Aperture 2.0, so disappointed…
Last week I mentioned that Apple Computers had just released the very eagerly awaited upgrade to their photo editing and management application Aperture. Being an early adopter I downloaded Aperture 2.0 as soon as I heard about it, and Apple also sent me my trial serial number.
My first impressions of Aperture 2.0 is that Apple has really taken it to the next level and is now ahead of Adobe’s offering Lightroom. I was so impressed with how Aperture 2.0 worked on my Mac Pro, and my MacBook Pro for that matter, that I decided I had to buy it.
When you open Aperture 2.0 you get this startup screen with your trial serial number and the details of your library, you also get this popup with a couple of options allowing you to either continue your trial (assuming it hasn’t expired), buy Aperture 2.0, and Authorize (see screenshot).
I clicked on the buy option on Saturday morning, Safari promptly opened and went to the purchase page where I confirmed my existing Apple / .Mac account information. I then had the option to buy a completely new version of Aperture, or as an existing user I could just buy an upgrade from version 1.5 to 2.0, and then had the further choice of buying a boxed version or just receiving an electronic license version. I chose the upgrade from 1.5 to 2.0, and to receive the electronic licensing as I didn’t require another box and with all the available tutorials on the Apple website I didn’t really need the user manual. From there I had to confirm my credit card details and my delivery address..
Pretty easy process to do, and the transaction seemed to go through quickly and without any problems.
I went and checked my .Mac email address and had the order confirmation was there already (10:51am), I was expecting that the invoice with serial number would arrive soon there after. Waiting, waiting, waiting, nothing. Oh well, must’ve been a hold up in the system somewhere, it is Saturday after all. I went back about my work, editing photos, and figured the serial wasn’t overly important to the photo set I was working on.
Finally at 6:34pm the invoice arrived, no serial number. What the! I logged into .Mac and then into the area where you can check your order process and it shows that I’ve purchased Aperture and that the invoice has been sent, but still no serial number. By this time it was way too late to ring Apple anyway as it was nearly 7pm on a Saturday night, I figured I’d leave it till Monday and that it would be easy enough to sort out.
Monday comes, I call Apple and they have no idea what has happened and are looking into it. After not hearing back from them in what I considered a reasonable amount of time I call again. This time I get passed around from Customer Support to Apple Care to Pro Apps to Customer Support and eventually back to Apple Care, no one can help me but they’ll have someone call me back shortly.
Well this time they did actually get back to me shortly. After outlining my purchase process again to Kevin, I think his name was, I was informed that he would look further into it and get back to me shortly. About an hour or so later I get a call back from Kevin, they’ve recognised the problem and are looking into why I wasn’t issued a serial number and could I email him a copy of my order confirmation and invoice so that he could reference them both. I emailed them to him while I still had him on the phone, he acknowledged the receipt of them.
I was confident that things were now being taken care of and that I would soon have my license. This is now Monday afternoon.
4:30pm Monday afternoon I left work, still no Aperture 2.0 license. Around 5pm Kevin from Apple calls me on my mobile to say sorry and that he hadn’t heard back from the Pro Apps team yet but he would chase them up the following morning. At no stage did Kevin from Apple Computers Australia give me any bad service.
At 10:49am on Tuesday morning Kevin calls me, I’m thinking ‘hells yeah here comes my serial number’. He’s apparently spoken again to Pro Apps in the US and they are generating me a new serial number and they’ll call me sometime in the next COUPLE OF DAYS with the serial number. I complained that I couldn’t fathom how it could possibly take a ‘couple of days’ to generate a serial number. I also told him how disappointed with Apple Computers I was and that this sort of service was absolutely disgraceful. He apologised and said he would get back to me, or try to get someone to contact me later in the day.
It’s now Wednesday, and I still don’t have a serial number for Aperture 2.0, and Kevin has still not called me back.
I emailed customer support again this morning, they replied with a generic ‘we can’t help you any further, you’ll need to contact Pro Apps support on this US phone number’. I replied to that with and told them how disappointed I was that after all of this that they had the gall to suggest that I should spend more money on a product that I have yet to receive by calling their support line in America from Australia. I also told them that I would now be filing a complaint against Apple Computers with the Department of Fair Trading in Australia.
About another minute or two later, just to add insult to injury, I get an automated email from Apple asking me to fill in a survey to do with my recent call to Customer Relations. You can bet I told them what I thought of their service.
As a long time Apple supporter who currently uses a Mac Pro with 2 x 23″ Cinema Displays, a MacBook Pro, an iMac, an iPod Touch and an iPod Nano, on a daily basis this sort of customer service is purely disgraceful and I would find it extremely difficult to continue to recommend their products in the future as I would be afraid of influencing friends and colleagues to buy an Apple Computers product that they might not ever receive….despite being charged for it!
Lift your game Apple Computers.
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