Apple has taken customer service to a whole ‘nother level, after responding to a user’s complaint that its iTunes and Apple Music services had stolen 122 GB of music files by sending out two men to his home in order to fix the problem.
James Pinkstone’s previous story regarding the problem he encountered with Apple Music/iTunes was heavily circulated earlier this month, with the Apple user claiming that Apple Music had scanned 122 GB of music stored on his iTunes account, and had either deleted them or replaced them with different versions of the same track after its database couldn’t recognize the files. While the validity of Pinkstone’s claims had been debated, with many pointing out how Apple Music displays a warning message prior to the deletion of any tracks, Pinkstone claimed that he had spoken on the phone with a customer service rep following the deletion of his music, and that they had informed him that what had happened to him was par for the course for the service.
Now Pinkstone has revealed that Apple has been very keen to get to the root of the problem, claiming that the company even sent out two of its Senior Engineers to his home in order to try to figure out the issue themselves. Pinkstone writes that Apple had “read the phone transcripts” between him and the customer service rep, adding: “They maintained that she was mistaken, [although] they did not dispute my account of what Amber had told me,” with him claiming that Apple were also “convinced this was not user error.”
Pinkstone then went on to detail his impromptu visit from Apple in his blog post, saying that the two men spent “hours troubleshooting” the issue, even conference calling other engineers based in California in order to discuss how they should investigate the problem. However, they failed to come up with a solution or a reasonable explanation for what happened to the missing music files, with Pinkstone adding that both he and the engineers agreed that “Apple is not off of the hook yet,” and that their inability to sufficiently troubleshoot his problem with Apple Music and iTunes will likely present problems for both services further down the road.
While Apple hasn’t confirmed whether or not this encounter had taken place, Pinkstone’s account of the series of events is thorough enough for us believe him. Though Apple was likely more concerned about what implications this error could have on the rest of its products rather than simply helping a man retrieve his music, it’s still good to see a company tackling user complaints head-on in such a forthright manner.
[Via Vellum Atlanta]
