Olathe’s iResQ shows its dark side, woman charges; UPDATE: case closed

Friendly Midwestern success story iResQ, the Apple-authorized repair center in south Olathe, fixes iPhones and iPods but may have a tough time fixing its reputation in the almighty blogosphere. In the wee hours this morning, the influential Web site BoingBoing — a kind of think tank devoted to epic geek time wasting — linked to a Sacramento, California, blogger accusing iResQ of opinion blackmail.

According to BoingBoing’s post today, the disgruntled customer, who blogs as brownielinzi, sent her broken iPhone to iResQ, which advertises same-day repair and overnight shipping, and then waited two weeks for a response. She e-mailed the company to complain and posted the query on her blog. That’s when iResQ agreed to waive some of its charges. But, she says, there was a catch.

Brownielinzi complained in her February 5 entry, “I hate iResQ”:

After some excessive “fact-checking” on their part, iResQ removed the diagnostic fee and overnight shipping charges from the bill, but not the cost to actually repair my phone. I agreed, finally, because it was obvious that this was the closest thing to customer service they were willing to provide. However, even though I already expect piss-poor customer service from iResQ, today they’ve exceeded my expectations. Today iResQ threatened to “rescind the refunds” UNLESS I REMOVED MY BLOG POST.Short of libel, independent consumers have every right to express anger and dissatisfaction with businesses that fail their expectations. iResQ’s blatant attempt to stifle negative feedback is completely unacceptable.

Brian Buffington, iResQ’s general manager, says he plans to track down brownielinzi’s iPhone, respond to BoingBoing and let us know what happened to start all of this. We’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: Buffington has refunded brownielezli her repair charges (she got her repaired iPhone last week by overnight delivery) and sent a lengthy mea culpa to BoingBoing (along with an offer of 10 percent off repair costs to bloggers with bad iShit), excerpted below:

iResQ regrets to inform the public that a member of our staff acted

wrongly when recently dealing with an individual customer’s iPhone

repair order. Specifically, we apologize for asking that the

blogger’s post be taken down in order to receive a refund. The person

who acted this way acted wrongly, and we have addressed the matter

internally. Additionally, we have reached out to the affected

customer to apologize and offer a full refund.

We think any customer should always be free to express their opinions, positive or negative. As a company that also blogs, we understand the

passion that bloggers bring to their self-expression, and as American

citizens, we certainly appreciate the value of free speech. …

Finally, as a sign of our sincerity, and a token of our appreciation

for bloggers everywhere, we would like to announce “Blogger

Appreciation Discount” through the end of February….

(Full disclosure: I have twice driven to iResQ’s nondescript, industrial-park office to drop off different iPods that the technicians there were unable to repair because the parts weren’t available. This probably says more about the quaint old hand-me-down equipment I was using than it does about iResQ.)