I’ve got some serious problems with an iMac computer, bought in Taiwan, still barely under warranty (eleven months old). I’m not sure where to take it for repairs - the place I bought it is nearby, but they need to send it off somewhere, and it’ll come back in a week or two. However, I’d really like to talk to someone and show them what’s wrong with the machine - and confirm the machine is working after repairs have been done. The Genius Bar in Taipei 101 seems the obvious place to do this, but I’ve tried to make an appointment online: it was showing me next Tuesday (a week away) as the next available booking, and now it’s showing me no possible bookings. Caveat: this is my bad Chinese navigating the website.
I called the Taipei 101 Apple Store, and apparently no one on the phones speaks English.
So: I’ll be carrying this thing from Danshui. Is there a difference between going to the official Apple Store, and a random Studio A shop? Does anyone know a good way to handle making appointments if your Chinese isn’t very good? Is just showing up at the Apple Store Genius Bar on a random Wednesday morning, with no appointment, a terrible idea or just a mildly stupid idea?
Thanks!
EDIT: There is an “Apple Support” app, which theoretically makes it easier to see which Apple retailers have the earliest appointment slots available. Except that, according to that app, there are NO Taipei shops with any appointment slots available over the next week - and you can’t book any further out than that. I could, however, go to Hualian or Taichung or Tainan for an appointment.
So either the appointment booking system is very popular, or perhaps it just doesn’t mean anything.
I recently had to repair a laptop at the Xinyi Apple store. I have no idea when appointments are available, but I also could never find one on their website.
I ended up going at around 10:15 or so (they open up at 11). There was a pretty big line for Genius Bar walk-ins, but the vast majority was for iPhone repairs, not computers.
Once the store opened I was taken care of right away. My wife tagged along since my Chinese is horrible, but the staff we dealt with was very fluent in English (same when I picked up the machine).
Overall this worked out well, I’d probably only do it on a weekday though.
Thanks autorelease - very helpful. I’ll probably give it a shot tomorrow.
When you got there at 10:15, was there already a long line? EDIT: And where did you go to line up: inside the 101 mall, or at the outside door near the Apple Store? (I’ll be carrying a big fragile box so I want to the walking to be efficient!)
Figuring out the the Genius Bar appointments is a pain on their website - I managed to find it once, but then couldn’t get back to it. The Apple Support app does work well for showing when appointments are available, but there are very, very few open slots!
Phoning the store doesn’t seem to be much use. On one of my calls to the Taipei 101 Apple Store, I did get to an English part of the phone tree, and it told me to hold, and music played for about five minutes. Then the music suddenly cut off and there was only silence. I stayed on the phone for another five minutes or so before giving up.
Maybe there are such places, but I’m unable to decipher the Chinese information. Plus I’m not sure where my still-current one-year warranty applies. I’ve heard from a couple of people that the Apple Store Genius Bar almost always has people with good English skills, and that’s certainly important to me.
You can enter the mall before 11, you’ll see a very clear line at the Apple Store entrance.
Online appointment thing is super frustrating, when I asked about it they said they are swamped with folks trying to get iPhone battery replacements since the price will go up in 2019. Also only having one official store for the entire country doesn’t help…