's dismissive approach to troubleshooting has been particularly alarming. Despite my technical background and detailed documentation of the problem, the staff immediately dismissed it as a software issue without any substantive investigation. The hardware diagnostics performed were cursory at best and failed to identify the root cause of these debilitating crashes. This superficial approach is inconsistent with Apple's reputation for technical excellence, especially in light of emerging discussions among tech analysts about potential reliability concerns with the M2 chip.

What I find most troubling is the contradictory use of environmental policies to avoid repair. While I fully support sustainability efforts, claiming that environmental initiatives prevent servicing a functional device that has become unreliable directly contradicts Apple's own 2030 goals, which emphasize repair over replacement. This rationale feels less like genuine environmental concern and more like an excuse to avoid addressing complex hardware issues.

The service experience itself was shockingly unprofessional compared to my positive interactions at ten other Apple Stores worldwide. Several employees displayed open indifference, including a manager who offered canned responses rather than constructive solutions. My technical insights were repeatedly disregarded, reducing what should have been a collaborative troubleshooting process to a condescending exchange. Being treated as an uninformed customer, despite my academic work analyzing Apple's design practices and supply chain sustainability, adds insult to injury.

This isn't about seeking special treatment - it's about receiving the competent service Apple promises. The store's failure to resolve or properly escalate the issue points to systemic problems in technical training and customer service. When a $1,200 device becomes unreliable within its warranty period, customers deserve more than scripted responses and environmental excuses that contradict the company's sustainability messaging.

While I remain hopeful that Apple will address these service gaps, I must caution others about the current state of the Eastview facility. The combination of inadequate diagnostics, dismissive attitudes, and policy abuse creates unnecessary obstacles for customers with legitimate hardware issues. For a company that has built its reputation on both innovation and customer satisfaction, this is an alarming departure from...

I will never purchase another Apple product again after my experience at this store. I brought my Mac desktop in for a repair as it wasn't opening applications, typing lagging, etc. Apple Support had me wipe the disk twice and then restore from backup, but the problem persisted, so they told me to bring it in for a repair.

As I was dropping off the computer along with my hard drive (so they can transfer my information back over if necessary), I EXPLICITLY asked the store employee that, if they had to change anything in the hard drive backup itself, that they make an additional backup first so that I can revert my computer to its original state if anything went wrong. The employee acknowledged this and agreed they would do so.

Fast forward four days, I go in to pick up my computer. The new employee giving me my computer says "Yeah everything is good now, I mean you'll just have to set back up your desktop but we transferred everything from your hard drive."

I get home and turn on my computer. All of my Firefox and Chrome history and passwords, which is four years worth of absolutely crucial information which I need for my career, is gone. I look at my external hard drive, and there is only the one backup in there, which is the one I made prior to dropping it off.

As I'm looking through the backup, they COMPLETELY DELETED every single file associated with the Firefox and Chrome apps. Who knows what else they deleted along with it. When I called Apple Support to file a complaint, a senior advisor called the store who relayed to him that "they were unable to create a new backup due to a problem with my hard drive." I know this is a blatant lie because the hard drive has more than enough space for three additional backups, let alone one. Additionally, if they could not create this new backup, they should have called me to ask me how I'd like to proceed before PERMANENTLY ALTERING AND DELETING my private information. The senior advisor then claimed that "this information from Firefox and Chrome wouldn't be saved on my backup anyway," which is an even more egregious lie because I had restored from the backup TWICE before bringing it in and all of this information was still on my computer both times.

Instead of performing an actual professional repair on my computer, which is why I brought it in, they lazily wiped the disk and took the absolute easiest route to "fixing" my computer, in the process setting me back four years of my life. It's literally grounds for a lawsuit and I demand reimbursement. I've filed a complaint with Apple but let's see how long it takes for them to get back to me, if they do at all.

Simply put, don't trust anything you own with this store. The entire mood and demeanor of the staff is one of rudeness, laziness, and incompetence....