Horrific Apple Store experience, can anyone help me out here with my Apple Watch?

[BigMcGuire]

I’ve had absolutely horrific experiences at Apple Stores closer to LA. The Apple Store near me (60+ miles from LA) is absolutely amazing - goes out of their way to please, everyone is smiling, and they are awesome. Guess it depends on the manager?

I get AC+ on all my devices. I’d expect much better. I’ve gotten much better treatment before.

Looking forward to the resolution when if you get your phone back. I also have a 1TB iPhone 14 PM. …

 

[Kierkegaarden]

Usually they send out the "How was your experience with "employee name" the same day you leave the store. Interesting that I never got that email from Apple so I can't tell them how this experience was.

You probably won’t get this until you receive your repaired iPhone. I would also try emailing an executive directly and sharing your experience. Keep us informed on how this goes. Out of curiosity, was the Apple Store located in a mall or was it a stand alone?

 

[KaliYoni]

Guess it depends on the manager?

In my experience, both the manager and who is managing the store on a given day exert a big influence on how staffers feel and behave.

 

[Pierre535]

So a Xr loaner wasn't good enough? I take my Honda Pilot in for warranty work and they give me a Civic as a loaner. Am I pissed, do I whine because the Civic amenities are nowhere near What my Pilot, has? NO! I go about my business, happy to not have to sit in the waiting area for hours an glad I can go about doing what I need to do.

 

[Robert.Walter]

Unfortunately, you were given bad advice in regards the state of unpairing. Hopefully, you didn't try to pair the watch with the XR. If you didn't, your health data should still be on the watch. I would not try pairing the watch with the XR at this point.If you did attempt the pairing and it didn't work as you suggested, I believe you are out of luck, unless you had the automatic iCloud backup option turned on and didn't realize it.

On the bright side, you have a loaner phone to use, which is better than nothing.

As to the screen protector, the Apple employee stated proper policy about Belkin. If I had been the manager, I would have offered some good will with a new protector.

Why should belkin be responsible for warranty repair damage to screen protector? That makes no sense.

 

[Robert.Walter]

The fact that they gave you a loaner XR at all and your ungratefulness makes me think nothing they could have done would have been acceptable to you.

How would Best Buy have handled things if you strolled in with a dead Samsung S23? They would have told you to call Samsung and take a hike. No loaner, no recommendation to file a claim with Belkin, etc.

But it’s not Samsung nor Best Buy. He bought apple and apple care to avoid that treatment. You’re bringing oranges to an apple conversation.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Why should belkin be responsible for warranty repair damage to screen protector? That makes no sense.

Because that is part of the Belkin terms on the Belkin site. Apple is merely the reseller of the product.

The OP would have to contact Belkin about a replacement protector and also pay shipping for the new protector.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I would expect it.

And you would be wrong to expect and demand such from Apple under the terms of AC+.

 

[Robert.Walter]

Just curious: was there no next day express exchange possible? In my experience I get the replacement product the very next day, no repair needed. I live in Europe btw. Ps in Europe as well.

I’ve used this several times. Worked flawlessly until last time when they expected me to print out their return labels and proforma invoices for customs. I don’t have a printer.

 

[Robert.Walter]

No I didn't decline the Express Replacement Service, it wasn't given to me as an option. They said the only option was to have the phone shipped to a "depot" where they would try to repair it.

Side note, one of the people I was dealing with said "Yeah the good thing is that when they take your phone apart they will remove the waterproof seal. They'll then put a new seal on it so it will be way more waterproof now." I said back to him "The phone is 5 months old. How bad do you think the seal has gotten after 5 months?" He said "Oh yeah, I forgot that the 14 is only a few months old."

That was his response because you called out his lousy scripted look on the bright side nonsense.

 

[engbren]

I remember going to the Apple Store when I had a catastrophic failure of an iPhone 5 and the Apple Store replaced it on the spot. I’ve since had experiences that mirror yours with the exception of my last visit with a MacBook Air whose screen had spontaneously cracked without being dropped or knocked in any way. That was the second fault I had with that one, the first was a faulty keyboard that had a few letters fail. I had AppleCare and was expecting to have to pay a fee for a replacement screen. The keyboard issue they replaced the Mac on the spot and the screen they repaired overnight at no cost.

 

[Robert.Walter]

Because that is part of the Belkin terms on the Belkin site. Apple is merely the reseller of the product.

The OP would have to contact Belkin about a replacement protector and also pay shipping for the new protector.

Are you assuming the screen protector caused this? If not I missed some fact or it still makes no sense.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Are you assuming the screen protector caused this? If not I missed some fact or it still makes no sense.

I assumed no such thing.

Apple alerted the OP that the screen protector would probably be removed during the repair process. The OP wants Apple to replace the screen protector free of charge. Since the protector is a third party item, Apple is not responsible for replacing the protector even if the OP purchased it at the Apple Store. As I said, any replacement for the protector must go through Belkin.

 

[mittencuh]

So a Xr loaner wasn't good enough? I take my Honda Pilot in for warranty work and they give me a Civic as a loaner. Am I pissed, do I whine because the Civic amenities are nowhere near What my Pilot, has? NO! I go about my business, happy to not have to sit in the waiting area for hours a glad I can go about doing what I need to do.

Although not applicable to the OP as he has the best iPhone, to me, if I were Apple, I’d make the loaner a top-line iPhone. Seems like cheap advertising. Similar as to your example for service loaners, as premium brand loaners are generally quite highly optioned.

 

[ian87w]

Where in Apple's standard warranty or AppleCare+ do they promise "a premium experience"? If you get that, great. If you are pragmatic and don't want your day ruined by Apple behavior out of your control, you need to take some of this into your own hands and not rely on Apple so much to go above-and-beyond.

Disagree. This is not about personal responsibility, this is about expectation from Apple’s own branding and positioning. Premium brands where Apple like to equate themselves with offer premium services. From banking to car dealership, they all offer more than the standard from special lounge to loaner cars. Considering OP actually paid for AppleCare and not even offered express replacement service, which is the feature of AppleCare, is a disheartening outlook for Apple.

If Apple’s premium pricing only offer you the same service as Samsung/Xiaomi, then the ivory tower is crumbling. It shows that Apple as a brand is not premium in practice.

If you yourself like paying premium for subpar service, suit yourself.

 

[ian87w]

Although not applicable to the OP as he has the best iPhone, to me, if I were Apple, I’d make the loaner a top-line iPhone. Seems like cheap advertising. Similar as to your example for service loaners, as premium brand loaners are generally quite highly optioned.

Yeah, at least a -1 version or the lowest from the current lineup of the same design, maybe a 13, or a 12. It’s hilarious seeing a company that seems so marketing aware, is penny pinching when it comes to customer service.

Then again, a loaner is a loaner. At least they didn’t give OP a 16GB iPhone 6… 😅

 

[DMG35]

For what it’s worth on eSIM, you can activate from the AT&T app an eSIM. But signing into the AT&T app if your old phone is dead is not possible, it needs text message access to do 2-factor authentication.

So you need to go to the AT&T store to get an eSIM on the XR (also I don’t know if you knew this but the XR has eSIM capabilities). Why you would want an eSIM on the XR is that you can transfer it to the 14 when you get the 14 up and running if you have the XR, the Settings lets you transfer the eSIM.

That said, no guarantees it actually works, lol, because activation servers have not been very reliable.

That would have been helpful if the Apple employees told me that. They told me it has to be activated on the actual SIM card.

 

[DMG35]

So a Xr loaner wasn't good enough? I take my Honda Pilot in for warranty work and they give me a Civic as a loaner. Am I pissed, do I whine because the Civic amenities are nowhere near What my Pilot, has? NO! I go about my business, happy to not have to sit in the waiting area for hours a glad I can go about doing what I need to do.

Lol you are comically off base here. I work in the medical field and my phone has very large amounts of data on it. They basically gave me a messaging machine as I can’t load a backup on a 64GB phone. So your analogy is completely ridiculous. If your analogy was simply "well it makes phone calls and can text message" then that might be even close to being ok. I do way more with my phone during a work week.

In your world I have taken my top of the line off-road vehicle that I push hard on a daily basis and I'm given a Honda Civic loaner. Yeah it will drive down the road but I'm not going to be able to do with it what I need to do with it.

 

[school computer user]

I wasn't ungrateful at all. In fact I thanked them for the loaner even though they had a complete disregard for my time and the time I will have to give them again to get a phone up and running when I have to go back.

If I would have (and I wish I would have) bought the phone from Best Buy they would have replaced it with a new one in the store. I had an iPad Pro that I purchased last year have an issue with the screen so I took it into the store. They couldnt’ figure out what was wrong with it so as a Total Tech member they gave me a brand new one in the Box and apologized that it happened.

And let me give you a little rundown of what happened yesterday. I drove 30 minutes to the Apple Store. The technician said ”Yes, something is wrong with it. If we can’t fix it we will give you a new one Today. Come back in 2 hours and it will be ready.”

So I drove 30 minutes home, and then another 30 minutes back to Apple 2 hours later just to be safe on the time. They then tell me that they can’t fix it but will ship it off to a “depot” to see if they can fix it. If they can’t then they will give me a replacement phone. I asked why didn’t they just tell me that the first time when I was there and they just smiled and said “Because we assumed we could fix it.”

Oh and let’s not forget Apple’s genius decision to remove the SIM card. So now I have to call AT&T and get a SIM card activated and then reactivate my other phone whenever I get it back. That process took over an hour because AT&T only saw a 14 Pro Max on my account and kept trying to do an eSim activation.

So my 1TB iPhone 14 Pro Max was replaced with a loaner iPhone XR 64GB and I’m ungrateful? I can’t even restore this phone from backup because I don’t have enough space to restore it. And not only that I lost all my watch data because of them and you think I should be grateful to them? I highly disagree. And if I would have gotten an apology from ONE employee it might have made this a less bitter pill to swallow. But the fact that they just smiled at me like this was all not their problem was really infuriating. I didn’t get a single “I’m really sorry this happened” from one single person.

I only hope I get one of those “How as your experience with …………….“ emails because I won’t hold bacK and will destroy each of the three people that I had the displeasure of talking to yesterday.

I'm not sure if this'll work but look up "MoneyTalksWireless" on YouTube, the guy is able to repair quite a lot, he does mail-ins and is located in Bridgeport, CT.

 

[madeirabhoy]

Ok that’s fine. But how about a phone that doesn’t have 82% battery health and doesn’t last more than 3 hours fully charged. Is that also asking too much? The lengths some of you will go to defend a corporation are incredible.

If it has an 82% battery it lasts more than 3 hours charged.

 

[DMG35]

If it has an 82% battery it lasts more than 3 hours charged.

I'm sure it does. This was coming off of a sync when I got 3, but I highly doubt I get more than 4-5 hours on it.

 

[DMG35]

Because that is part of the Belkin terms on the Belkin site. Apple is merely the reseller of the product.

The OP would have to contact Belkin about a replacement protector and also pay shipping for the new protector.

Apple could easily just give me a new one free of charge. They absolutely have the ability to do that. They were just being ****'s and said they wouldn't.

 

[DMG35]

You probably won’t get this until you receive your repaired iPhone. I would also try emailing an executive directly and sharing your experience. Keep us informed on how this goes. Out of curiosity, was the Apple Store located in a mall or was it a stand alone?

It's located inside a mall.

 

[jeremysteele]

Where exactly is the problem here?

They gave you bad advice on unpairing which sucks, but otherwise everything is normal.

 

[ian87w]

Where exactly is the problem here?

They gave you bad advice on unpairing which sucks, but otherwise everything is normal.

Disagree. Since OP actually has AppleCare, the least Apple should’ve done was to suggest OP to use express replacement service.

My friend had an experience. His Apple Watch was having issues and we were at Apple Store Singapore. The genius told him that replacement process would take a week, but we would’ve flown back to Indonesia by then . Then the genius saw that he had Applecare, and immediately suggested him to just do the express replacement shipped to the store as it would be faster instead of going through the regular process. The genius immediately set up a call with Apple support via phone at the store so my friend can set up the express replacement. A replacement Watch was shipped to the store in a few days and everybody was happy.

Of course, this was years ago before the pandemic. Seems like Apple was different back then.