The black leather loop band I purchased in October has started to break/tear in one of the joints near the connector . I went to the Apple store today hoping to get a replacement, spoke with a genius who agreed that the band was defective and needed to be replaced but did not know how to proceed, she consulted another genius who I thought was going to handle my request, so much for my thoughts, she, the second genius, proceeded to tell me that in order for them to process the band return/replacement I had to unpair my watch from my phone, asked why and was told that was what they do, I said no I do not want to unpair my watch because it will erase it, the genius told me unpairing does not erase the watch but if it does I can restore it from a backup, if I have one, she went on to tell me she unpairs customers watches using her iPhone. Saw I was getting nowhere took my defective band and left.
Genius is a word that does not apply at my local Apple store.
Will follow up with Apple Cust service tomorrow but was too annoyed after todays experience to do any follow up today