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spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Original poster
Jun 11, 2009
11,488
5,413
General gripe here, but I had a terrible experience at Apple. I spend thousands every year with them, and the last warranty exchange I have with them is at least 5 or 6 years ago. My wife's 13 pro has a weird issue where the screen dims, it gets really hot, then just reboots. It's sporadic so it's tough to reproduce. My wife brought it into our local Apple store that gets all our business and as soon as she walks in the rep cops an attitude. She looks the phone over and says nothing is wrong with it. My wife explains the issue again, the girl seems to fixate on my wife's UFC shirt and says something to the effect Oh you work out at UFC, is it possible you got the phone wet? Then starts scrutinizing the phone, saying there is water apparent inside one of the camera lenses.

At this point my wife calls over the manager who looks and says he doesn't see anything in the camera lens. He pops out the SIM card and sees both the water stickers are white and says there is no water damage. Then he asks if she really wants Apple techs to make the water damage a reason for charging for a replacement phone. My wife isn't very technically oriented so she just took the phone and left in confusion and frustration. I took the phone to Verizon, their tech closely looked it over and 5 minutes later issued a warranty replacement, no questions asked.

It seems like Apple has changed a lot. I had no issue if they took the phone and let their techs review it, but they made my wife feel like it was her fault by trying to claim water damage and having the techs look at it being an irreversible decision. It's interesting because this did happen at an Apple store years ago when they claimed the water stickers were red, I was able to view the stickers and show the manager who promptly exchanged the phone. I believe there was a class action lawsuit related to this. Now if there was truly water damage my issues would have been 1) prove that caused the defect / Maguson-Moss Act, and 2) aren't iPhones advertised as being water resistant? The IP68 rating means 30 minutes at 6 meters of water. I thought I had read about an emerging class action lawsuit where water damage would be a manufacturer warranty/failure issue itself because of how the phone is advertised.

Anyhow just venting and seeing if anyone else has had issues with Apple warranty claims. It makes me feel like they are pushing the Apple Care warranties hard by denying manufacturing claims.
 
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That lawsuit about the false advertising got thrown out unfortunately.

So now you continue to see stupid ads like the Apple Watch being able to be used during extreme sports, which we all know is a farse.

Sorry you had a bad experience. My only suggestion is leave a bad google review. Some businesses care about them.
 
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Sorry about meeting that person. Unfortunately, not every employee would serve as a face of the company; I can see it everyday at my work(company is great but some people are not).

I had my iphone se 1 gen bought in the middle of nowhere in 3rd world country. It was activated 6 months ago and abused by some teen with daily 5 hrs of PUBG. I bought it used and it failed on me. NYC WTC apple store issued a replacement with no questions and were courteous above and beyond.

Recently, wife's 13PM exhibited the same issues like in your post. She went to the "apple" app on her iphone and scheduled a phone call. They called back in 15 minutes, talked about 20 minutes, ran some tests in that timeframe, and directed us to the closest bestbuy(what a courtesy otherwise Apple store is 2.5 hrs away) to receive a replacement on the same day. Overall, my wife and I think it was one of the best customer services and we thank Apple for keeping their high standards.
 
That lawsuit about the false advertising got thrown out unfortunately.

So now you continue to see stupid ads like the Apple Watch being able to be used during extreme sports, which we all know is a farse.

Sorry you had a bad experience. My only suggestion is leave a bad google review. Some businesses care about them.

Tell me about it, I do a ton of HIIT and MMA training and the AW is just awful at following my HR around.
 
That lawsuit about the false advertising got thrown out unfortunately.

So now you continue to see stupid ads like the Apple Watch being able to be used during extreme sports, which we all know is a farse.

Sorry you had a bad experience. My only suggestion is leave a bad google review. Some businesses care about them.

That's crazy, I'll have to look it up. I just don't get how you can advertise a phone as IP68, but then say that water ingress isn't a manufacturer defect.
 
I just don't get how you can advertise a phone as IP68, but then say that water ingress isn't a manufacturer defect.
The same as with a cars. They can advertise it as a "trd off-road pro" or "4x4 rubicon" meaning that you can do offroading, but manufacturer would not cover ripped off exhaust because someone scraped the bottom while rock crawling, drowned engine because the air intake was lower than the river one wanted to overtake, fallen off wheels and failed suspension, because someone went rock crawling/jumping on a 4runner with independent front suspension.

Also we need to know what is IP68. It is a very static controlled test: phone smoothly placed at guaranteed depth for a given time. Iphones easily survived bucket tests - when someone put it in the bucket and drowned for the depth and time to test IP68.
However, rubber seals will wear off in 1 or 2 years and nobody can guarantee the waterproofness anymore unless tested. Also holding your phone and jumping into the swimming pool or swimming with it (or your Apple watch) creates greater pressure which will exceed the parameters of 4 meters/ 6 hours even though you barely take it 3 feet under the water because the amount of water pressure was not static as in the real IP68 tests.

I also bought torque wrench. It works perfect when new because it is calibrated at the factory. According to the manual, it needs recalibration every 6 month. That is a disclaimer. It can preserve preciseness even after 10 years, but specialized mechanics will have a calibrating device to check it every 6 month. As a hobby man I don't need to go that deep and can live with the tool being non precise.

The same disclaimer with Iphones, watches. They are waterproof, but nobody can guarantee that it will not leak on you for various factors be it overload over characteristics or the broken seal at the factory.
 
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Not really, I’m always surprised at how easily they seem to swap stuff out with replacement devices. I never ask them to.

I often wish they could just repair my old device and not make me take a new one. That way I don’t have to setup the new device. But I guess the days of actually fixing anything are long gone.
 
But I guess the days of actually fixing anything are long gone.
It is not gone, but it looks like collecting and shipping in bulk to China original factory is more cost effective to them.
Probably local walk-in repairs are just to please people who can't wait so long, otherwise I bet it is more expensive to pay for the person doing it on-site in Apple store in US rather than shipping the half globe across.
 
A timeline for me…

First iPhone bought as new was the iPhone 5 in September 2012.

1 - Replaced iPhone 5, November 2012. No issues, Apple was great.

2 - Service on my wife's iPhone (2014 I think), Apple Genius noticed frayed Lighting cable and offered replacement as well.

3- Screen replacement, iPhone 6+, September 2015. I had a jailbroken iPhone (policy of service of JB devices had changed by this point). Genius was dismissive.

4 - 2017, final replacement of iPhone 5 (swelling battery). Genius was nice, actually allowed me to choose my carrier. I chose Verizon because the phone was a Sprint device and got an immediate unlock.

5 - November 2021, battery replacement for iPhone 6s+. Genius was nice but pushed using an iPad a as a computer replacement. Uh…no.

6 - May 2022 - replacement of iPhone 11PM (shattered back glass and cracked screen). I had an appointment. They said I didn't. They got me in and the genius was nice. I know the process though so I pretty much did most of his job for him.

In the final analysis, I think it's just people. You used to be able to just walk in. Now you need an appointment. And the geniuses deal with all sorts of people and skill levels. I know when I walk in I will be there for no less than an hour - so knowing the process I take care of everything before hand: backup, Find My off, Apple ID logged out, Face/Touch ID off, passcode off, screen lock set to none - device restored and set up as new. That tends to short circuit any potential crabbiness and lets the geniuses know that I'm not a moron. They can get on with what they need to do and our time together is limited.
 
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