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Comment by sirn | Hacker News Reader

If only they could provide this kind of customer service worldwide. I've been fighting with Apple (Asia) about screen burn-in since 2010 (which I've already given up); I can never ever open iPad keyboard more for than 5 minutes without getting a burn-in since the first day since I bought it. The only thing they ever did was denying the problem. I love Apple products, but never have faith in their customer service.

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"I can never ever open iPad keyboard more for than 5 minutes without getting a burn-in since the first day since I bought it."

Could you clarify what you mean by this? Not sure if I understand.

iPad on-screen keyboard. The burn-in is very noticeable after few minutes especially in landscape mode (for some reason).

That's not how burn in works ...

Burn in requires a static image for a long period of time (months/years). It doesn't just magically show up after 5 minutes of use.

Sounds like he's referring to "image persistence", which is similar in appearance to burn-in, but a different mechanism.

Burn-in is more likely to be found on CRTs and can take a long time to occur. Image persistence can happen in seconds or minutes and is what is seen on LCDs. It's usually temporary or reversible. (And plasma owners can experience both, yay! :)

Hmm, you're right. I did choose a wrong word, my problem is more of Image Persistence[1][2] than CRT-type burn-in, which in my case, did magically appears after few minutes of use and took a long time to disappear.

This doesn't deny my point of Apple support is awful outside US, though. I also have issue with horizontal line on 2009 iMac screen that they refuse to acknowledge the problem until very recently (October 2011). I'm happy that it's finally fixed, but it shouldn't took two years.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_persistence

[2]: http://compreviews.about.com/od/monitors/a/LCDBurnIn.htm

Apple has great customer service in general. At least in the US, dunno about Asia.

I got them to replace my 27" iMac screen, on site, without taking it to an apple store, just by sending them pictures of it. Had some intermittent discoloration. And it got replaced the very next day.

Their phone system is also great now. No waiting on hold or typing numbers into your phone 3 times each, then repeating them to each agent, like with comcast and others.

That's the exactly problem: they have great customer service in US but for some region (e.g. South East Asia) it's almost on the same level as all other companies out there.

It's cultural. There's only so much Apple's customer service culture can do to overcome the customer service culture in a country, when the staffing of the company sources people locally who have different ideas of what constitutes customer service.

The US has great customer service and of companies operating in the US, Apple is the cream of the crop. So it's effectively the creme de la creme in the US. Customer service in southeast Asian countries is largely crap across the board (I lived in China for 1.5 years and I'm speaking from experience).

One of the cultural phenomena that backfires customer service-wise is the collectivistic culture versus individualistic culture. Business people see customers as a collective and not a group of individuals. In this environment, no matter how good Apple's policies are, the judgement of whether or not your case/issue will be judged on a case by case basis and deemed worthy of meriting a replacement is going to break down because the people you ultimately deal with don't see or treat you as an individual or your case as unique.

There are benefits of collectivistic cultures, but customer service isn't one of them.

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