y meant to tell you both I got a bit cranky last night because I couldn't find a place to give open feedback to Apple on their website so I sent an email to Tim Cook, not sure if he would ever get to read it or if anyone will but I feel a little better. I wasn't rude just told him the story.
As follows

"Good evening,

I'm Chris Shute and I have a story to tell you because I couldn't find an appropriate place on your website.

I purchased an iPad Air 2 online recently and it arrived on Monday. The reason I purchased a new one is because my old iPad 2 was too full (we only bought our first with 16 gig not knowing how portable and versatile it would become for us retirees) and was starting to slow down. From that comment you understand that I'm not tech savvy but love iPads they are just so easy anyway back to the story. I contacted Apple support as I could not find information online about how you transfer data from the 2 to the Air 2 given they had different iOS's (not enough memory to ever upgrade the iOS on the 2) and our iTunes was only on our PC for the iPod we have had since 2008.
I spoke to a young bloke, Timothy, in Auckland and explained the story and that I wanted to move all my data from the old to the new including 5 gig of photos. Timothy was just lovely he even came onto my PC screen and pointed to the things I needed to do so we uninstalled the programs for iTunes and then reinstalled the new version 12 something. He then told me to plug in my iPad 2 and we would upgrade to the latest iOS. By that time it was over an hour and he had to finish work so sent me instructions via email about how to complete the process. About 10 mins later a message on my PC stated there was a 3014 error on my iPad and the message banner had stopped calling my iPad 'Chris's iPad as it had done previously.

I rang the support team again and spoke to a young bloke in Idaho and he took me through the shut down and start up of my iPad but it still just had the picture of the cord going to a computer on the screen. He was not really au fait and kept putting me on hold we only spoke about 10 mins out the 50 or so minutes I was on the line with him. He then informed me that I could reset the '2' to factory settings. Imagine my surprise I said "oh no I have 5 gig of photos" you need to get them off first, he said he would seek advice from an expert.

I then spoke to a bloke from Singapore who asked me to take him through exactly what transpired with Timothy, after 20 minutes or so of discussion he explained that all my data was irretrievable I then started crying, I had photos of my 17 year old dog who recently passed away, a brand new grandson (September 2014) and various holiday photos that we used the iPad for to download from our camera, all gone.

To say I was devastated is an understatement but the nice young bloke offered me a hardcover for my recent iPad Air 2 purchase to compensate for the loss. I declined. I should have just kept it in my library like a photo album, instead of seeking expertise to enable me to give it away.

Your online support staff that I dealt with have a very friendly and polite disposition they are just lacking in one area which I fear is a major negative for your company, they don't seem to have the underpinning knowledge of the products they are supposedly supporting the use of.

I have since found out that the new version of iTunes is not compatible with iPad 2's and that Apple does not have a '2' friendly version of iTunes available for downloading. I was also advised by the Singapore support person that I should have backed up before the iOS 8 was attempted to be put on my iPad.