Apple’s Customer Service Tested with iPhone4

This is where the rubber meets the road. The top tech company has a quality/design problem despite it’s rigorous testing and Steve Jobs micro-managing. How will the vaunted customer service respond? It’s well-known that Apple weeds out posts from it’s forum if they are too blunt about a weakness. And it is also widely known that Apple is ranked first for quality and warranty response. How is all of this going to come together?

An easy fix for the problem, according to Appleinsider and probably Apple themselves, appears to be the rubber bumper casing. This is something Apple could design, build, and give away for pennies + shipping.  The first problem? Having to admit the mistake. Apple hates to admit anything we all know.  How do you confess to 1.5 million new owners their unit has a fixable problem? The other problem, it would ruin Steve’s perfect industrial design and the phone’s appearance. Dilemma time in Apple offices. Bulk mineral water time in Steve’s office.  Seriously it is action and opportunity time in the Apple offices.

Come on Steve, put on the black mock-turtle neck and show the sadness and humility that the color deserves.  Apologize, give away the bumpers, redesign the casing a bit and start releasing the slightly updated iPhone 4. It hurts the pride, but really this is an opportunity to set your company even further apart from the competitors.  What are the odds?  Whatever you do please don’t fix it by covering the sides in glass as well.  That would be like carrying your grandmothers urn around.  Scary.