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<TITLE>Re: [Ti] Apple customer service</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Gill Sans, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>When you charge premium prices for your product, then you need to provide premium customer service. Other wise, why purchase your product?<BR>
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This discussion resembles the value proposition issue that every firm faces, and some people on this list and others have questioned Apple’s value proposition.<BR>
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Rather than drag this dead horse across the finish line so that we can shoot it, let’s look at Apple’s sloppy customer service from a different perspective.<BR>
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Steve Jobs defends the decision not to license OS X (i.e., no clones for you) because the OS X’s stability is due in large part by its tight relationship with the hard ware. In other words, OS X would be less stable or somehow less effective if Dell, Hewlett Packard, and e-machine built and sold Intel-based machines with OS X installed.<BR>
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Dell’s customer service is lousy, but Dell competes on efficiency and not effectiveness. Hewlett Packard’s customer service is consistently outstanding. IBM built a lap top that could withstand being lugged around by its owner. Those companies competed on effectiveness (side note: I have no experience with the Think Pad since Lavono bought it). H-P and the Think Pad are more expensive than Dell, but those companies delivered on the value proposition. Apple does not because Apple controls both the operating software and the hardware, and that control has made Apple sloppy and arrogant, which is always a winning combination.<BR>
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Hopefully, H-P or a third party will create software that allows a user to run OS X on their system. A reverse situation that exists now for the Apple base. I love OS X but I hate Apple hardware.<BR>
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Michael<BR>
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On 6/10/06 10:59 PM, "Gene Steinberg" <gene@macnightowl.com> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'><FONT FACE="Optima, Times New Roman">Apple's customer service rates, by far, the best in the industry. As <BR>
bad as they might be, Dell and the rest are regarded as worse. So <BR>
what incentive is there for Apple to improve?<BR>
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