MacTomski's Qype profile

A proper butcher, no complaints.

Eat here or collect takeaway here regularly. Never been let down. Great balance of price, atmosphere and service.

Top place to take the kids.  My 2yo daughter loves the aquarium and the stuffed fox that you can actually stroke.  The skeletons and stuffed animals in glass cabinets are fantastic and genuinely educational, the way a natural history museum should be.

I took a foreign client here on a clear evening and we were not disappointed.  The only thing I would say is that even looking out towards Wembley, I found myself continually wanting to look further left.  We eventually managed to move to seats overlooking the river, and then the experience was perfect. 

I didn't have a great experience at the Covent Garden store. 

My wife's iPhone 4S, bought from Orange under contract, had a fault (sporadically turned itself off).  After all the usual diagnostic stuff, resetting etc., Apple Support told me it was a hardware problem and should be swapped, so I opted to do it in-store at Covent Garden. 

The 'new' phone that I received in-store had a broken microphone (there are two, apparently.  The 'other' microphone, which switches on when you are on speakerphone, was fine), so again I called Apple, we established it was a hardware problem, and arranged to swap it at Covent Garden again. 

Imagine my surprise when the second replacement phone also had a fault - in this case, it had a greyed-out wifi switch and we couldn't turn wifi on.  Again the problem didn't go with resetting and again, Apple concluded it was a hardware problem.

I don't know how long this would have gone on - ultimately, I decided to give up on Covent Garden and go for home delivery, and the last replacement phone appears to work fine.

I wouldn't bother writing this here, but when I asked to make an official complaint, I wasn't particularly happy with the response I got.  Initially, I was told to call the store manager.  I said I didn't think this would help much, that the problem should go higher than the source. Then I asked what feedback I would get by making a complaint to Apple Support over the phone, whether I would be contacted or receive any sort of acknowledgement of my complaint.  I was told I wouldn't, but that I could rest assured that the complaint would get through to the store manager.

I don't really think that is good enough.  I don't really believe anything will be done about it, and in fact, an embarrassed apology from Apple for the time I wasted and general inconvenience of resetting broken phone after broken phone wouldn't have gone amiss either.  I feel I have given Apple a chance to acknowledge my experience and make amends, but they declined that chance.