Customers say Apple's online store has become less satisfying to shop - Page 2

Some of them are actually not trolling, sometimes they're just not up to the sycophantic standards of others. [this is not a jab at you]

Exactly. That was my point.

It has changed a bit cosmetically though difficult to navigate? Please.

The only thing that might make it a bit easier is a more direct link such as store . apple . com /imac/order . html or something instead of php or whatever they're using now.

 

Being critical of Apple, if and when criticism is justified, isn't trolling, but, most people don't bother listing the Apple products they own when they do that. It's definitely a red flag that the poster is likely a variant concern troll.

This is so dumb. I'm not saying there isn't always a better way to do things. I just think this article and the research it's based on are a bit pointless. These sites all do different things. They should each focus on why they are doing and just do it simple and well. One click up or down is not going to have such an impact on people's lives. Being confusing is. Apple insider had been shit lately. Post some opinionated articles about the future moves apple might make instead if just reporting rumors from every inch of the Internet it's boring and uninteresting.

Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this. If you think otherwise I would love to hear others opinions.

 

If they're not trolling, it doesn't need to be said. If the complaint is a valid one, it will stand on its own as it is, without any "proof of ownership" for "legitimacy".

how is it not easy to browse? they have categories you can browse through

In my opinion, they have a splash page with 6 categories (giant icons). 2 rows of 3:

1. Shop iPhone
2. Shop iPod
3. Shop iPad
4. Shop Mac
5. Accessories
6. Clearance

(Text links underneath for Education / Corporate Portal Pricing Sales/Support)

Save all those promo Ads until you reach the portal you selected, and have all the details below instead of everything crammed together.

When it comes to purchasing big-ticket items like their macs and phones, it's just fine. It's the little stuff like accessories that have a lot to be desired in terms of navigation. Just too many clicks to find anything of interest.

This is where Amazon does a good job. I could find the tiniest little thing with zero problem, and arguably get more detail about that accessory than what is available on Apple's site.

There is definitely room for improvement.

As a bit of an aside, I'm with Fido in Canada, and updated my iPhone to 6.0.2. Yesterday I went to use my wifi hotspot for the first time since the upgrade, to tether my iPad, and nothing happened. I went to try it again, and the option for 'personal hotspot' was gone! Anyone else have encountered this? 

Yeah, right.

 

From the many instances I have seen I would say that the actual trolls are well in the minority and it seems that many times the person is criticized more for listing their credentials than for what they actually have to say.

 

... but, yes, I do see what you are saying.

 

Here's an area where Apple could certainly improve its store...

 

Go here,

 

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC461LL/A/apple-60w-magsafe-power-adapter-for-macbook-and-13-inch-macbook-pro

 

Now, change the product to the 45 or 85W power adapter. (Right side, below Add to Cart.) Notice that the information at the top of the page, and the "Ratings & Reviews", changes to the power adapter you selected. However, the "Overview" section still describes the 60W adapter and the "Questions & Answers" section remains the same.

 

You forgot the /s tag Nothing drastically has changed. My only quibble is the product reviews which sometimes review from the same author being placed side by side under different headings e.g. under 'Most helpful' and Most recent'. Seriously, of all my e-commerce sites, Amazon is the most difficult to navigate, search and narrow down in my book. Period/

The number one reason I HATE amazon.com is that on at least three occasions, I have ordered a product listed as available, and was informed it would take 7 to 14 days... only to receive a notice 10 days later that it was no longer available.

"customers apparently feel Apple's expanded product lineup %u2014 which has added products such as the iPad in recent years %u2014 has become an issue."

Meaning what?

I have to disagree with people having issues finding cases for the iphone 5 I just tried to find one for my wifes new iphone 5 and it is literally 3 clicks from the main page to list all iphone 5 cases. less if you do a search. Apples sight is super easy to find things on and to purchase if anything since last year it has become easier to find what you need.

For iphone 5 cases from the main apple page click store, then under iphone on the left click cases, then click iphone 5. thats it. It lists all of the cases and pictures of them for iphone 5. I agree with the other posters above that people were upset that they could not get an iphone 5 for weeks because of demand and rated apples sight low because of it.

Oh and as for amazon's sight i find it a confusing mess that is hard to navigate and to find things on. Also I dislike it shoving what you have looked at in your face and annoying emails shoving the same thing in your in box.

The headline borders on trolling.

 

It should be changed to reflect that a "survey" offers up these claims.

Maybe the survey's authors and AI should start with some statistics. Last year was 83 and this year was 80. With an error margin of /- 2% (estimated), it's not meaningful to say that the scores are down.

I wouldn't put much stock in this report.  It seemed obvious to me from the preliminary report ranking Amazon as number 1 and one of the high end designer sites as near that bottom that the survey must have heavily weighted price.  If they are forthcoming I guess that it will turn out that they changed their ranking to more heavily rate price this year than last.  

 

Jim

To give Newegg a higher favorable tells me the survey was not surveying Apple customers.

The same could be said of the other companies, though. It's all relative.

 

So, regardless, either Apple is down or the others are up.

I feel the same way about iTunes.  The search was never good.  With iTunes 11 it is even worse.  The general search produces way too many results, most are irrelevant, the back button works very poorly, there is no way to do a parallel search,  no confirmation asking if you really want to purchase, no check for duplicates, no advanced search, and on.  

 

It is Apple's new way to get money.  Horrible.  Apple is heading in the wrong direction in my view.

I doubt that the three point difference in rating from last year to this year is statistically significant.

And I also agree that bad ratings can be much more than about the site. Some people choose to be negative about any company they choose not to like and other people will downrate the site if they have any complaint about Apple in general. And I bet some people downrate the Apple.com site because they don't like iTunes.

Having said that, browsing for products on their site is fine. Search for products, especially third party accessories, is not so great. And on the Tech Specs pages, they no longer list model numbers, which I found useful to make sure that if I go to a retailer (Apple or otherwise), I'm looking at or pricing the same machine I looked at online.

Searching for solutions to problems is also poor. When you go to their user forums, if you search for an issue and find it, and then want to comment, you have to sign-in. Once you sign-in, you lose where you were and have to search all over again. That's simply not acceptable.

Complaining about Apple's prices for third-party products may be legit, but I don't think it's a valid reason to say it's LESS satisfying because Apple always charged list price for third party accessories. When I see people buying such accessories in an Apple physical store, I always wonder why they do so (unless they look like a "money is no object" person) because the same products are available in lots of other retailers for far less money. Personally, I think anyone who pays $35 for an iPhone case is insane.

It wouldn't be the first hire from Amazon put in charge of a project. 

 

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/15/apple-hires-amazon-executive-to-head-its-siri-search-team

http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2012/10/15/apple-hires-amazon-search-guru-stasior-to-oversee-siri/

 

Off topic, but.....

 

Mine disappeared and I found it in another settings menu (forgot which one). Once I turned my phone off/on it came back to the main page of the settings menu. This was on Rogers.

 

So what's your belief, or do you even have one?

 

Oh, I'm sure you know my belief.

You misunderstand statistical sampling error.

EVEN IF the samples were random and representative, a sampling error of +/- 2% means that any observed difference less than that amount is insignificant. That is, Apple's result last year could have been between 81% and 85% and this year between 78% and 82%. Since the ranges overlap, it is entirely possible that Apple's performance actually went up (just as the others who appear to have gone up might have actually gone down if their change was less than 4%f).

Now, that's using standard confidence limits. One could say that with an 70% confidence limit (rather than the standard 95%) that Apple's performance actually has gone down, but with that low of a confidence limit, it is better to say that it has probably gone down rather than a blanket statement that it has.

Beyond that, of course, are the question of what it means. How much of an impact was caused by the fact that so many of Apple's products have long lead times this year-considerably more than last year. So are consumers reacting to the wait rather than the actual performance or usability of the site? This survey doesn't tell you that.

 

That all trolls aren't. Yep.

 

Relative to the other companies, though, Apple is 14th in line instead of 2nd.

 

No matter how you cut it, Apple is still further down on the list than last year... unless you are going to say that the statistics for 12 other companies is wrong and only Apple's is right.

 

Sampling error might bring them up to 6th but it still aint going to get them to 2nd.

 

I think the point is that, if they are all within the error (x2) of each other, the ranking isn't reliable, that in fact, it could be reversed for all we know. Or, it could be up for some, but down for others, there's no way to know. In other words, statistically, it's a dead heat, and ranking them at all is misleading since the numbers aren't precise enough or the differences large enough to distinguish them in a particular order.

 

So, for example, in the Reuters article linked to (I'm not sure where the original data or margin of error info is), it says, "LLBean.com had the second-highest ranking, 85, up 4 points from a year earlier." But, if the margin of error is ±2 points, statistically, you can't even say that LLBean had any change from last year. Or, they may have actually had an 8 point change, because last year was measured 2 points high, and this year 2 points low. (Unless I just confused myself there.)

Edited by anonymouse - 12/27/12 at 2:19pm

I find it frustrating what Apple charges you for upgrades! $200 on an iMac to go from 8GB to 16GB? I can purchase a complete set of 4 fast top of the line Corsair CAS 9 modules making a total of 32GB for less than the price of getting 8GB in upgrade from Apple. This is ridiculous! And now they've made the iMacs where you can't even upgrade the memory yourself? $200 to upgrade to the Core i7??? I can buy that processor outright off the shelf for $259... This is gouging! Trying times, I'll tell you... I know, I know... I can't run Mac OS X on a machine I build myself, but it just irks me what Apple charges you for the upgrades!

 

So go do that instead.

 

No, not really.

Oh oh

I would consider for you to disconnect yourself from these people you mention.

I don't think Apple is capable of that

But you're not confused, are you?

Make an appointment with a Genius.

You could also ask someone, just a thought.

So he was helpful by showing you the way. I'd say that is helpful. And, were the directions any good? Did you get help? Was someone able to answer your question?

Ehm, thanks, I guess.

They are? I don't think so. "Hello world! What do you think?" "We don't think so"

Ah, so that's the reason!

You lost me here. Actually, earlier.

Wow. Just wow.



Not the Fuel Cell Patent??





Wiki gave me one positive and one negative tiddybit just now:

1. Rumors indicated that the company would look to Android to save its business woes, however in an interview with The Telegraph; Research In Motion CEO Thorsten Heins stated that ”If you look at other suppliers’ ability to differentiate, there’s very little wiggle room. We looked at it seriously – but if you understand what the promise of BlackBerry is to its user base it’s all about getting stuff done. Games, media, we have to be good at it but we have to support those guys who are ahead of the game. Very little time to consume and enjoy content – if you stay true to that purpose you have to build on that basis. And if we want to serve that segment we can’t do it on a me-too approach.”

2. On November 22, 2012, shares of RIM surged 18%, the largest gain of the stock in over three years. This was due to National Bank of Canada analyst Kris Thompson's announcement that the new BB10 devices were expected to sell better than anticipated; along with raising the target stock price.

 

Then purchase it and install it yourself. If you go to Best Buy and have a tech do the work they're little Geek Squad will charge you nearly $200 for the service.

 

I find it laughable that people think Apple should give inexpensive memory upgrades when it's one of the simplest augmentations for an owner to do themselves.

 

You want Newegg memory price upgrades, but want Apple to do it for you. Not going to happen. It doesn't happen from Newegg, either. They'll sell you the stick to put it in yourself.

Less satisfying? Seriously?
I wonder why they said it was less satisfying as opposed to other years.
Sounds like some crap PR junk used to sulify Apple's image.

Apple should present comparison charts earlier in the buying process...not make the consumer click on "buy now" first.

If I click on iPod touch, yes, it's filled with nice photos and all, but the photos/illustrations are giant and I feel like I have to scroll down those massive illustrations to get to more/better information.

 

Just present the damn comparison charts (and selections) earlier.  Then have the "buy now" button at the top and the bottom of the chart.

Why would I want to click "buy now" in order to then get comparisons...it's counter-intuitive.

 

...I'm guessing that most consumers are not Apple purists who relate only to design/layout...instead, give us information in a more readily available format in which to buy things!

 

So endeth the complainings. :-)

Interesting that people think Amazon does a good job. Maybe it's just me but I find it frustrating that international shipping costs aren't calculated on the fly and there is no way to only display items that will ship to my country.

You've clearly come into this with the idea that Apple has somehow created it's profit margins up front and any upgrades should be down at some magical, near cost value you've imagined in your head. That isn't how reality works. You can't walk up to a bus or train and say "I don't have a ticket, but since you're going that way why not give me a ride?" just as as you can't say "I have already configured an iMac, now I want to add a couple upgrades so why not give them to me at cost? I'll even through an extra $5 because I'm a nice guy." That's fucking bullshit!

And what if I told you that's because the standard config iMacs are sold at less than their optimal sale value to achieve a lower starting price? Well, you'd probably erroneously call that bait-and-switch. You'd be wrong, of course. Bottom line is they figure out everything long before it goes on sale so they can try to make their profit margin. If you only want to support companies that don't how to make a profit instead of buying equipment that suits your particular needs then Apple isn't for you. In fact, talking about how you should be able to change out your components tells me the iMac certainly isn't for you.

Note that Intel's current price list has the Core i7-3770 (8M cache, 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 3.40 GHz. 22nm) at $294 and the Core i5-3470 (6M cache, 4 Cores, 4 Threads, 3.20 GHz, 22nm) at $184. That's a $110 difference. Yeah, right, Apple doesn't pay that, but the point is the difference in price. Sure, right, it will vary but which do you think Apple gets a better deal on the more expensive on in the BTO 27" iMac that they buy less of or one that is a standard build processor? That's right, the chances are that they get a bigger discount on the cheaper processor so that $110 difference could potentially be greater.


PS: It's only the 21.5" iMac that doesn't user accessible RAM, not iMacs.

PPS: If you want to build your own Hackintosh there are plenty of sites that detail how to do it and which HW is best supported. If you don't like the support they have then write your own drivers to better support your particular wishes but complaining about a company charging you for an upgrade is ridiculous.
Edited by SolipsismX - 12/27/12 at 3:40pm