iPhone dead; $30 rental?
This morning I woke up on my own. Normally I hear little crickets chirping around 7am which is my iPhone letting me know it’s time to face the coming day. This morning, no crickets. At first I thought maybe the battery was flat, but that’s not possible. I charged it the day before and didn’t put it through any rigorous usage. So iPhone CPR commences.
First I try a hard restart, holding down the home and on/off button for a few seconds. No dice. Then I plug it in, nothing, another hard restart, nothing. Let it sit for a while plugged in, restart, nothing. She’s flat-lined and any amount of resuscitation is not getting her little heart pumping again. By this point it’s time for work.
I roll into work around 9am with a cold iPhone in my pocket. She still feels good but her soul is lost. 10am rolls around, I can’t wait. I head to Apple Store on the Plaza hoping they can shock her back into existence. The Genius looks it over, does exactly what I did earlier that morning. Realizes he can’t do much so offers to send it back to Apple for repair. This sucks, two days sans phone is not acceptable. I’ve never had to send a phone in for repairs, I’ve never had a phone just break. I need a phone at all times. I can’t say for sure if this is Apple’s fault but I know for a fact that I have not done anything out of the ordinary to cause my iPhone to die. So I’m forced to pay $30 to rent a phone while mine is being repaired. This is lame.
Apple shouldn’t be charging it’s loyal $30 to rent an iPhone while theirs is being repaired, especially if the error is on Apple. This doesn’t seem like good customer service to me. I would gladly put down a deposit for the rental but I should get that deposit back.
While my phone travels in her temporary sarcophagus to the bowels of Cupertino I’m left with the sting of loosing $30 for an error that is undoubtedly Apples. grumble
I would like to thank the guys at the Apple Store, they were very cordial and accommodating.
Update: August 28, 2007
I recieved my “fixed” phone in the mail via Apple. Only problem was the little guy refused to recognize my SIM card. I tried all sorts of things, even other SIM cards, nothing. Apple was kind enough to replace the phone. What a relief. After about two weeks of usage things were back to normal until this evening while browsing the web I was greeted with a colorful half streaked screen. I don’t know about anyone else but the Aurora Borealis belongs in the sky, not on the lower half of my iPhone screen. My luck just gets better by the iPhone.
Related tags: apple, customer service, iphone, mobile
Remarks
Jacob Kaplan-Moss http://jacobian.org/
Wow, they’re dropping like flies — I just had to send mine in for repair after the bottom 1/4” of the touchscreen stopped working.
I did, however, get away without the $30 fee — I asked, and the manager waived it. I’ve found that Apple Store folks often will waive fees of that nature if you ask nicely while pointing out that it’s obviously a hardware problem.
I think the extended warrenty/AppleCare also provides free loaners. Given that the failure rate appears to be pretty high, I think I’ll spring for the piece of mind.
Chris Griffin http://chriszgriffin.com
I agree that Apple shouldn’t charge for loaner iPhones (especially if it’s a hardware issue), but this process is so much better than what I had to go through with all my other phones. I’ve had almost all my phones, at some point, break on me. Sometimes it was my fault, sometimes it wasn’t.
I’ve always paid the extra $4-5 a month for insurance. The problem is, all the major carries outsource their insurance to some company (I forget the name), and if your phone breaks (and it’s out of warranty, which (quite conveniently) was the case most of the time) you had to pay $50 deductible and wait 3-4 days for a refurbished phone. If you were lucky, and your phone was discontinued, they would send a new phone. Oh, and forget getting a loaner phone until the new one arrives.
This is why I’m glad Apple is handling iPhone support, and not AT&T.
Andy http://blog.modernsketch.com
Exactly the reason I am not an early adopter. Version 2.0, here I come.
Nathan Borror http://www.playgroundblues.com
I guess I should have been more disappointed at the Genius bar. Maybe he would have felt sorry for me more. It’s really stupid either way. Maybe they’ll let me put that $30 towards an extended warrantee.
@Andy - Smart man but you’re missing all the fun!
Lorna
I can’t believe they charged you for a rental. They should have given you the rental for free or a new phone - that bites. I had the same thing happen with my brand new Canon Rebel only I was without it for a MONTH! Horrible The iPhones are not doing so well. I would complain to Apple, maybe they’ll send you a refund.
Eric http://www.ericrogers.org/weblog
Mine died too, only it as my fault. It was in my bag with my MacBook, and crashed to the floor. The screen shattered but it still functioned.
Apple was awesome with it. They are replacing the screen for free, even it though was user error and not at all covered in the warranty. Apple just wants everyone to be happy for the iPhone launch. And yeah, they did offer me a rental for $30, but I just took the SIM home and popped it into an old phone. No big deal.
kevin
and if your experience with apple is anything like mine, it’ll die again about 10 minutes after you get it back, and you’ll get to rent another one while it’s sent back to cupertino again (and again, and again…), unless the apple store guy is willing to eat the rental fee (because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your apple product. just ask anyone who works at 1 infinite loop; they’ll be happy to tell you so).
apple has absolutely the worst customer service i’ve ever had the misfortune to experience; i will never do business with them again.
andy
Well, at least you didn’t spend too much on it or have to pay a boatload of money for a single-service provider. Oh wait no…
Nathan Borror http://www.playgroundblues.com
So I got the phone back on Monday and put the SIM card in only to have it not recognize the card. Not sure what the deal was but it just was not going to cooperate.
Next day I took it to Apple Retail and they just flat out gave me a new one.
I’m still out $30 which I’m going to try and get appropriated towards an AppleCare plan for the phone. While this thing is expensive, when something goes wrong they definitely take care of you. Each employee couldn’t have been nicer.
Chris Coyier http://creativesuitehelp.com
Similar thing happened to me, only the apple store was not nearly as accommodating to me as they were to you. I ended up having to call Apple, who subsequently sent me THREE service phones somehow, I just sent back the other two without even opening the box. Now it’s been 3 weeks and I haven’t seen my phone back. PLUS, the AppleCare service phone is awful:
Taylor
I went to the Mac store in Kansas City because my MacBook’s hard drive had been messed up and it took forever to do anything. After a bit of testing (reinstalling the OS, etc.) which I had already done, they sent it in and gave me a new hard drive. I love their stores, and the employees are really nice, knowledgeable people. Unfortunately nothing is perfect. An example of this would be my MacBook, the iPhone, or, outside of Apple, Microsoft’s Xbox 360. While all the aforementioned gadgets are amazing, there are always problems with major launches, and hey, shit happens. Unfortunately, that’s just a part of life. Being out 30 bucks does suck, though…
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