A friend of mine from Germany bought an iPhone when he was on a business trip to New York last year in September. He was very happy with it, but after a couple of months the key to lower the ringer/sound volume was broken which resulted in the volume automatically decreasing all the time.
He called the Apple hotline and was told, that US iPhones can only be send in in the US and that it can only be returned to a US mail address. Therefore I took the phone with me, when I was in Germany a couple of weeks ago.
At first, I went to the Apple Store in Palo Alto and asked to get help with the broken iPhone. I was told, that I can only get help after registering for an appointment at the Genius Bar in the store. So, I went home, set up an appointment online and came back a day later.
I explained the problem to the guy at the Genius Bar and was told, that Apple does not provide support for unactivated iPhones. Unactivated means, that no AT&T contract was signed for that iPhone. (After buying an iPhone in the US, you connect it to your computer, electronically sign a contract for an AT&T mobile plan online and only afterwards the iPhone can be used; but this can be bypassed by certain software hacks)
This sounded very strange to me, as I cannot image that it is possible to make the warranty dependent on the fact whether you signed another contract. Anyway, I again went home without getting any help.
Two weeks later, I found coincidentally a forum post on the internet, which mentioned a webpage on apple.com where you can enter your iPhone’s serial number and get information about the validity of the warranty as well as request support. I entered the serial number of the broken iPhone and I got the following message:
Our records indicate this product has not been activated. [..] Please note that warranty service is not dependent on activating your iPhone.
This message clearly states, that even if you do NOT activate an iPhone (= sign an AT&T contract), you still get warranty from Apple on the iPhone. Furthermore, the page provides the possibility to directly set up a service request. Unfortunately, the number of categories which can be selected is very limited and the broken volume button problem did not really fit into any of the available categories. Therefore, I just chose some other category and entered a longer explanation text into the description field, as I thought that someone would read it and react on it.
5 minutes later, I got an email saying, that my new dock is going to ship as soon as possible and that I should just put my old, broken dock into the package and return it to Apple. Well, the category which I selected randomly was “broken Dock” and there does not seem to be anyone at the Apple support who is checking such requests…they just get shipped.
To prevent the shipment of a new dock, which I do not need, I called the Apple hotline and told them the story and asked for the cancellation of the service request. The Apple support lady put me on hold for a couple of minutes and finally replied that she canceled the request.
Then I told her the story of the broken iPhone and that I would like to send it in for repair. She looked up the serial number in their system and told me, that the Apple Care Protection Plan, which is an extended 3 year warranty which you can buy extra for many Apple products, for that iPhone was expired. As the iPhone was bought without an Apple Care Protection Plan and was still in the standard 1 year warranty, her statement was total bullshit.
I told her, that the iPhone is still in the 1 year warranty and that I never bought a protection plan for it. She again put me on hold for a couple of minutes and finally told me, that she is not able to initiate a service request and that I should go to an Apple Store to directly get support. I told her, that I already tried this and that the colleagues there do not want to provide support without an activation. Suddenly she confirmed, that an activation is necessary to get support and she finally got totally confused when I told her, what Apple’s website is telling about getting support without activation.
Well, after over 30 minutes on the phone, the conversation ended without any result.
I already thought that it will probably not be possible to get any kind of support for that broken iPhone, but on the next day I found a package from Apple in front of my apartment door. As I came home late and assumed, that the Apple Support lady probably just did something wrong with the cancellation of my original support request so that the package probably only contains the dock, I did not open it.
Another day later, I again found a package in front of the apartment door. Getting curious what they are sending me now, I opened both packages. First one was an empty box to put the broken iPhone in to send it to Apple. The second one was the dock.
As I had to enter credit card information when I had set up the service request initially online, I was concerned that Apple is going to charge me money, if I do not send them a broken dock back. So, I again called the Apple hotline. This time, it was a guy who asked me for my mobile number. After he could not find my private mobile number and not my company mobile number in their system, it became clear, that he wanted to have the mobile number of the AT&T contract which you normally would sign, if you get an iPhone.
After telling him, that the phone is not activated, he said “Sorry Sir, I cannot give you support for an unactivated iPhone.” I tried convincing him, that Apple sent me stuff, which I do not want and just wanted to clarify how to give it back to Apple. But he kept saying the same sentence again and again. That made me ending the call by using some words I do not want to repeat here and I just sent both packages back; the previously empty box now with the broken iPhone in it.
Two days ago, I had a Fedex tag at my apartment’s door stating that I could pickup a package at their station. At the Fedex station, two packages were handed over to me. One contained a brand new iPhone, the second one was another empty box with a message saying that I should send back my broken iPhone….what I already did…
Summary:
You CAN get support for your not activated iPhone (but only with US pickup location and US return mail address)
Don’t believe if any Apple Support people tell something else
Don’t create online support requests within the wrong category
)
…is really great! I got one almost four weeks ago and I really like it. But why are there so many annoying issues and missing features?
