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swingerofbirch

macrumors 68040
Original poster
I bought Earpods (not AirPods) 3.5 mm back in September. The controls stopped working. They come with a 1 year warranty. Sure they're only $19, but with companies like Anker when a cable stops working, there's a fairly seamless way that's had some thought put into it to get it replaced, so I figured I might as well try with Apple rather than shelling out another $19.

Their Support site is first of all not set up in any way that recognizes that Earpods exist. To start a chat with someone you have to select a product, and there's no way to indicate you want support with Earpods. If you type Earpods as your issue, it will take you to AirPods. And then it will insist on a serial number for AirPods. I'm not even sure how I eventually got through to the chat, but I did. The representative kept telling me to wait, and I would wait so long it would tell me if I didn't write something it would disconnect me, so I would type "Hi," and the representative would write "Hi" back. This went on for a long time. I eventually told them, after maybe a half hour, that I didn't have any more time and asked if they could e-mail me back. They said sure.

I didn't get an e-mail back, so I chatted again today. Another long chat, simply asking if I could mail these in for a replacement. They do after all have a one-year warranty. It was a long wait for them to finally suggest setting up a Genius Appointment for me at a local (actually not so local) store. That's not going to happen.

I guess Earpods are somewhat of an obscure product out of Apple's line-up but it's not like they have that many products, and smaller companies (like Anker as I mentioned) are really good at processing requests like this.

It would almost be better if they didn't come with a 1 year warranty because they kind of don't.
 
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