[…]
The Geniuses I’ve spoken to explain that #Apple’s silence on the issue isn’t just hurting customers, it’s also making it much more difficult for Geniuses to do their job. If a Genius officially puts a replacement #phone sale through on Apple’s internal system before noticing that the replacement phone is also #broken, Apple’s system won’t immediately allow Geniuses to swap it with a third, functioning device.
“If you put it in the [Mobile Genius point of sale system] and can't give them that #shitty 6 Plus that's doing the same thing as their device they came into fix, you personally have to hand them a different one than the #paperwork they signed says, and do another swap through Mobile Genius the next day,” a Genius told me. The customer, of course, doesn’t have to pay for a second replacement phone because it’s within the 90-day #warranty period, but essentially they’re being given off-the-books replacement devices for at least 24 hours until the #system is updated.
More pressing, customers aren’t generally #happy when they’re asked to spend $329 to replace a phone that they didn’t cause to #break.
“In order for you to get a #promotion or #raise as a Genius, they look at customer #satisfaction reviews. With this, you know a lot of times it’s not going to be a good encounter. When your yearly review comes up, your #manager will say, ‘Well, you had a lot of #negative reviews,’” a Genius told me. “And then you say ‘Yeah, they had a phone that they did #nothing to and we asked them to #pay $329 to replace it.’ It affects your #career at Apple.”
[…]
