IOS 577: Sharing the Holidays

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I totally agree with @RosemaryOrchard , I live in Germany and when I bought my first iPhone, a 3GS, the repair service was send the phone away for 2 weeks and wait for it to come back. The nearest Apple Store was about 14 hours away, so a minimum of a 2 day trip to get to a Genius Bar.

My 3GS had bad RAM chips and would randomly freeze. You couldn’t do a “forced power off”, you had to wait for the battery to run out, then you could charge it and start it up again. I took it to the phone shop, they sent it to Apple for repair. 2 weeks later, I got the phone back, no fault found. A day later, it froze again, back to the shop, phone back to Apple, 2 weeks later, it came back, no fault found. This time, it froze in the shop and I was very loud with the salesperson, with about a dozen people queueing up to buy an iPhone. This time, they sent it of and, miracle of miracles, they sent me a new phone and admitted that the RAM in the other one was faulty!

6 of the first 7 weeks of ownership with the phone by Apple! That wasn’t really the customer experience I wanted.

With our Android phones at work, if they break, the carrier sends a refurbished phone by express courier next day and they collect the old one and leave you the new one. If you didn’t break the screen or it wasn’t caused by water ingress, that’s the end of the story, otherwise you get invoiced for the cost of the repair.

With Apple phones, the carrier collects the iPhone and 2 weeks later, you get it back repaired. If you fork out the Apple Care+ cost, Apple provides the same level of service that the carrier offers for free for Android devices.

In the meantime, the situation with Apple Stores has become a bit better. The nearest store is now only 4 - 5 hours away… But still too much, but possibly better than waiting 2 weeks, if they can guarantee a fix on-site, same day.

On the other hand, a colleague offers a phone repair service in his spare time. He’ll replace an iPhone screen or battery overnight and you get it back the next day. A battery replacement works out at around 50€, generally.

With your Androids at work, isn’t that a special arrangement? We had the same with Vodafone. Irrespective of what the device was, it got swapped out if it failed, although we used to keep an eye on it because there was a noticeable uptick in broken phones when a new one was launched :slightly_smiling_face:

I’ve had a screen replaced on my own Samsung tablet and a new logic board put into an S20. Samsung collects the devices and it takes about a week.

Yes, but the point is, the carrier has a deal with the Android manufacturers for immediate replacement and worries about whether it was your own fault and whether they will charge you for the repair afterwards. Apple won’t let them do the same deal, you have to pay an extra 250€ to get the same level of service that the carrier and the other manufacturers offer for free, because Apple won’t come to an agreement with the carrier.

Our carrier (T-Mobile) only replaces like-for-like. You break a 2 year old Galaxy S10, you get a refurbished Galaxy S10. Only if the manufacturer has gone out of business do you get an alternative model.

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