Campbell Interactive

I’ll preface this journal of the event by saying that this is only my experience at one store, the Apple store in The Fair Oaks mall in Fairfax VA, I cannot say if what I experienced there is indicative of every store or every customer experience. I will also say that the actual purchase was fairly smooth, the associate was to me and my wife very nice and since this was just a transfer or upgrade rather there were no hiccups here to speak of.

Where this whole experience goes off the tracks for me is in the hours that preceded this transaction. I wasn’t really in the market for the upgrade, it wasn’t something I was planning, it just so happens that I married an incredibly patient woman who loves me a great deal because she out of her own volition took our two children and her tired four and a half month pregnant body down to the Apple store to buy me the new one for my birthday. It’s been two weeks since the launch and she hasn’t been tuned into the news around the iPhone gen one or the new 3G so she was surprised to find herself in a line and even more so when told she would be there for four hours and that I would have to be there with her since I was the primary on the account.

I was surprised when she phoned and revealed to me her plan. I decided to take some time off and I joined her at noon, by then she had been there two hours. The kids were actually great, for a four year old and a two year old to tolerate that amount of nothing for that amount of time, well it was indeed a miracle. 

Longer story long she and I took turns with the line standing while letting the kids play with the macs they have setup for the kids inside the store. This is where we noticed for the first time why the wait was indeed that long. It wasn’t due entirely to lengthy new account processes, people who didn’t have all the correct information readily at hand, or by sheer volume of customers, though there is no doubt these were healthy contributors to our five hours in line. What we saw kind of took us by surprise, we had hypothesized several scenarios while isolated in line as to the delay, perhaps there were only a couple of people who had the knowledge of establishing an AT&T account, perhaps there were special computers designated for the account process. The reality was that any of the associates with a hip register can do it the only real process was getting one of them to actually approach the line of waiting customers.

What I found in the four hours I was there myself was that there was a definite process in place because I witnessed this of each of the associates, Step one was to approach every warm body in the store that wasn’t already “involved” to confirm that they were in no need of assistance, twice, then recoup from that effort by congregating with one another near the genius bar for a vibrant discussion of God knows what if not disappearing completely into the back of the store behind the big silver door. Then after exhausting all viable options in avoidance they shanty over and greet the next lucky customer with a cheerful “I would love to help you with an iPhone today” or some reasonable facsimile thereof. Only to repeat the pattern five minutes later when the transaction was complete. No special associates except for the couple of orange shirt concierge who could have been tremendously more helpful if they were given the power to sell the things than only allowed to repeatedly question the cattle if they were familiar with AT&T plans.

In case that came out somewhat muddled in my exposition, the only reason it was taking so amazingly long was because they were apparently avoiding having to do the deed. I waited a day to write this to let myself get over the four hours I waited which took a lot less time than it will for me to get over the six hours my wife waited. I wanted to not come off as ranting or whining. I may or may not have been successful here but the one thing about my four hours is that it offered, I believe, a good cross section of the operation of iPhone sales at this store that day. 

A tad frustrating. But hey my awesome wife got me an awesome birthday gift and she isn’t complaining so why should I… after this post I mean.