> It's annoying that it indicates the best way to get support from Apple is to make a prominent blog post.
Posting somewhere public (for example, a company's social media page) to get support appears to be an increasing trend.
Posting somewhere public (for example, a company's social media page) to get support appears to be an increasing trend.
You can just make a clear, coherent complaint in your own forum and occasionally [like in this case] it actually brings about a transformation.
I doubt that Apple's customer service is any worse now than it was before.
As a result we started getting calls about medical emergencies in the middle of the night.
The local phone company did not see this as a problem either for us or the hospital or people calling with emergencies, but offered to put us on a waiting list (!) potentially for months before they could be bothered to change the number.
Until my dad had hounded the reporters at the local newspaper until they wrote a piece about it - suddenly it was fixed within a day or two.
So public attention worked back then too (this was early 80's) - there was just fewer outlets and more work to get your problems published.
These days it doesn't take much before I go for social media.
Another option I've found works (but is pricey) is to sign up (temporarily if you don't otherwise need it) for one of LinkedIn's premium tiers and use that to get access to top execs at the company you have an issue with. Often the issue is not so much to draw public attention, but that drawing public attention is the simplest way of getting the attention of and access to a senior enough executive.
I really believe that's true and wish it could be applied in more cases. Basically spread the problem to people who are normally not affected by it.
I would bet that TSA queues would get solved in ~2 months if all government workers and politicians (to the highest position) were excluded from TSA precheck and could not pay for priority queues.
But only if you have enough followers or readership.
The Ars Technica writers have often remarked about feeling guilty for taking advantage of this privilege. They try to resolve things, then after failing, mention they're going to write a story about things, and suddenly get the VIP treatment. But not everyone can write an article for a major news site.
The more likely explanation is that PR teams are horrified at the prospect of something "going viral" and don't know how to tell what will and what won't, so they work to resolve any potential issue before it can blow up.
*in this case meaning escalate to product teams or get the attention of executives