Apple Retail Employees Vent Frustrations About Stores Becoming Less 'Shopper-Friendly' in Recent Years

A new article by Bloomberg has highlighted some customer and employee frustrations with the state of Apple's retail business, particularly in the wake of changes introduced by former retail chief Angela Ahrendts. According to some current and former Apple employees, the retail stores have become more focused on branding than satisfying shoppers, leading to more complaints lodged against some stores.

apple bangkok store opening interior 11072018
Ahrendts left Apple last month after first joining the company in 2014, and Apple executive Deirdre O'Brien has succeeded Ahrendts in the retail position. The shake-up happened as Apple's retail business faces more and more issues alongside slowing iPhone sales.

O'Brien is now tasked with revitalizing Apple's retail business, even if that means moving away from the idea of Apple retail stores as social gathering places, which was the initiative spearheaded by Ahrendts. The former retail chief built stores with less clearly defined locations for checking out and speaking to Apple's Geniuses, in an effort to promote the company as a luxury shopping brand amid the launch of the first Apple Watch and its $17,000 Apple Watch Edition models.

According to Bloomberg's sources, this led to customer confusion and was accompanied by other issues, like less skilled employees and the removal of the traditional Genius Bar at some stores.

The overhaul of the Genius Bar has been especially controversial. Customers looking for technical advice or repairs must now check in with an employee, who types their request into an iPad. Then when a Genius is free, he or she must find the customer wherever they happen to be in the store. Ahrendts was determined to get rid of lineups, but now the stores are often crowded with people waiting for their iPhones to be fixed or batteries swapped out.

Apple was “trying to streamline things,” says one employee, “but in the process made things more difficult for some customers.”

One former Apple executive said that O'Brien is looking to borrow from the past and break up Apple stores into more clearly defined sections. These include areas that promote Apple's growing services business, like Apple Music and Apple TV+. A few employees speculated that she will also bring back the original Genius Bar.

To help boost sales in the interim, Apple has begun offering discounts on iPhones, cheap financing, trade-in offers, and more. These offers were seen around the world, including specific promotions in Australia and China, with Apple typically e-mailing customers about the limited-time discounts. In the United States, Apple even updated its website to promote a monthly payment option for iPhone XR and XS trade-ups.

The first Apple retail store that will open under O'Brien will be the Carnegie Library location in Washington, D.C. on May 11. As of now, Apple still sees its stores as communal gathering places. According to CEO Tim Cook, "We should probably come up with a name other than 'store,' because it's more of a place for the community to use in a much broader way."

Visit Bloomberg to read the full article: "How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster".

Popular Stories

election results 2024 live activities

Track 2024 U.S. Election Results Live on Your iPhone Lock Screen

Tuesday November 5, 2024 5:02 am PST by
Apple News is providing Live Activities support for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, allowing iPhone and iPad users to track electoral results in real time directly from their Lock Screen. The feature is rolling out for U.S. users over the course of Election Day, November 5, providing continuous updates of the electoral count. So if you're interested, you don't need to repeatedly check...
Generic iOS 18

Everything New in iOS 18.2 Beta 2

Monday November 4, 2024 12:34 pm PST by
Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 updates to developers, and Apple is continuing to refine the Apple Intelligence capabilities. There are also a handful of smaller features that are worth knowing about. Find My Find My has a new option to Share Item Location with an "airline or trusted person" that can help you locate something that you've misplaced....
ios 18 2 chatgpt plus

iOS 18.2 Beta 2 Shows Siri ChatGPT Limit, Offers 'Plus' Upgrade Option

Monday November 4, 2024 10:54 am PST by
With the second beta of iOS 18.2 that's available for developers today, Apple has further fleshed out the ChatGPT integration that's available with Siri. In the Settings app, there's now a section that shows the ChatGPT daily limit, and offers an option to upgrade to the paid ChatGPT Plus plan. The beta includes an Advanced Capabilities section with a "Daily Limit" reading that shows up as...
iCloud General Feature

Here's What's New in Apple's Updated iCloud Terms and Conditions Taking Effect Next Week

Friday September 13, 2024 7:39 am PDT by
Apple has started notifying users about an upcoming revision to its iCloud Terms and Conditions, which takes effect on Monday, September 16. We compared the text of the upcoming iCloud Terms and Conditions with the current U.S. version from September 18, 2023 and identified four key changes: "Apple ID" references have been changed to "Apple Account" throughout. iCloud users must agree to ...
ipads early bf deals

The Best Early Black Friday iPad Deals

Tuesday November 5, 2024 7:02 am PST by
Black Friday is still a few weeks away, but you can already find great prices on numerous iPads, including the 9th generation iPad, 10th generation iPad, iPad Air, and iPad mini. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running. Of course, there is a chance that ...
M4 M4 Pro vs M4 Max Feature

When to Expect New M4 MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro Models

Monday November 4, 2024 2:36 am PST by
Apple's fall 2024 Mac announcements have included new iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro models, all of which debuted with variants of Apple's M4 chip. Apple intends to update the rest of its Mac lineup with M4 series processors over the next 12 months, which will make it the first time that Apple has used the same chip generation across all of its Macs. This means we can expect new M4...
New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18

10 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.2

Thursday October 31, 2024 9:42 am PDT by
Apple is set to release iOS 18.2 in December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. There are a handful of new non-AI related feature controls incoming as well. ...

Top Rated Comments

Digital Dude Avatar
72 months ago
The open air store layout is chaotic, cold and dysfunctional. Employee knowledge of products has dropped significantly in recent years.
Score: 102 Votes (Like | Disagree)
B4U Avatar
72 months ago
And when people criticize her bad decisions, they are labeled as misogynists just because the bad decisions are made by a woman.
But the fact is, the decisions themselves are simply bad no matter who made them.
Score: 94 Votes (Like | Disagree)
magbarn Avatar
72 months ago
Exactly, Apple stores have gone downhill when Ahrendts had control...
Score: 87 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Scottsoapbox Avatar
72 months ago
Ah corporate America, where one executive gets a bonus for changing something and the next executive gets a bonus for changing it back. :rolleyes:

But change is often confused with progress in both corporations and forums. o_O
Score: 81 Votes (Like | Disagree)
The Phazer Avatar
72 months ago
Finally, someone might do something about the fact it's actually quite hard to walk into an Apple Store and just buy something.
Score: 48 Votes (Like | Disagree)
haruhiko Avatar
72 months ago
Less and less third party accessories, more and more pointless expensive stuff, tens of versions of old and new iPad, iPhones and MacBook scattered across tables, nobody knows which one is the latest version. A bulk of store area is used to place... stools on it with random kids and grandmas sitting on it doing nothing, with a giant crazy screen playing nonsense ads. Noisier than a market. Extremely difficult to find someone to help, even for checking out. What is a Genius Bar? Apple Store's service has never been this bad before 2015 or so. These 2-3 years has negated the good reputation of the Apple Store built up in decades.

And god damn it I cannot return any goods in Hong Kong's Apple Stores since 2017. WTF? Tim Cook may care about your privacy but he never cares about Apple Store's service.
Score: 36 Votes (Like | Disagree)