Hi
So I went into the Apple Store today to see if they could do anything about my Lightning cable. It seems to have overheated or something as there is lots of discolouration and the wires are exposed on the inside.
I took it to one of the retail staff and they took one look at it and immediately said it was [direct quotes] 'obviously user damage' caused by 'you bending it at the top'. This has been plugged into my display since July last year, and it's never been moved or bent, always stayed straight.
I've had many, many cables in the last 10 years and none of them have done this except this one, so I think it's more likely there was a fault.
It's not the cable I'm too worried about - sure I would like a new one as it's useful not to have to unplug my other one all the time, but it's more the principle. I paid £15 for this cable less than a year ago. If I had an Android phone with micro USB I could've bought 30 cables for that price. To have it a) fail and potentially cause a safety risk and then b) have someone insinuating that it was my fault isn't that great to be honest.
I understand his position - there must be thousands of people who break these things and come in wanting a replacement. It just really sucks that all he could do was take one glance and then say where I can buy a new one (like I'd be buying another one of these from Apple... ). He seemed to just want to get back to chatting with his mate.
They sell these things with phones on two year contracts, so I expect the cable that's required for it to work to last that long too. It's just a shame that the person in the Apple Store showed so much disinterest and didn't even listen to me when I tried to explain what'd happened. I've attached a picture of the cable below.
Well you can kind of trick apple to get you a new cable. Just buy a cheap knockoff lightning cable from somewhere for cheap that looks exactly like the apple version. Buy a genuine cable from the apple store and then return the knockoff to the apple store. And now you have a brand new cable!
I did this when my macbook charger broke and i bought a charger from ebay that looked identical to the apple charger and then did the swaparoo at the apple store to get me a genuine because apple care was being a bitch.
If you can't provide a quality product to me that can't last at least a year with normal use, I will abuse your system to get what I need.