This is the kind of thing other companies should emulate.
Customer Care and Services are going down the toilet. If other companies emulate Apple it would be a better market.
That's for sure. Plus if more companies did this there would be less waste in the manufacturing stream. Fewer devices in land fills, greater efficienies etc.
Most problems are. But there is no way to test every single unit for every single possible issue before it ships. So they randomly sample X units from every batch and hope for the best.
Also in some cases there really isn't an issue with the item. They send all allegedly defective units to EFFA for the first couple of weeks after a launch and then for some issues it can go a lot longer. So someone could bring in an iPhone 6 claiming it won't make phone calls but it's an account issue or they live in a place with shit reception. But the phone will be tested anyway.
They also EFFA some units from in store service. My sources tell me, for example, that there is an EFFA going on right now on all iPhone 5 series phones (the 5, 5C and 5S) that had a display replaced and come back with an issue related to something that could be affected by that display like the receiver, home button, touch screen etc. This is allowing them to check if there was a bad batch of service parts, a failure with the post repair tests etc.
This testing unit really isn't a secret despite the headlines nor is it really Apple unique or only present at launches. But it is a key part of Apple's QA. This team is likely where those replacement programs come from. Which is a good thing.
When I was briefly an iOS AHA I remember there was a special type of alert that would go out to all support people for a "capture" process. If a customer called with a specific problem that fit the capture specs we would send them to the capture team who would, I assume, swap a new phone for the suspect one so engineers could analyze the issue. This was for all products including older ones, not just new stuff.
This is all fine and dandy, but by the time products are on the shelf, there have already been millions produced. I guess a late fix is still better than no fix...
It is rather arrogant and foolish to assume you will find every problem before a release. Accepting the reality and having a strategy to mitigate problems is the best approach. Otherwise you are assuming you have trapped all the errors or doing a Microsoft/Samsung/Google and "marketing" away the problem and pretend it is not there.
Funny you mention Microsoft. Remember the X box ring of death. I gave up after getting mine replaced with two more units that also failed. Apparently they did no testing of any kind at any point to figure out why it was happening and stop it.
Compare this to Apple which wasn't likely legally required to do anything about the sleep wake or battery issues on the iPhone 5 in many countries (since the issues didn't start turning up until the phones were several months old for most units) but they did anyway since their percent of acceptable failure is way lower than the industry norm. Half the phones getting a free repair underthe sleep wake were probably dropped etc, but Apple isn't bothering to try to sort that out. If it is from that group, the damage isn't obvious and the rest of the phone is fine then they are fixing it.
Apple didn't pay anything to fix the sleep button; it was probably covered by their contracts with the manufacturers.
Comments
This is the kind of thing other companies should emulate.
Customer Care and Services are going down the toilet. If other companies emulate Apple it would be a better market.
That's for sure. Plus if more companies did this there would be less waste in the manufacturing stream. Fewer devices in land fills, greater efficienies etc.
Most problems are. But there is no way to test every single unit for every single possible issue before it ships. So they randomly sample X units from every batch and hope for the best.
Also in some cases there really isn't an issue with the item. They send all allegedly defective units to EFFA for the first couple of weeks after a launch and then for some issues it can go a lot longer. So someone could bring in an iPhone 6 claiming it won't make phone calls but it's an account issue or they live in a place with shit reception. But the phone will be tested anyway.
They also EFFA some units from in store service. My sources tell me, for example, that there is an EFFA going on right now on all iPhone 5 series phones (the 5, 5C and 5S) that had a display replaced and come back with an issue related to something that could be affected by that display like the receiver, home button, touch screen etc. This is allowing them to check if there was a bad batch of service parts, a failure with the post repair tests etc.
This testing unit really isn't a secret despite the headlines nor is it really Apple unique or only present at launches. But it is a key part of Apple's QA. This team is likely where those replacement programs come from. Which is a good thing.
When I was briefly an iOS AHA I remember there was a special type of alert that would go out to all support people for a "capture" process. If a customer called with a specific problem that fit the capture specs we would send them to the capture team who would, I assume, swap a new phone for the suspect one so engineers could analyze the issue. This was for all products including older ones, not just new stuff.
This is all fine and dandy, but by the time products are on the shelf, there have already been millions produced. I guess a late fix is still better than no fix...
Apple didn't pay anything to fix the sleep button; it was probably covered by their contracts with the manufacturers.