The Apple Post:
As Apple continues to grow their worldwide retail presence, the company has today taken a step backwards and has announced the permanent closure of their Simi Valley store, with the 11-year-old location set to close to the public on September 15th, days after the company hosts their ‘Let’s meet at our place’ media event.
To my recollection, this is the first store Apple has ever permanently closed. It’s not a portent of things to come, however.
There have been closings before. In fact, there used to be a whole host of “shoebox” Stores that Apple closed all at once. Other stores have closed as new locations opened.
I am not sure if my experience is reflective of how people perceived the service at the Apple Store, but in my opinion it has deteriorated substantially. I have access to 4 locations, and I have had a bad to mediocre shopping experience in all of them. Their Genius bar is a joke for anything expect maybe diagnosing a hardware failures. Any software issue, your better off doing your own research than attempting to get it resolved there. When they first opened, the employees had a true excitement that was palpable when you entered the store, that is not the case now. Quite the contrary. I have gotten rude to condescending attitudes, something that I simply don’t experience in any other retailer. Heck, I have gotten better service at Best Buy.
I always thought the best thing about Apple was not having to use a “store” … yet if one needs one, it is good to have one close by.
Maybe Apple is attempting to keep its “Tiffany” metric alive? Maybe Apple will build actual computers, in the future…
Those two stores next to it look dead. With malls around America dying left and right, it could be retail itself that drags down some of these Apple locations.
I don’t think Apple’s got worse. It’s always been pretty bad.
I’ve had better service at Best Buy, too… because the employee was bored out of his skull. 🙂