I bought my Airpods Max (USB-C) headset in April of 2025. Six months later, they began to experience the typical connection issues - they would lose pairing and I'd have to reset them almost daily. After a while, resets wouldn't work unless I removed the ear cups and cleaned the cup hardware connections. Initially, I would only have to clean the connectors maybe once a month but this quickly ramped up to several times a month. I've owned them a bit over a year and half of that time I jumped through hoops to get them paired.
Last week, the headset outright stopped going into pairing mode. The indicator lights would only light up amber - it wouldn't show a white blinking light. In fact, all the lighting stopped working unles I was trying to pair the headset. The headset was useless so I decided to finally make an appointment so that Apple could troubleshoot/fix the issue. Yes, I've AC+ for the headset.
I first few times I tried to make an appointment at the Apple Store, I was rejected - the reasoning was something along the lines of, "can't make an appointment for that reason", when I was selecting "pairing issues" as a selection. This was super odd because pairing issues was an actual listed option to chose when making an appointment. The third time, I was finally allowed to make an appointment.
I took the headset to the store and within a few minutes of attemtping pairing mode, they said they'd have to keep it and send it to the service department, so now I'm in wait mode to hear back from them.
The reason I waited so long was due to not wanting to be told that there wasn't an issue. I see folks complaining of this issue a lot and see them also complaining of lack of committment from Apple to fix the issues. I was actually dreading trying to convince Apple to look at the problem, but it didn't take much convincing them since I waited until the Airpods were actually non-functional before reaching out to Apple. I've the feeling that if the headset was still able to pair, they'd have sent me home without much investigation.
I wanted to post about this because I didn't see too many posts on this forum talking of the repair/replacement experience with this particular issue with this headset version.
Last week, the headset outright stopped going into pairing mode. The indicator lights would only light up amber - it wouldn't show a white blinking light. In fact, all the lighting stopped working unles I was trying to pair the headset. The headset was useless so I decided to finally make an appointment so that Apple could troubleshoot/fix the issue. Yes, I've AC+ for the headset.
I first few times I tried to make an appointment at the Apple Store, I was rejected - the reasoning was something along the lines of, "can't make an appointment for that reason", when I was selecting "pairing issues" as a selection. This was super odd because pairing issues was an actual listed option to chose when making an appointment. The third time, I was finally allowed to make an appointment.
I took the headset to the store and within a few minutes of attemtping pairing mode, they said they'd have to keep it and send it to the service department, so now I'm in wait mode to hear back from them.
The reason I waited so long was due to not wanting to be told that there wasn't an issue. I see folks complaining of this issue a lot and see them also complaining of lack of committment from Apple to fix the issues. I was actually dreading trying to convince Apple to look at the problem, but it didn't take much convincing them since I waited until the Airpods were actually non-functional before reaching out to Apple. I've the feeling that if the headset was still able to pair, they'd have sent me home without much investigation.
I wanted to post about this because I didn't see too many posts on this forum talking of the repair/replacement experience with this particular issue with this headset version.