if only i had an Apple store close enough, I've sent an email to Bob Drake , got his mail adress from somewhere on the site, Have to say that after all of it, Apple were about as good as it gets for customer service , as a "sorry" for this inept retailer of ours they are fixing as qucik as possible and when i'm happy they will send me , free of charge, a new I pod Nano, to try and make up for Comet. As a person who deals with brands as part of my work i made a point to Apple that for anyone not quite as "upto date on brands etc, and who actualy works in the world of B2B" as me , i.e. someone much younger or older who had the same problem , then those people will have a dismal view of the Apple brand itself as they will think that the retailer has a close and "agreed" relationship with the retailer, which of course most of the time they do not. It damages the "brand"! The worst thing of all was the other employees in the Comet store were embarrassed by the reatcion of the store manager, I asked them in fornt of other customers if this was a common occurrence for them and how they dealt with it, those poor employees!

After a long time considering i decided to buy my family an I pad last Sunday (22.07.12) from Comet Northampton. By Tuesday it had strange orange lines across the screen, by Thursday blank white screen. As i was off work on Friday i took it into the store in St James retail park. What happened next was entirely unexpected and made me about as angry as i get. Firstly the deputy store manager Stephan (yes i am naming and have plently of witnesses) refused to replace or refund, now remember i'd had this item less than a week. After some very reserved complaining from me he gave me use of a store phone and said call Apple which i did , thye were very good but couldn't fix it trying over the phone, as a last resort they said ask the store is they have a PC logged into "I tunes" and we'd try one last thing to rectify the problem, I asked Stephan if he could help, his words "there's one over there , help yourself" and dissapeared , i had no idea how it worked or what to do with it, but he was entirely unwilling to provide any help what so ever and was , in my opinion, very rude. Luckily i happened to know, although not well, one of the Comet employees who was very embarrassed by what had happened and tried to help me , to no evail. Comet then carried on ignoring me and left me there for another 20 minutes with no service (been there 2 hours now) in the end all they would offer was to rtake my new i pad and send it off to Apple to be fixed. So i buy an expensive piece of kit , have it 4 days, loose it for 10 days or 2 weeks while comet merrily spend my money that they have! They were rude, unhelpfull, dismal service. I want to know if , by law, they have to replace or refund as i requested or are they really entitiled to send off to the manufacturer. Surely my contract is with Comet not Apple , and i want my goods or my money. Complaining to Comet is near impossible, my wife simultaneously had them on the phone who said , i quote" it's at the stores perogative" , what the hell is that all about, and they refsued to put her through to anyone to complain eithere about the service or the rude store manager other than writing a letter, which usually is a total waist of time. Any help please??? NOTE: i got home not trusting to leave my BROKEN goods with Comet and called Apple who were taken aback by this service and really tried to help, they will collect from me and fix or replace. well done Apple , Comet you're a joke.