iPhone to Android - a Nightmare

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29-Jun-2012 9:26 AM
Apple has by far, hands down, the worse customer service I have ever dealt with. And a strange way of 'resolving' issues with their long-term customers.
I recently decided to switch to Android for a few months until iPhone5 was released, at which point my contract would be up and I would be able sign to get a new iPhone. However, in the meantime I had enough credit with my provider to get an Android until then.

Anway, I switched from iPhone to Android and had an immediate problem with the iMessage attaching itself to my phone number and not allowing any text messages to my phone number get through to my phone because it kept defaulting to my iMessage account (that had been deactivated when I switched)

I went online, found a solution which involved removing my device from my AppleID support page. Didn't work. Then I tried the next step and removed my phone number from the account. Didn't work. I phoned Apple and proceeded to spend THREE hours on the phone with Tech Support who...Couldn't figure it out. He tried a multitude of different things finally getting me to totally wipe my iPhone. I did. Didn't fix the problem. He tells me he will contact the Engineering Department and phone me in two days... Two days later? Nothing. Three days? Nothing. Four days? Still nothing. Finally, I phone Apple. FOUR hours later ... The end result is this...

Apple tells me to wait THIRTY days to see if the problem will fix itself. Thirty days of paying for full service that I am not recieving due to Apples incompetence. Can you believe that? My service provider steps in (they have nothing to do with) and they get so tired of Apple's rudeness that my service provider offers to help me by giving me an iPhone.
End result? I want to be an Android user and Apple is forcing me to be an iPhone user and wouldn't even offer me a loaner phone until they could get things figured out on their end.

I am 100% upset with Apple and the way they treat their customers, and I would never recommend an Apple product to anyone so long as I live.
Anisa
 
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chas_m

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29-Jun-2012 9:26 AM
Apple has by far, hands down, the worse customer service I have ever dealt with.

Wow. The only way I could possibly imagine someone making this statement is that previous companies they've dealt with killed members of their family and ate the dog.


Thirty days of paying for full service that I am not recieving due to Apples incompetence.

This part of your post I don't really understand. You don't pay for iMessage.

Anyway, I'm sorry you had the problem and am not sure what you expect us to do about it. You're not going to convince anyone here that we shouldn't use Apple products -- we aren't having your issue, pretty obviously.

Hopefully they will resolve the issue at some point. I hope you enjoy your Android phone, but you'd better hurry up and get it as a bunch of them are about to come off the market due to ... well, patent infringement and stealing from Apple.
 
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Wow! That is the worst review of Apple customer service I had ever heard. However, if it is true, then it is good to know. I personally never had any issues with the Apple products that I've owned through the years, but this goes to show that not ever instance is good. Human dimension comes into play with each customer service interaction.

Paul
 

vansmith

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I hope you enjoy your Android phone, but you'd better hurry up and get it as a bunch of them are about to come off the market due to ... well, patent infringement and stealing from Apple.
That won't happen and you know it. The world of patent litigation is always ongoing, contested and never resolves anything. A cursory search on patent litigation will show that it never goes anywhere and products rarely get stopped for very long.

'Tis the story this week. Next week, Google wins patent case against Apple. The week after, there's an injunction against Apple...and so the vicious and never ending litigation circle goes.
 
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Wow. The only way I could possibly imagine someone making this statement is that previous companies they've dealt with killed members of their family and ate the dog.




This part of your post I don't really understand. You don't pay for iMessage.

Anyway, I'm sorry you had the problem and am not sure what you expect us to do about it. You're not going to convince anyone here that we shouldn't use Apple products -- we aren't having your issue, pretty obviously.

Hopefully they will resolve the issue at some point. I hope you enjoy your Android phone, but you'd better hurry up and get it as a bunch of them are about to come off the market due to ... well, patent infringement and stealing from Apple.

Ya but he's paying for his phone service yet he can not text because of the iMessage issue.
 
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29-Jun-2012 9:26 AM
Apple has by far, hands down, the worse customer service I have ever dealt with. And a strange way of 'resolving' issues with their long-term customers.
I recently decided to switch to Android for a few months until iPhone5 was released, at which point my contract would be up and I would be able sign to get a new iPhone. However, in the meantime I had enough credit with my provider to get an Android until then.

Anway, I switched from iPhone to Android and had an immediate problem with the iMessage attaching itself to my phone number and not allowing any text messages to my phone number get through to my phone because it kept defaulting to my iMessage account (that had been deactivated when I switched)

I went online, found a solution which involved removing my device from my AppleID support page. Didn't work. Then I tried the next step and removed my phone number from the account. Didn't work. I phoned Apple and proceeded to spend THREE hours on the phone with Tech Support who...Couldn't figure it out. He tried a multitude of different things finally getting me to totally wipe my iPhone. I did. Didn't fix the problem. He tells me he will contact the Engineering Department and phone me in two days... Two days later? Nothing. Three days? Nothing. Four days? Still nothing. Finally, I phone Apple. FOUR hours later ... The end result is this...

Apple tells me to wait THIRTY days to see if the problem will fix itself. Thirty days of paying for full service that I am not recieving due to Apples incompetence. Can you believe that? My service provider steps in (they have nothing to do with) and they get so tired of Apple's rudeness that my service provider offers to help me by giving me an iPhone.
End result? I want to be an Android user and Apple is forcing me to be an iPhone user and wouldn't even offer me a loaner phone until they could get things figured out on their end.

I am 100% upset with Apple and the way they treat their customers, and I would never recommend an Apple product to anyone so long as I live.
Anisa

I read this post several days ago, and decided to not reply because I found the content way too confusing to decipher, and didn't really want to "get in to it". I figured that the OP would just disappear (which they may well have) but now that it has resurfaced, I feel compelled to comment.

First, maybe someone can straighten me out on a few key points:

I recently decided to switch to Android for a few months until iPhone5 was released, at which point my contract would be up and I would be able sign to get a new iPhone. However, in the meantime I had enough credit with my provider to get an Android until then.
This paragraph makes clear that the OP is/was in a contract. I'm not sure of where they live, but in the States, contracts last for 2 years for the most part. At least those carriers who deal with the iPhone, anyway. But the OP says that they decided to switch for a "few months", until the iP5 was released. First off, no one truly knows when it will be released. We're guessing sometime in the fall, which leaves 4 months at the most for the release.

But you can't just go switching phones without updating the contract policy, unless of course you use a phone which is already out of contract, so at this point, I'm assuming that this is the case, or that an unlocked phone was purchased for full price. This hasn't much to do with the issue, I'm just trying to get some facts straight.

My service provider steps in (they have nothing to do with) and they get so tired of Apple's rudeness that my service provider offers to help me by giving me an iPhone.
This part got me thinking about said service provider. Providers are known for throwing Apple under the bus, and would never admit to a problem being on their end. Apple on the other hand, is just the opposite kind of company. It was even made clear by the OP that "tech support" did in fact try to troubleshoot the heck out of the issue but couldn't come up with an immediate answer. I'm not sure of how that translates into "rudeness", and from where I'm sitting, it kind of looks like the carrier is trying to earn brownie points by offering something that they know will not even resolve the issue, because it is not one of hardware.

The issue its self stems from a communication error somewhere on the software side, and IME, smells like it's from the carriers end. I could be wrong of course, but when a phone is deactivated and a new one activated, all of the relevant technical information is fed from the carriers end. Apple's servers AFAIK, simply act as a gateway when an item is activated and receives information from the carrier. Correct me if I'm wrong...

As far as Apple giving out a "loaner", that's not how it works. Phones are subsidized devices for the most part, and there are channels to go through if something isn't working. If the OP had gone to a Genius Bar in a retail store, they likely would have swapped it out if the problem was with the actual handset at all.

Something doesn't sound right about this whole thing IMHO.

Doug
 
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chas_m

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That won't happen and you know it.

This may come as a shock to you, but most litigation does, in fact, have ultimate winners and losers. Your false presumption is that both companies are equally guilty in different areas, leading to roughly-equal mixed results. This is simply not the case.

Rather than post a lengthy explanation of why you're wrong, there's this:

FOSS Patents: Android devices have already been found to infringe 11 valid Apple and Microsoft patents

Bottom line: Android infringes on other companies' patents (not just Apple's, either). They copied line-for-line from Java (37 separate instances -- the fact that the court rules these aren't copyrightable doesn't mean they didn't plagerize. They did.)

Apple has, as far as I'm aware in the fight between itself and Android, not been shown to be infringing on ANY patents other than "standards-essential" patents, which (as the courts have been saying and will continue to say) you can't be guilty of infringing on.

Only a small part of these ongoing cases is about "hey you stole from us" (mostly MS and Apple saying that to Google, HTC, Motorola and Samsung). The "bigger picture" here is that Apple and MS (and previously Oracle) were in court saying "companies (any company) cannot use FRAND patents as a legal weapon."

On that front, Apple (and MS) are winning, and will continue to win until Google and Moto (et al) reform. I also expect Apple to continue winning injunctions and penalties against these companies (more Samsung than anyone else) for ripping off their software and hardware.

So ultimately, you're wrong. Unless up becomes down, Apple (and MS) are likely to win at least MOST of the cases if not all of them. Some will likely be settled, but on the principle I described (the abuse of standards-essential patents), Apple at least is going to go to the mat on that. FRAND either means something or it doesn't. Google and Moto in particular are in fact GUILTY of abusing FRAND patent licensing and are currently under investigation by the US FTC, the ITC and the EC on this point. I think that says something very important about these companies.

People who say patent litigation amounts to nothing simply haven't been paying attention.
 

vansmith

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This may come as a shock to you, but most litigation does, in fact, have ultimate winners and losers. Your false presumption is that both companies are equally guilty in different areas, leading to roughly-equal mixed results. This is simply not the case.
I never made that assumption - you drew that from my statement. My point is that everyone supposedly infringes on other companies patents all the time. This case isn't anything special - patent infringement cases pop up more often than weeds on a neglected lawn.

Sure, Google likely infringed on other companies patents. The point however is that anyone can make a case that someone infringed patents - it's what lawyers are paid to do. Remember how Google supposedly infringed on all those Java patents that Oracle possessed? Remember all those patents Apple apparently infringed upon that were owned by Motorola?

Like every other patent case, this will be contested until its settled out of court or the patents, which are generally ridiculous anyway (swipe to unlock? really?), will be categorized as invalid or irrelevant.
 
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Love apple stuff, but to believe that they are "squeaky clean" when comes to patient infringement on other company products is highly improbable. It really is getting old. They are all dirty to a certain degree (Apple, Google, Samsung, Motorola, etc.). In the end it is all about the :$.

Paul
 
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chas_m

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I understand where you're coming from and we are probably more on the same page than I initially realised.

But yes, swipe to unlock is a patentable concept. By coincidence, Apple's patent on that was rendered invalid by a ruling from a UK court, but not because it was silly (as you seem to infer) but because prior art was shown that proved it wasn't Apple's original idea.

Apple (and other companies) that can show that their idea was an original one should be able to patent them (that is, after all, the idea behind patents in the first place).

Google didn't "supposedly" infringe -- they admitted to doing so. What saved them is that the court (rightly IMO) found that software APIs can't be copyrighted (not patented).

As for "all those patents Apple apparently infringed on that were owned by Motorola" -- no I don't, and I follow this stuff closely. Can you provide a link to what you are talking about there? I might be forgetting something (it's a lot to keep track of!) but I can't recall anything like that. Lots of Moto CHARGES of infringing but to the best of my knowledge, nothing proven.

You may be thinking of the ONE case in Germany where Apple was found to be infringing a Motorola patent on push e-mail. If so, you may not know that that case is not yet final and (IMO and those of some other observers) Motorola is likely to ultimately lose that, as it could be considered a standards-essential patent. The whole concept of whether FRAND patents belong in courtrooms at all is being re-examined. The ITC has re-opened another case on this very point recently.

If you're aware of a court case in which Apple was convicted of infringing on a non-FRAND patent other than that one, I'd sure like to know about that. Thanks.
 

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Google didn't "supposedly" infringe -- they admitted to doing so. What saved them is that the court (rightly IMO) found that software APIs can't be copyrighted (not patented).
You can't infringe someting that can't be infringed. ;)

If you're aware of a court case in which Apple was convicted of infringing on a non-FRAND patent other than that one, I'd sure like to know about that. Thanks.
Here you go.

But yes, swipe to unlock is a patentable concept. By coincidence, Apple's patent on that was rendered invalid by a ruling from a UK court, but not because it was silly (as you seem to infer) but because prior art was shown that proved it wasn't Apple's original idea.
This is out of place but I wanted to include this here since it forms the basis of my concern. Essentially, I'm making the argument (and I think you'd agree) that patents can be overly trivial, cases in which they're involved are struck down (at least partially) and can be so counter-productive but lucrative so as to warrant a whole "industry" (patent troll anyone?). I can't tell you the number of times I hear of company X suing company Y for a "power-button-that-is-raised-and-clicks-and-is-on-the-left-side" patent. This is my problem - everyone sues everyone, no one ever really wins by the time appeals are up and the only losers are the consumers who, like in this Android case, have to have an update pushed out to remove functionality (I don't care if Google infringed on the patent - my focus here is on us, the consumer). The triviality makes my heat hurt. ;)
 
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chas_m

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You can't infringe someting that can't be infringed. ;)

You can -- or more accurately you can have an intent to infringe. At the time, Google was under the impression that they needed a license. They decided to infringe anyway and work out a deal later if they got caught (this is a summary of their own email). Basically the "better to ask forgiveness than get permission" approach.

It worked out for them in the end, but that's still pretty ****ing of Google's intentions. And it comes to us from Google itself.


You may want to read that article again. Apple not convicted of anything. Opted to settle rather than fight. You might INFER that they COULD have been infringing, but that's not a conviction, and we don't know that that's true at all. So in short, you couldn't find a conviction (as I predicted).

This is out of place but I wanted to include this here since it forms the basis of my concern. Essentially, I'm making the argument (and I think you'd agree) that patents can be overly trivial, cases in which they're involved are struck down (at least partially) and can be so counter-productive but lucrative so as to warrant a whole "industry" (patent troll anyone?).

I certainly agree. But it's equally unfair to just lump them all together, pronounce everything trivial, and dismiss the lot.

IF you're going to have software patents at all (and that's another topic for another day), then the patent holder has a *legal obligation* to vigourously defend them. They don't actually have a choice in the matter. One could say that the whole idea of having judges who have backgrounds in law, not technology, to validate or invalidate patents is a bad idea. I'd certainly say that, and in fact this is one of Apple's chief arguments, not to mention the whole idea of why FRAND was invented in the first place.

You could argue that software patents are stupid and shouldn't exist. The EU doesn't recognize them, in fact, and recently Judge Posner (one of the most techo-savvy judges around, the guy who just heard the Oracle-Google case and didn't rip his own head off out of sheer boredom) is said to have come round to this view as well, arguing that the system is broken. Who am I to disagree with his genius legal mind?

But these cases (IMO) aren't as much about the patents as they are about forcing all parties to play by the rules. As far as I can see on this, the big picture is that Google and Motorola and Samsung have decided not to honour their FRAND obligations. They've stopped playing by the rules. Apple and Microsoft (primarily) are in court MOSTLY to get them to play by the agreed-upon rules so that we DON'T have to litigate every imaginable little patent.

This is the important part. If Apple and MS don't succeed in advancing this position (that FRAND should not be litigable unless the parties refuse to negotiate in good faith), then innovation in the industry will die, or the cost of consumer electronics will skyrocket.

So this is not a case of "these two companies [name any two] are in a ... um, yellow-snow-making contest" -- it's about whether FRAND survives and is enforced, or chaos and endless litigation wins out. That's the bigger question that's really playing out here. Tim Cook summarized Apple's view pretty well during his D10 talk, if you can view it I'd suggest you take a look (obviously covers a lot of other stuff, but he does get round to talking about the patent lawsuits to the extend he can).
 
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I have always been treated like a king on the few occasions that I have had to contact apple support. I think switching to andriod opens up an entire new batch of problems but good luck to you. Which one of the 147 different android phones did you get??????
 
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chas_m

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[import bans] won't happen and you know it.

Oh really?

Apple granted injunction against Galaxy Nexus | Electronista

(temporarily stayed during the trial, but Apple DID win an injunction on the grounds that Android infringes Apple's patent)

Samsung denied stay of Galaxy Tab 10.1 injunction | Electronista

Had any luck buying a Galaxy Tab 10.1 or 7.7 lately?

ITC sides with Microsoft, orders Motorola import ban | Electronista

It ain't just Apple that Google is stealing from ...

Just a few examples, plenty more where those came from ...
 
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WOW from starting with a troll to patent infringements.
This thread has taken on a new light.

Now i have subscribed i look forward to the next instalment ;)
 

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