One of my favorite gadgets I own is my Apple iPod Touch… the iPhone's "little brother". Recently I picked up my iPod and realized that there was a portion of the screen that was no longer responding to my touch. After a few attempts at resetting the device it was obvious that something was wrong, so off to the Apple store at the Holyoke Mall to see what they had to say.

I have had plenty of experience in returning items that are under warranty, but this was something else.

First, I walked into the store at 9:30AM and was greeted by a covey of school aged kids, all being shown how to create music on the various computers throughout the store. Not the type of field-trips I was going on when I was a kid, that's for sure!

I spoke with one of the saleswomen there and explained my problem. She immediately made me an appointment with an Apple "Genius" (that's what the store calls their tech support folks). I had a short five minute wait to talk to him.

Expecting to go through the standard "how did it break, did you drop it, did it get wet" type of questions, I was very pleasantly surprised. The tech quickly verified that the iPod was indeed having a problem and said "Yup, we can fix you up…" and turned around and pulled a new iPod out of a drawer and handed it to me. Other than having to sign a paper acknowledging receipt of the iPod, I was done… 5 minutes max. Wow!

Other retailers should learn from Apple. Treat you customers right and they will be customers forever.