Comments on: Dell beats Apple, for once.

By: spacecowboy

spacecowboy — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:46:51 +0000

In the 1st week of Dec 2005 my wife and I decided to get the 30 gig video ipod for our daughter through the Apple website. We placed the order on a Sunday along with the free laser engraving. I was hoping that it would arrive before Christmas. Upon clicking on the the button that confirms the order I was wondering how this was all going to pan out. That night I received an email that the order was being processed. The next day Monday, I got an email that it left the manufacturing plant somewhere in China. China? hmmm, How could they engrave and ship so fast? On a wednesday it hit a location somewhere in Tacoma, Wa I live north of Seattle. On Thursday it was on our doorstep just before my daughter got off of school at 2:20pm. With a lot of doubt I opened the sealed package to make sure that it had been engraved. I didn’t want to wait till Christmas to find out that it wasn’t and have to go through hell and high water to correct a mistake. Lo and behold it was engraved perfectly! That was smoother than a Freddie Couples swing. How did they do that? And what the hell was I worried about?

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 04:08:24 +0000

Justin: You are not alone.

Check this: http://www.intarweb-master.com/index.php/2005/02/23/apple-get-your-shit-together/

I had the same experience, but it caused a few problems.

By: Justin

Justin — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 03:23:36 +0000

I’m still wondering why Apple’s tax system is so royally screwed up. After calling all the B&M Apple Stores in the Denver area and finding out that the iPod Nano is out of stock in the black 4GB model, I decided to place an order online.

Get to the checkout screen and on a $276 order (iPod nano and the armband) Apple wants $25 and some change in tax. That works out to a little over 9%. I live outside the city limits and therefore my tax rate is around 4%. Even better, there’s not a single county or city in the Denver Metro Area that I know of that has over 8% and some change in tax.

I seem to remember this when I ordered a PowerBook back when my permanent address was still at my parents’ house (also outside the city limits). They charged me city tax even though the ENTIRE ZIP CODE is outside city tax rates.

For such an “innovative” company, their e-commerce side of the business sucks.

By: Randall

Randall — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 19:01:49 +0000

I was again dismayed to learn about Apple’s method of handling orders. Although I have been a Mac user since its inception, Apple’s products tend to be more costly than PCs. Despite educator/government discounts–these are not significant in dollars compared to the product being purchased–let alone free shipping, there are hidden costs, such as state taxes. It is extremely difficult to gain access to a “live” person for any kind of question, tech-related or not. As a result, I do not purchase Mac products from Apple itself. I do not even go to the retail outlets. My experience with online purchasing of Mac-related items, from cpu’s to software, have been excellent. I wonder how Steve Jobs would respond to comments like mine.

By: McGroarty

McGroarty — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 17:27:22 +0000

Sam, I’d strongly urge ya to call and see if you are getting the new model. If you aren’t, they might be willing to bump it up. Good luck!

By: Sam

Sam — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 16:52:47 +0000

I ordered my iBook July 15th. Here it is the 26th and it still hasn’t even started being built yet. I called and asked why it was taking so long and played the Dell card (we ordered a Dell 4600C with 3 modifications, flat-panel monitor, printer, and digital camera and had it to my house in less than a week) and got the ship date bumped up to the 25th and a $50 credit to my account. Well, it is the 26th and still not even built yet.

One thing to think of in my case is that they updated their iBook line on the morning of the 26th. My thinking is they didn’t want to send a product out and a new one debut a day later. That is admirable *if* that is the case.

By: David

David — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:37:00 +0000

Your experience with both Apple and Dell mirrors mine exactly. Funny that a company as innovative and cutting edge as Apple has customer care, support and logistics departments that are stuck in the dark ages.

By: Cap'n Ken

Cap'n Ken — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 15:15:16 +0000

I ordered my Mac Mini online through Apple and didn’t have any issues (maybe my credit rating is better :) ). I have a discount through my company, and everything worked seamlessly. I also like that Apple pairs my online orders and my Apple Store orders (bought my iPod at a physical store) under my same account. As far as advanced case and exception management, maybe Dell is doing better there because they have much bigger volume and more experience selling direct to customers (so they’d recognize issues that tend to come up and have systems to deal with them).

Incidentally, I just bought a replacement laptop battery from Gateway and also noticed they let you split payments across credit cards and all that. Smart.

Around the time I got my Mac Mini, I also bought a refurb Dell desktop from their store. My big issue with Dell is that I believe they purposefully disguise the fact that they are charging you sales tax. They have sales tax disclosures only after you’ve purchased, and their “sales tax estimator” simply doesn’t do anything (at least in my case). If you care, I detailed my experience with them at [Link].

Ultimately, my complaining about their shady tax disclosure practices got them to refund the sales tax they charged me, but I still think they are purposefully hiding the tax implications of your purchase with them. For the record, I think it sucks that Dell has to charge sales tax, and I’m sure it hurts their sales.

By: Neil Anderson

Neil Anderson — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 17:57:10 +0000

Okay, considering the $13 in charges to your credit card from Apple got me thinking about my recent eBay purchase.

I “won” a $2200 item on eBay. The vendor said they accepted PayPal. I’m in Canada; they’re in the US. Paid the vendor’s account with my VISA card via PayPal. Vendor sent an e-mail stating that for that amount they really wanted a bank draft instead and refunded my PayPal payment. Result? Due to the exchange or whatever I was suddenly out over a hundred bucks! How’s them for apples?

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 17:51:17 +0000

That is just the impression I got from talking with customer support. “No, we can’t do that. No I don’t know why. It’s not my department, let me transfer you.”