Quality of Apple Service Outside USA?

It's fairly well known that you can get good service if you go to an official "Apple Store" in the USA.

However, in a lot of the countries there is no Apple Store. In these countries you buy from an official Apple retailer/reseller. Does Apple hold these retailers to the same standard as the Apple Store in the US? Does anybody have experiences with servicing their products in countries where there is no official Apple Store?

The reason I ask is because I know that for companies like Dell and HP, the quality of service and support varies a lot over the world - even for business products.

I used to live in a country where the only way to get decent service was to find a good local shop who would build you a desktop computer. Typically one local company had a monopoly for distributing a particular brand (e.g. Dell, HP) in that country so they simply did not care. And since they used the same service center for consumer and business support, both markets got equally bad service.

 

It does seem to depend on the country. Here is the countries I have had direct experiance with:

Germany: Good quick service. Replaced LCD screen (one week repair time) and iPhone (one week old) I walked into the store and they just gave me a new phone in the box and I left the old phone.

Turkey: Bit slow but got the job done. Total or 4 weeks to replace main board of macbook pro. Part needed to be ordered from Europe.

Thailand: Bad service. Refused to fix macbook saying it was not covered. Got it fixed when I was in Singapore without problem.

Singapore: Quick service. Hard disk was replaced dropped of Macbook one day picked it up the next.

Indonesia: Pretty good service. Replaced iPhone headset with new one, no questions asked.

All the above were for Apple products purchased in Germany and under Apple Care extended warranty. All within the last 4 years.

 

Thanks. I guess I will have to be careful before recommending Apples to my friends in different countries. They would be very unhappy if they purchased something expensive could not get good service. I would be unhappy too because I would never hear the end of it

 

not sure you want to count it as 'out of usa'.

but Canada has great apple service.

 

I think I can help!

First off Apple does not service iPhones, iPods, or iPads outside of the country purchased. So don't buy your portable product from US, if you want service in canada!

Second, I can explain about about resellers and retailers.

Apple Stores are defined as "Corporate locations". These locations are the only places you can get "Apple Certified" Service on iPhones, iPods, and iPads. However, service usually is just replacing the entire product!

Resellers and Retailers are defined as "Privately Owned" Apple stores. These people are trained by Apple, have all the Apple certifications, and have to provide a "Standard of Care." Believe it or not, resellers get pretty strick penalties if their standard of care isn't up to Apple Standards.

History Lesson:

Apple was started as grass root company with stores only owned and operated by individual owners. In 2002, Apple started building their Corporate locations. Currently, for resellers, its expand or die. The product itself doesn't carry a big enough margin for resellers to stay in business without kickbacks from Apple (kinda like car dealerships).

 

Do you know if Apple actually does check up on the "Standard of Care" of their resellers?

What recourse does the consumer have if a buyer, in a country far from the USA, has a problem with a reseller? I ask because I know how these things work in some countries. What will happen is that one large corporation (say Corporation X) will basically become the primary and only distributor for some Brand. This corporation will then sell to local distributors, or they will use their own local stores to sell the product.

The local store is the point of contact for service. However, if the service is bad, the only thing a person can really do is contact Corporation X. The problem in this situation is that if Corporation X doesn't care (in many countries they really don't care) then you are stuck.

I suppose the person could email Apple USA, but I doubt most are going to go that far. I've lived in countries where nobody expects good service for electronics. They might fight a little but, but a lot of times it's expected that once you have purchased a product and left the showroom, only expect some sort of proper service if the product was defective and you need to exchange it (typically you only have a few days to do this).

So the attitude of the consumer is very different. I doubt they'll contact Apple USA because they'll assume Apple couldn't care less about resellers in foreign countries. Plus, I have a hard time believing that Apple USA will care about an Apple reseller in *random small country* in Asia.

Just so everybody knows, I'm not trying to single out Apple in any way. In some countries the idea of "Customer Service" only exists in the best 5 star hotels. So I'm just trying to get information.

I just have friends who are getting interested in Apple products. Due to exchange rates, the Apple stuff is quite a bit more expensive than other brands. I'd just like to be able to give them accurate information when they ask for my help.

 

I can tell you what i know as a reseller. Apple does check up, they do two things. They do walk ins to check on the retail store, and they also look at the metrics of the customers "after repair" survey. Apple is very demanding to keep those up above 90% statisfaction.

So lets say you get a repair and they don't do it correctly. If you go back in the first month to get the same thing repaired on your computer (no matter where you go) the original repairer location will have some very harsh penalties. I can't tell you exactly, but lets just say it definitely motivates the individual store to do the repair the right way!

As for other countries, Apple does care. They actually keep track in something kind of like a carfax report. You can always call 1800-APL-CARE and they will help you. I have even heard of Apple shipping you a new machine free of charge if a reseller does mess up. While this isn't an everyday scenario (As in very specific circumstances) it goes to show that Apple does care about the end customer.

When it comes down to it, I can only tell you what I hear from people that have talked about it in my store. I do not have personal experiences with foreign Apple stores. What I would suggest is to see where the closest store is to you, cause if its far enough, sometimes you will have to mail your computer to apple to get it fixed anyways.