Reader Joshua wants to warn everyone that exchanging your defective-out-of-the-box iPhone 3G is a huge pain the butt. His girlfriend got her iPhone on launch day but quickly discovered that the speaker was broken. She brought it into the Apple store to have it checked out and an employee accidentally dropped it. At that point, Apple told them they’d just replace to the phone. That’s where things got complicated.
Joshua writes:
My girlfriend was set on getting an 8GB iPhone 3G on launch day, and to make sure, we headed out to the closest mall location in San Jose, CA at 5am. We were the 20th person or so in line, and had no problems getting in.
She was transferring her service from T-Mobile, and surprisingly, it all went smoothly. We probably walked into the physical Apple Store at around 8:15am and were back out to our car by 9:15.When we got home, we noticed a problem with our iPhone — the speaker wouldn’t work. No external sounds whatsoever, unless it was docked. We called the Apple Store and I have to say, Apple offers some awesome support. They took her name down and told her to come right back in past the line and they’d take care of us (sorry to everyone who was still waiting).
We rolled back in around 10:30am, and if the next five hours had been up to Apple, we’d have been gone by 10:45am. Funny thing, they were going to try to troubleshoot it, but then one of the Apple specialists accidentally dropped the phone, and said casually, “We’ll just go grab you a new one.”
Unfortunately, AT&T has a different take on iPhone exchanges. AT&T could not give her a phone exchange because she was no longer qualified for first-time purchase and activation, so they tried to charge her full price ($399 instead of $199, if I recall) for the iPhone because she’d already purchased and activated an iPhone. Then, since they already returned that previous iPhone, AT&T locked her phone number and said she couldn’t get it back for 48 hours because of that return. After that, it became a worry on both ours and Apple’s part if they were going to charge an early termination fee, and then a new activation fee for the second phone.
Our Apple concierge, Rosemarie, was wonderful in arguing with AT&T on our behalf. Four and a half hours later, Rosemarie was able to widdle it down so that they could get her new iPhone activated with her original number, but they refused to let her walk out of the store with an iPhone for $199. In the end, Rosemarie and the store manager (whose name I didn’t get, but she was also extremely helpful) decided that what they were going to do was charge us for the full price of an iPhone and issue themselves a gift card for the difference of what we would have had to pay. So we paid our part ($231 and some change) and they used their self-issued gift card to cover the rest. In other words, Apple chose to eat the cost on our behalf because of what AT&T was doing.
In the end, we couldn’t have asked for more exceptional service than what this Apple Store gave us. While we waited, specialists noticed us and offered us snacks and sodas and were generally really friendly and empathetic. We were also pretty chill about the whole thing, which I’m sure helped, and by the time we left, they made sure we weren’t screwed with by AT&T.
So, just a warning to anyone else that has to exchange their iPhone. I’m not even generally an Apple/Mac person, but this gives me great faith in the Apple Store’s customer service, and I would definitely say to have faith in them, but be wary of AT&T.
Kudos to the Apple Store for for spending so much time working this out for you. We hope that AT&T works out this glitch — there’s really no reason why a simple exchange of a defective phone should take 4.5 hours and require the Apple store to issue gift cards.
Is this happening to anyone else?
(Photo: qshio )
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I’m assuming that when apple returned the first phone, they also returned the initial purchase amount ($230 ish). That tends to happen when you return something. Then, they sold her a new one, but they didn’t qualify for the subsidized price. So, apple rung up the unsusidized price, then gave her a giftcard such that her out of pocket expense was the same as before.
Oh okay, that makes sense then… except for the fact that whenever I’ve done a defective exchange it was just that, an exchange and not a return/re-purchase.
Apple just plain rocks in this regard. Shows that the unreasonableness lies with AT&T.
The apple store can replace the phone and swap the sim.
AT&T does not need to be involved in that situation.
Don’t involve them. Ever.
They eat babies.
Yes, AT&T are pretty much douchebags.
My experience with Apple and the iPhone has been great, though.
Bought the first one when it came out (so took a bath on the price), but when the touchscreen went haywire, took it back to the store and got a new phone on the spot, without having to go through the usual song and dance.
Yesterday, I noticed a spot on the inside of the screen. I’ve never dropped the phone, and there was no damage on the outside of the screen.
Took it to the Apple store, and within 1 minute of looking at the screen, the genius pulled out a replacement phone, swapped out my sim and I walked out with a (relatively) new phone.
Try that at Verizon or T-mobile. I should know something about doing that at T-mobile. They’ll basically say it was your fault.
So yeah, I got soaked on the original price of the iPhone, but I’m satisfied with my phone and the service I get with it. That’s how customer service should be run.
@brettt: The problem with just “swapping the SIM”, as you suggest is that you’re SIM code (on the card) and the serial number (on the phone) will no longer match – it’s good for a short-term fix, or if you’re out of warranty, but if you have a problem in a month, the non-matched codes will cause a whole bunch of other headaches (I’m pretty sure there are about 100 stories about just this problem here on consumerist relating to the 2G iphone).
I had a similar problem.
Got iPhone at the ATT store on Friday. Went to return it because of wonky battery. ATT store was out of phones. Went to Apple Store. They started to get me a replacement, but stopped then said they couldn’t take it back because it was purchased at the ATT store and was therefore an ATT owned phone. However, if I go back in 14 days, it becomes a service issue and Apple can replace it at that point.
Seriously, if you lay down with dogs…
I had a similar problem.
For a detailed description of how it went down, here’s my blog: [ryandauzet.com]
To sum it up…
Two things were holding me back from a smooth iPhone buying experience:
1.I had a business discount applied to my account.
2.My iPhone was currently under repair and I made the mistake of taking off the iPhone plan on my account while my phone was getting fixed (AT&T will assume you don’t have an iPhone when you take off the iPhone plan, thus removing your upgrade eligibility).
So, I spent about 1.5 hours on launch day talking to AT&T trying to get this figured out. I spoke to 3 customer service reps at AT&T, and every one of them told me that I wasn’t going to be able to get an iPhone that day. I wasn’t going to leave until I had a new phone in my hand. I was able to get them to remove the AT&T business discount by having them delete my account completely then recreate it. Apparently, the AT&T customer service reps can’t remove the discount over the phone, you’re supposed to go to the AT&T store for that (WTF!?!). Deleting and re-adding my account started my account off with a clean slate.
When we finally made it over that hurdle, the Apple guy told me that I wasn’t eligible for a new device, even though my last AT&T phone was the 1st gen iPhone. I had to call AT&T again to figure out why, and they basically told me again that I was SOL. The end result: Apple said they’d give me the 3G iPhone for the upgrade price, then eat the rest of the cost.
Kudos to Apple for taking care of their customers and shame on AT&T for not following suit. The only thing that’s kept me with AT&T is the iPhone.
Why is this thread even this long? It’s a story saying, “Thanks Apple, for great customer service”! It’s not a freaking debate about the moral smugness of whether you purchased the iPhone or not. Jesus, you trolls need to get a life.
Customer support at the international plaza store in Tampa sucks. On Monday I went in, there were about 20 people waiting outside the store, in a roped off area, with some mouldy old security guard letting them through. A friend of mine and I walked in, saying we were going to look at computers. Then my friend just asked a rep for an iPhone and they sold it to him. So not only were they dehumanizing people by making them stand outside while they went through a 2-hour process to sell people a phone, they weren’t even guarding against people just walking right around the line. Awful.
Something similar happened to me that AT&T screwed me. Apple, of course, was great through the whole process. Basically, I had sold my v1 iPhone a month before the launch to guarantee I got top dollar for it (I did, $365 for a 4gb). When I did that, I threw the sim in my backup phone until the new iPhone launched. I stood in line at Apple on opening day for 3 hours only to find out that AT&T was not going to subsidize my purchase because I had just “upgraded” a month ago. Of course, by “upgrade” they meant that I started using my backup phone that I’ve had for 3 years. Now, I am not eligible for “another upgrade” until November. So, I am returning my 3G and going back to a v1 iPhone until Google Android launches on T-Mobile or Verizon at which time I will gladly pay the ETF to end my relationship with AT&T forever. After a few years of a decent Android phone (hopefully Nokia), I hope Apple opens up the iPhone for use with other/good carriers.
I also got a 3G iPhone on the first day. I’ve found after working with Apple by phone (1-800-MYAPPLE) that I need a new phone. Yesteday I was told that they would send me a new phone (free) and I would send them my 3G iPhone in packaging they will provide. I have AppleCare which costs $69 but the first yr is covered by Apple and the 2nd by this warranty. The problem with my phone is that when I sync it it takes 20+ minutes and has crashed, etc. Yesterday, Apple said I should get my new iPhone today. With all my Apple products I’ve had excellent service by calling the 800 #.
That’s why if you buy a phone buy it from the phone company not the maker. If you bought it from an at&t store, they would have just swapped the phone and sim cards. I have done this with many phones, including the iphone without problem. Apple just has no idea what they are doing when it comes to selling the phone and setting up service.
I’m still confused. Surely AT&T and Apple had some contingency in mind in the event of defective merchandise. When you’re planning on selling “millions” of units, it’s a stupidly simple requirement. This whole nonsense of having to fool the system and negotiate with a CS Rep just so a customer wouldn’t be charged twice over a replacement seems completely absurd.
I had a similar thing happen to me. Got to the Apple Store at 3 am, was third in line, and was in the store at 8 am. The entire story went like this:
I went in, chose the model I wanted, and they attempted to activate my phone. Their system gave some weird error, which was traced to the fact that I had a FAN account on AT&T (business discount). I wasn’t aware that I had the discount, but it was through my university. I called AT&T while at the store and told them to remove the discount. They did, and after refreshing the account management page on one of the in store computers, I saw the discount was removed. I asked the Apple Store employee to try again. This time it went through, but the store’s credit card systems went down. Every employee was having the same problem, and they all kept retrying to no avail.
After about 30 minutes, the credit card systems were back up. It wasn’t possible to rerun that same transaction, so they tried using another phone and took the first one to the back since it couldn’t be used anymore. Unfortunately, when they tried running through the process I was no longer “upgrade eligible”. When I went to the account management page, it showed that my contract had been renewed today. In other words, the previous phone was activated, but since I hadn’t paid for it, I couldn’t have it.
The employee directed me to the customer care portion of their store, and asked me to call AT&T to see if we could get the contract extension reversed. AT&T said that all the Apple Store employees would have to do is return or exchange the previous iPhone, and the transaction would be reversed. This of course did not work. So one of the managers called AT&T again (this time the number the Apple Store people call), and was told that the extension was removed. We ran the transaction again and it didn’t work. He called one more time. They said they removed it once more, but again it didn’t work.
By this time it was noon. I had been waiting to get my phone activated for four hours. Finally, the manager said that he would take my credit card information, and find a way to charge me for the phone later if for some reason the transaction hadn’t gone through. I told him I’d come by tomorrow to see if they had run into problems. They gave me the phone (the first one that was activated but not paid for), and after a few activation delays with iTunes, I was out the store with my activated 3g.
Despite the excessive amount of time that I was at the store, time flew. The employees were joking around, offering me refreshments, and constantly apologizing. I had good conversations with them and other customers and so the experience was not bad at all.
The best part was, that since the beginning (when I walked in), I had been working with a manager (not a specialist) to complete the transaction. Even though the manager was busy with other employee asking him questions, he did not stop helping me and made sure I left the store satisfied. The assistant store manager, who was also there, was apologetic about the entire situation. She seemed stressed out with all the problems that were going on during launch, but handled the situation well and made jokes with myself and the other customers.
Even with all the craziness, Apple got a plus in my book for the whole experience.
My wife and I arrived wide eyed and eager at the Apple store in the Fashion Show mall in Las Vegas just before 7am on Friday to trade in our old iPhones for new 16gb models (black for me, white for her).
On an AT&T family plan since last June, I figured it would be a pretty easy transition to 3G, right? Wrong!
With only 100 people or so ahead of us in line, the wait was roughly 5 hours just to get into the Apple store. But that did not bother me at all compared to what happened next.
The very friendly and helpful Apple employee attempted to “port” our existing iPhone numbers to new 3G models. Unfortunately, something went haywire during the porting process.
Two hours later (now a total of 7 hours into the process for me), the porting issue was resolved, and the old numbers were ready to be ported to the new 3G phones.
But, when it came time to check out and actually pay the $299 for the upgrade, AT&T wanted to charge me $499 per phone! Apparently, in resolving the porting issue, AT&T declared the 3G phones bought and paid for, and hence upgraded. When going to pay for the phones and check out at the Apple store, I was now no longer eligible for the $299 upgrade price since, according to AT&T’s monolithic HAL 9000 series I had already ‘upgraded.’
After much arguing back and forth between myself and the Apple employees and AT&T, and after my graciously offering both sides every deal I could think of that was rejected out of hand without any consideration (“give me a store credit for the difference and I’ll pay the full price for the phones” – “no” – “give me an AT&T wireless account credit, and I’ll pay full price” – “no”), I was sent packing without my precious new 3G phones.
All’s well that ends well though. Apple convinced AT&T to “return” the 3G phones, a process that takes about 5 hours. So I had lunch, watched Hellboy II (decent flick), then came back to the Apple store around 8pm, more than 13 hours after my day in line began.
By now, most of the glitches had been resolved, and I was able to buy two new 3G iPhones for the upgrade price of $299 a piece. I was tire, dirty, overheated, hungry, and my feet hurt, but at least I was no longer stuck on the Edge network!
The only remaining issue was my wife’s old number never did get ported to her new iPhone. She wound up with a new number, but was happy because she hated her old number and loves her new white iPhone!
The moral of the story: Apple needs to sever all ties with AT&T and build its own wireless cellular nationwide network for data and voice. I’d rather pay Apple for home and mobile phone and internet than AT&T or any other wireless carrier!
I waited in line for 7 hours on the 11th, picked up two 8g’s on a family plan. My display ended up being less touch sensitive on part of the screen and the screen didn’t seem to be glued down completely. I noticed later, once i got the replacement phone, that the vibrate button wasn’t right either, it didn’t toggle it freely moved. I thought they might of changed the design. This phone was badly built from the start. The headphone jack, the ipod connection was hard to insert and there was glue coming out of the creases…
Heres what went down at the apple store on July 12th. Waited in line for a few, got up to the door guard/ greeter, told him i’d like to exchange the phone. Appleman came up, “well, what seems to be the problem” he asked in a condescending manner, like nothing could be wrong since it’s an apple product. Blow #1
I showed him the screen and how it flexed and protruded over the bezel because it wasn’t glued down. He walked in the back room with my phone to compare with others iPhones and to show the DM, I guess district manager who never showed his face throughout this whole ordeal(1 hr prob). Appleman returned and said “they can’t tell a difference compared to others they had but they will exchange it anyway.” Blow #2
This is where it got tricky. Appleman leaves for a while with my phone and says they are going to give me a brown box version from the genius bar reserves or something because that’s what they do for exchanges. He said it would be new but not retail. This made me question if I was going to get a refurb or gray stock version because the only way i can tell if its new is if its in a shrink wrapped retail box.
I wasn’t happy with this, I waited in line for a retail box version for 7 hours and the phone isn’t even 17 hours old and I can’t even exchange it for a brand new box? He came back several times and explained: the system this, the system that, and it can’t even let him do it, blah blah blah. Finally a manger saw us chatting and called him over, asked him what was going on…she said just do a “retail swap”. easy enough. done and done. They exchanged it ported my number and I left with a new retail version like I deserve. No issues with att or anything. The manager did say something about the exchange might show the $399 price but just ignore it.
Something I learned, iPhones have 10% restock fee. Return or upgrade to 16g, I asked.
They could of handled the situation a bit better, the deal about them saying they couldn’t see a difference is just wrong, calling me a liar pretty much. They should of had me show them again and asked me politely so we could be on the same page. I found it frustrating he kept having to go in the back room and get answers, the DM or whoever should of got off his ass and talked to me and figured it out with out the middle man rep. in the end it worked out but the hoops and time it took were uncalled for.
I just needed to get a new cell phone. My contract with Verizon was up and the phone I had was over 3 years old and due for retirement.
Did I think about an Iphone? You bet; I’ve got an Ipod Touch and love it. But there were a couple of things that were bothering me. One was the high price; they can say the 3G is half the price but it’s not – it’s even more. And the other is AT&T; we used to call them Cignaless. The change in corporate name didn’t improve their coverage or service one little bit.
Aftr considering the situation carefully, I chose to get a Blackberry Pearl through T-Mobile. I’m happy; it does everything I want and then some and the service is about half the price that AT&T wants for an Iphone.
If Apple wasn’t in bed with AT&T it might have turned out differently – but I’ve been an AT&T customer before and I’m not going back to them no matter how sexy the phone is.
I had a “damaged out of the box” experience myself, but had NO troubles w/Apple or AT&T.
Long & short of it…bought my 16GB @ Apple store Saturday afternoon; by 6PM the glass separated from the bottom of the phone (by home key). I called Apple store @ 5min to closing & was able to get my name on “stand by” for 1st thing Sun AM.
Showed up Sun AM & concierge at door tried to make me stand on line; told him my story & showed him my phone…BLAM! new iPhone w/correct number & all in under 20min.
GREAT service Apple…kudos to the employees & management at the South Park Mall (Charlotte, NC). Apple FTW
BTW…my line wasn’t available for upgrade, but one of my family lines was. AT&T guy told me to get iPhone on upgrade-able line, then go to AT&T store where they gave me a new fre SIM & registered the iPhone to my line; THEN gave me another new SIM (all free of charge mind you) for the “upgraded” line so my family member could use their number/phone again. AT&T FTW!
@Boatski: What does that have to do with anything? Nobody was returning anything, they were exchanging defective merchandise.