Some Sage Advice

Two True Tales of Horrible Customer Service at the Apple Store

Tale 1

A customer of our’s bought a new iPhone. But they didn’t have an appointment to set it up so they had to return to the Apple Store on another date to get it setup by the genius. So they returned to the Apple Store several days later at their alloted time only to find the Genius was busy with another customer. The Genius spent an extra 20 minutes with this customer forcing my customer to be late. Eventually, the “genius” was ready for them.  Sparing you all the gory details, two hours later and the “genius” couldn’t get my client’s iPhone to check email!

I spent less than 10 minutes changing and correcting all the genius’s settings and had the iPhone working flawlessly. (In case the genius is reading this, you need to turn off SSL for many email servers.)

Tale 2

Person with a Powerbook G4 that was dead. Now, in most stores that I have been in, when you need service for an item (TV, camcorder, etc), you take it to the store, go to the service counter, and they take your item in for repair. Don’t try this at the Apple Store!! You need to make an appointment with the genius first.

So here is what happened to the owner of the PowerBook…She make a phone call to the Apple Store to setup a time to bring in the dead laptop. The employee at the Apple Store says, “Sorry, but you can only make appointments online.” Fine, so she goes online and spends 10 minutes navigating Apple’s site to find where to make an appointment. Finally, the first appointment is available BUT IT IS TWO DAYS AWAY! So what is she supposed to do without a computer for 2 days just to get into the store for an appointment with a genius who will confirm that the laptop is dead!

So, our frantic Powerbook owner calls the Apple Store again and explains that the laptop is dead but the online genius scheduler won’t let her make an appointment. She is told that there is nothing they can do about it. Her options are to wait 2 days or to come in to the store to see if there might be a chance that someone might be able to help her. Maybe.

If this is Apple wants to build a great retail experience, count me out! I will go to the little guys down the road who will wait on you when you walk in and whose geniuses actually might know something.

I had to do a presentation for International Day at my daughter’s school yesterday. So, I had a group of 120 K-2 students make homemade pierogies! We had a blast. They mixed dough, made potato filling, and rolled out the dough and cut out round pierogies!
If you want to see the recipe I used and to download a PDF recipe card, I made a page for this.

If you have been waiting to buy Creative Suite 4, you better act fast! The last day to get the CS4 software at a discounted price is April 30, 2009. On May 1, prices for the Suite increase by at least $200!

Yikes!

We recently upgraded a user’s Intel Mac from Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4.11) to Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.6) and everything went smoothly except for his iPhone. Under Tiger, the iPhone worked as it should syncing from iTunes on a regular basis. However, once we upgraded to Leopard, his iPhone wouldn’t show up in iTunes! When we checked the System Profiler and selected USB, the iPhone showed up. So we tried all the different USB ports, repaired permissions, etc, but nothing seemed to work.

The solution, as we discovered, was to re-download and reinstall iTunes. It seems that there are some system components that are installed by the iTunes installer that are system-specific. So when iTunes was installed in Tiger it all worked fine. But when we upgraded to Leopard, the iTunes components needed for the iPhone to work in Leopard were missing. Re-installing iTunes under Leopard installed the missing pieces.

Question/Issue:
Why does the following error occur during installation of the MR3 build of the Symantec Endpoint Protection Client? Error: “Lsetup.exe: Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.”

Symptoms:
The following error is encountered during the installation phase of the Symantec Endpoint Protection Client:

“Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.”

Cause:
The MSI Installer fails to recognize the installation of LiveUpdate and fails to register the SEP component(s) for integration with the LiveUpdate components.

Solution:
To resolve this issue, please follow the steps outlined below.

1. If you have clicked on the OK button once this error is returned and the setup has finished, run the setup again to return the error again. However, DO NOT click on the OK button.
2. Navigate to the SEP folder located on Symantec Endpoint Protection CD1 and run LUSETUP.EXE.
3. This will return a message saying that the selected Liveupdate components are already installed. Click OK to proceed.
4. Run the file LUCHECK.EXE, so the MSI installer can recognize and register SEP with the running installation.
5. Now click on the OK button on the LSETUP.EXE error prompt. The installation for the SEP client should proceed without any further errors.