Letters to Steve_ Inside the E-Mail Inbox of Apple's Steve Jobs - Mark Milian [29]
Steve Jobs didn’t often pick up the phone to go back and forth with customers, but Scott Steckley recalls a time when an e-mail to Steve, explaining how there seemed to be no end in sight to the wait for a computer repair, was met with a phone call. “Hi Scott, this is Steve,” he recalled.
“Steve Jobs?” Scott asked.
“Yeah,” Steve said. “I just wanted to apologize for your incredibly long wait. It’s really nobody’s fault. It’s just one of those things.”
“Yeah, I understand.”
Then, Steve explained that he expedited the repair for Scott. “I also wanted to thank you for your support of Apple,” he said. “Well, I see how much equipment you own. It really makes my day to see someone who enjoys our products so much and who supports us in the good times and bad.”
The old corporate slogan, “the customer is always right,” did not resonate with Steve Jobs. While he was very kind to people whom he felt deserved a break or who had supported him in darker times, Steve was by no means a pushover. He did not conceal his thoughts toward someone he believed was trying to skirt the system unfairly. For example, a customer complaining about Apple not honoring its warranty for his computer received the following response from Steve in 2008: “This is what happens when your MacBook Pro sustains water damage. They are pro machines and they don’t like water. It sounds like you’re just looking for someone to get mad at other than yourself.” Another customer named Tristan called App Store policies “a sham” because Apple wouldn’t refund his money. Steve said: “9 refunds already…. Who’s the sham now?”
A Berkeley student complained to Steve about Apple customer service refusing to compensate him and not sufficiently explaining the reason for delaying the shipment of his iPad. Steve was not moved. “Sorry, we don’t give freebies to make up for product delays. We are shipping iPads as fast as we can. If that’s not fast enough for you, we are happy to cancel your order and give you anfull refund for what you have paid,” Steve wrote, apparently too hurried to spellcheck. He signed off with a likely unintentional taunt, “Sent from my iPad.”
Worse than having to wait for a hot new product that’s already been paid for, as any gear head will tell you, is dropping the dough for a new gadget and then finding out that a brand new, cutting-edge version is coming out days or weeks later. Technology moves fast, faster than some people’s paychecks arrive. Ask Nate, an early adopter of the Apple TV who e-mailed Steve on November 30, 2010 when he discovered that it would not support the major new feature promoted in the latest version of the product, which happened to retail for a drastically cheaper $99 price. The feature he was referring to was AirPlay, which facilitates the streaming of music and video between two Apple machines. Steve reasoned: “It’s different technology. It does everything it did when you bought it.”
David Wilkinson got a similar response on March 16, 2006 when he told Steve his sob story about the iMac, which Apple had just replaced with one that runs on a drastically different architecture made by Intel. “The iMac G5 is a splendid computer and will remain so for a long time to come. Not to worry,” Steve wrote. Apple continued to support that breed of computer for several years until the company and its partners phased them out.
Besides giving people free stuff or chastising those looking to freeload, Steve Jobs offered personal technical support. In the summer of 2008, he responded to a customer’s concerns about disappearing apps. “Please make sure you’re running the updated software,” Steve suggested. Steve’s advice sometimes conflicted with conventional wisdom and guidance from Genius technicians at the Apple Store. A Genius clerk once told me that I should get in the habit of force-quitting the apps on my iPhone in order to improve performance and save battery. Alan Bonacossa asked