So I want to download free booking.com app on my iphone. Can’t login to App Store, it says my account is locked out for security reasons. To unlock it I have to answer questions I’ve not encountered since I sat my GCE O levels about a hundred years ago. Have to reset my password to get back into my account.
I heard some fuckwit police commissioner on tv today say people shouldn’t be able to claim back online fraud if they set weak passwords, or write them down, or shit like that. But of course, so many short-sighted, head-up-their-ass companies blindly make you jump through so many hoops to set a password, like saying it has to have upper case and lower case characters, and numerals, and it can’t be less than 8 letters or more than 7, and it must contain the word ‘shit’ in French, upside down, so how the fuck are you supposed to REMEMBER all these enforced passwords when you’ve got about fifty different ones that only work on specific sites and you didn’t want any of them anyway.
One day the world will wake up to the fact that if you want people to do business online you’ll have to make it easier for them. And if you really want to stop online fraud, get some fucking rocket scientists to go after the bad guys, and stop blaming me.
So when I finally get into my account, I try to set up a ‘rescue’ email address that will make it easier for me to ‘unlock’ said Apple account if ever I’m locked out again. Which will probably be tomorrow. For some reason, which it won’t tell me, it won’t let me use my main email address as my rescue email address, even though it’s the main email address I use for everything and I REALLY don’t want to use a million and ten other email addresses that I have no interest in ever using, JUST FOR THIS FUCKING STUPID APPLE ID SHIT. But it flat out refuses to accept my email address as the rescue email address. So that’s that fucked then. If ever I’m locked out again I might as well just flush my iphone down the toilet and go back to Android.
But for now, I’m in. I’m unlocked. I’ve ducked and bobbed and snuck in the App Store. So I search for the free booking.com app, and click to download it. Wait. Phone asks me for my new shit password it made me set up which luckily was only a few minutes ago so I can still remember it, just.
Then I go back to the app and try to download it again. No wait. Apple asks me to input my fucking password AGAIN! I do, with almost bleeding fingers, thinking, I must be so close to getting this app. This close.
Holy fucking bat tits. Now it won’t let me continue without confirming my credit card details and security code even though the FUCKING APP IS FREE!
Look, I think, I’m done with this shit. Why are they asking me to confirm my payment details anyway? Are they gonna charge me for a free app? So I go to the ‘contact support’ page on Apple website, and of course there’s no fucking online option to contact support. No email, no chat, no fuck all, even though I’m online, duh. The only option is to schedule a call from them. So I do.
Ten seconds later, the phone rings. I think, hello, that was quick, maybe they’re getting their shit together at Apple, maybe, just maybe their customer service team will be solar hot.
Then I get their sexy-voiced auto-responder telling me thanks for setting up a callback, and I would now go in the queue, and the current wait time would be around 10 minutes, or some shit, blah blah.
So I sit there tapping my fingers listening to their crappy music for 10 mins, 15 mins, 20 mins… then I hang up, thinking, life is too short for this shit.
But then the phone rings about a minute later. It’s another auto message from Apple. This time I listen very carefully, and as well as saying (again) thanks for setting up the callback with the support team, I would now go in the queue and the current call wait time was, wait for it, “10 minutes or longer”.
Ahh, right. I see what they did. Did you see what they did there with that “or longer” on the end? They covered their pathetic asses in a really sneaky way, by making me think it would be 10 minutes, when actually, “10 minutes or longer” could mean like 15 minutes, it could mean an hour, it could mean several hundred fucking light years man.
So about Apple. Here’s the shit. From the horse’s crapper. They might be the dogs when it comes to slick design, but when it comes to the usability of their systems and support, they blow bigger than Monica Lewinsky. And they make you swallow it.
Sort it out, Apple. I always knew you’d go down the toilet after Steve Jobs went, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so soon, or so bad.
And that’s putting it politely.
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