Well to be honest, Brian, I wasn't there. All I know is that one day she had a black iPhone, and the next day she had a white one. She told us that she had cracked the screen by stepping on it in a heeled shoe, had taken it to the store, had asked "nicely" to have a white one back, and that's what happened. Seeing as how she had a white one before my very eyes, I believed her.
Now, did she do a whole mess of paperwork before hand? I don't know. Was it more than once that she had taken it in for repairs and they finally gave her a new boxed unit? Again, I don't know. Could she have gone out and bought a $650 white phone because she was so sick of her black one and then lied to us about it? Again, Brian, I couldn't tell you, although it doesn't seem plausible to me.
But please, for the love of all that is good, do not use the phrase "physically impossible" when referring to actual PHYSICAL acts. Can it be technically improbable? Sure. Ethically unlikely? Perhaps. And while many things are PHYSICALLY impossible, typing keys into a computer or handing over a box with a phone in it is NOT one of them.