iCentre - Service with a... frown

Woo a fancy name! its an 'i' and it's a 'Centre' and it sounds like a real Apple store!

Then you walk in, find an incompetent salesman who knows absolutely nothing about Apple products, who cannot spell a simple name, who has to concentrate in order to move around an iPod...

Yes that's what Malta's brand new iCentre is.

So as you might know, I received an iPod Nano this Christmas. A Nano Chromatic... wow.... My unit happened to be faulty. The touch wheel was faulty. The guarantee said that it was bought from Forestals. I went there and asked for a replacement, of course. Mr. G.B. at Matrix in Sliema told me "Dak ahna ma nistghux nibdluh. Trid tmur ghand l-iCentre il-Pieta ghax huma l-agenti" (we cannot replace the unit. You have to go to iCentre in Pieta since they are the agents.. we're are resellers). But that's another story about yet another incompetent Maltese IT Company.

So I go to this acclaimed iCentre this morning. I walk in, and see that someone else had a problem. A woman bought an iPhone which came without the USB cable. She had bought it online. He hadn't even realised that the 'iPhone' she bought wasn't an iPhone in the first place but was one of these cheapo imitations which try to emulate the apple look. I realised immediately but thought I'd better say nothing... The iCentre salesman had to call the technician because he couldnt make heads or tails of what to do and where to start from... at one point he was going to sell her a car-lighter charger... he had absolutely no idea of what the hell was going on around him.

Back to my iPod. I said look this doesn't work and I want a replacement. Taken aback, he simply said 'imma dak ma nistghux. Ha nehodlok id-dettaliji tieghek u t-technicians taghna iduruh u jaraw x'irid jigri' and after having seen what had just happened to the woman before me I said 'li ser jaghmlu t-technicians naf naghmlu jien... ga ghamiltu restore, irresetjajtu, updajtjatlu s-software u deher car li l-problema qieghda fil-hardware' which confused him... so he called the technician (again) who told me he'd restore it... ok i understand, he wouldnt take my word for it... but before he left to restore it I did say that it wouldn't work in order to prepare the smug when he'd return. And he did, and I smugged.

So he said he'd order a new one from Apple... in America. They had at least five bloody iPods like mine, and i asked for one of those. He said that it's not 'procedure'. Then the person who was with me, and had bought the iPod for me told them... 'right so how about I get a new bigger iPod which is more expensive, pay the difference, and you keep the faulty one to fix/change at your own pace' and it happened that they didn't have a procedure for something like that. THEN I said ok what's the procedure had the new iPod I get next week been faulty too... would I have to wait for another week? And they didn't have a procedure for that either

Long story short - iCENTRE IN PIETA HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO KNOWLEDGE OF ANY APPLE PRODUCTS, THEY DON'T KNOW HOW THEY WORK, CANNOT RECOGNISE COUNTERFEITS, CANNOT FIX THEM AND CANNOT CHANGE A FAULTY ONE FOR A NEW ONE.

Buy your electronics online or go abroad and buy a new one. It's quicker.

N.B. Oh and if you're the owner of the company, or you're the salesperson in question, I've got your name and several witnesses and all the documents I need in order to prove myself, so I'd think twice