If you know me, you know that I am an Apple fan. I had an experience the other day with AppleCare when my iPhone 4 was having issues that only set that love for Apple deeper. At my past job at an extended warranty company, this repair blows them out of the water. Keep reading to get excited about AppleCare as I have.
My iPhone 4’s back glass was sliding around, which I have dropped it a couple of times, however I do not believe that would have caused this to happen. The ear speaker had diminished dramaticly since I purchased the phone. When I would be speaking to my wife I would say “Are you talking into your microphone!” It was very difficult to hear people. Another issue with the phone is the home button was having issues as well.
Since my warranty is ending on June 24, 2011 I figured I should call to set up service. I went to www.apple.com/support/ and set up a service request. With-in minutes I received an email advising me to take my phone to UPS and have them ship it for me. After locating an older iPhone to survive the long wait for my phone back, I went to UPS to ship off my iPhone 4. My wife and I thought we would have to pay for the box, packing material and shipping, boy was I wrong! The guy asked for my repair id number which pulled up my service request and AppleCare paid for the box, packing, and AND OVERNIGHT SHIPPING. I had no idea it was overnight shipping until I received an email on Friday May 20, 2011 stating:
Your IPHONE 4 reached the Apple repair center on 2011-05-20. We will notify you by email when your service request is complete. Regards, The AppleCare Team
That is insane that a warranty company would send your device overnight to them to repair. I used to work for a very large warranty company and the only way for this to happen is to escalate to a Corporate Resolution Specialist and demand overnight shipping.
The weekend came and went then on Monday May 23, 2011 I wanted to see what the status was on the repair, so I called 1-800-MY-APPLE. A nice guy answered and asked some questions, but then said his system was down and could not give me any information. I am not going to lie, I was a little perturbed with this, because when I worked for the extended warranty we could at least email a form that went into a folder and was worked and the person was called back. If our computer system was completely down, we had paper forms that we could fill out and someone would call that person back. I felt that there was no since in this person telling me that he could not assist me in any way possible. Then a few hours later I received this email:
Your service request has been completed and we sent you a replacement IPHONE 4 on 2011-05-24. The replacement shipped via FedEx using tracking number########, which should be active within 24 hours. Please allow two business days for delivery (five business days if your product is an iPod or iPad that has a personalized engraving). Regards, The AppleCare Team
The email also contained my old iPhone’s serial number and the new iPhone’s serial number. The best part of this is the fact they sent it back to me overnight!
This whole repair/replacement is crazy to me. Working at the extended warranty company that I was at showed me that you can get things done with longer shipping, but we received so many calls just people wanting to know where their product was. I am sure that if the company I used to work for would just overnight the parts to repair the products there would be a lot less escalations.
I must admit that I did not purchase the extended AppleCare on my iPhone 4 and now it is too late to do so, or is it? I found an article about purchasing AppleCare on Ebay. I may be doing this soon, as my manufacturer warranty will be ending soon.
Thank you for reading about a dugs life, have a great day.
adugslife 