# The Hooded Claw's wifi Woes and an Apple Customer Service Success



## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

I've mentioned that I had some wifi problems here, but with the exception of one post, I've been vague about it.  In short, originally my wifi performance was very spotty, sometimes it did well, but often it stopped while streaming video or doing long downloads.  The last straw came when I downloaded some television shows from iTunes, and I kept being interrupted during the download to reenter my iTunes password.  And when I watched the shows, I found that each place where it had stalled had a little "no video available" screen interjected into the show.  I also was disappointed that I had stuttering and hesitation in the Netflix app, since that's one of the main reasons I bought my iPad.

I did quite a bit of prowling around the Apple support forums and other places trying to find information.  Apple makes a number of recommendations, some are along the lines of "make sure the computer is plugged into an active outlet and you have paid your electric bill", but one of the substantive ones suggested that some router changes be made.  The quick easy version is that they recommend that you only have one modality of wifi running at a time (it's actually more complicated than that, but that's the simple version).  I have a router that is capable of both b and g wireless, since I have no device that can use the b wireless, I turned it off.  That produced immediate and dramatic improvement!  Things were a lot better.  But on playing around with it some more, I found that my iPad still hesitated during long video streams.  I got an app that measures wifi connection speeds, and found that from time to time my wifi speed dropped off mysteriously and suddenly.  I went out to a few public wifi spots and found the same things--Occasional hesitation in speed, and more importantly, occasional stutters and stops during video.

So I got an appointment at my local Apple store tonight.  The Genius didn't appear to know much about the wifi issue, I'm not sure if that was a pose to avoid intimidating or validating the customer, or if this is all so new that he wasn't up on it.  BUT, he took my concern seriously.  I showed him the annoying gap in my video download, and I showed him the log of my wifi download speeds showing the sudden drops.  He agreed that that shouldn't be happening.  He said he needed to look up some things and disappeared into the back of the store.  After a few minutes, he re-emerged, took down the serial number of my device and went into the back some more.  When he emerged he said "I think we should just switch it out."  I was flabbergasted, I'd expected them to be resistant to that, and certainly not to offer it unasked-for, but I quickly agreed.  He went into the back, came out with a new iPad, and used one of their computers to activate it.  He suggested I contact iTunes CS to arrange for re-downloading the video that was messed-up, and indicated they'd be able to look at my records and understand what happened.

I came home, contacted customer service, and I am now downloading a bunch of video.  I haven't really tested out my new iPad because I want to use all my bandwidth to get my video downloaded!  But hopefully it will be okay.

I was impressed by the way they handled things, to say the least.


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## Reyn (Feb 10, 2009)

I am so glad things are looking up for you.  Crossing my fingers this will be one that works perfectly.


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## jaspertyler (Feb 13, 2009)

I hope it works well!  The one I have has no problems so far (knock on wood).  I am glad to hear they replaced it with no hassle!  Sounds like amazon


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## Eeyore (Jul 16, 2009)

Hi Hooded Claw!

Sorry to hear about your stuttering Wifi problems and I am glad that Apple was able to switch your iPad out without any hassles. Interesting that the Apple tech went back to check on the serial number. I wonder if they had a batch that had QC problems? Here's hoping this copy works _much_ better than the other one.

I hope we don't run into these problems when the 3G's start shipping out. I would hate to sit at home after all this time with a semi-functional iPad. 

Best Wishes!


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