Today something went wrong with the on/off button of my iPhone 4. It was a typical problem of many other devices. You press a button often enough, eventually wear and tear will have it sink in and not bounce up when you expect it to. The great thing about Apple products though is its International Warranty. I can take it to any Apple Store in the world and they’ll fix it for me. Since I’m in London now I decided to take it to the Apple Store in Covent Garden (Yes that’s my finger at the bottom of the camera lens when I took this picture… me being an idiot).
The service was good. I made an appointment and I only had to wait some 10 minutes or so before a staff member came to help me. I told him my problem and he took my phone to the back to take a look at it. He came back 5 minutes later and the first thing he asked me to do was look down the bottom of my iPhone where you normally plug the charger in.
Then he asked
“Do you see that pink dot at the bottom of the phone?”
I struggled to see it for a while but after some moments I said yeah.
“That is a sensor that indicates enough liquid has gone into the phone to affect the electrical components of the phone. So your warranty is void.”.
I had never dropped by phone into water or anything so I had no idea how that might have happened. But in any case, nothing else in my phone was wonky or not working. Everything was working fine… there were no electronic problems. The only problem if anything was mechanical… and that was that my on/off button wasn’t working so well. It just didn’t spring up anymore when I pressed it.
So I went on to ask
“Are you saying that some liquid had gone into the bottom of my phone and for that reason my on/off button has stopped working?”
He said “No I’m just saying because of this, warranty is void so if you want to replace your button you’ll have to pay GBP173 (which is something like RM865)”
I asked further
“Everything in the phone is working fine electronically. Just that one button. Are you saying that water going into the bottom caused my button to not bounce up when I press it?” (While everything else in my phone including charging it through the same socket the water was supposed to have gone in by is still working fine).
And he said
“Probably not… but we’ll never know for sure if this damage was caused by the liquid or not. So we have to void the warranty”.
I said okay and that I wasn’t going to replace my button for GBP 173. He looked really surprised that I wasn’t going to do it. Like any other idiot he told this story to would have done it.
Somehow when I walked out of the store I wasn’t feeling angry or anything. Maybe it’s because I knew I was going to change my phone soon anyway.. or that Eric Soong would have been able to fix it for me back home for a fraction of the price. As I went home though I thought about it.
The first thing the Apple staff did after taking 5 minutes to examine my phone in the back, wasn’t to tell me why my button wasn’t working. In fact he never did tell me why the button wasn’t working. He spent the entire time telling me why my warranty is void and why if I want him or Apple to fix my phone, I had to pay for it and it wasn’t under warranty. I don’t even know if my warranty is already expired in the first place but I assumed he checked anyway… which is why he came back to give me some other reason it was void.
So sure… legally I’m sure Apple is covered. I’m sure they can prove that “enough liquid” might have gone into the phone to affect the “electrical components” and hence warranty is void. But if that really happened… why is my phone still working like a charm except for the button on top? It’s not like I dropped it into a pool. The only reason I can think of how any liquid might have gone in is from the sweat of being in my pocket or even maybe on one of those days I get caught in the rain. Still… everything is working… just not the spring on the button. In any case, why is Apple’s first approach to jump on you to prevent you from getting your warranty when they could instead be focusing on fixing the problem itself.
So did Apple just cheat me out of my warranty? Or were they just trying to get me to pay a fortune for something that cost a fraction to do.
I have been using Apple products since 5 years ago. Today I have an iMac, Macbook Air, iPad 2 and iPhone 4. I was planning to switch either to the iPhone 5 when it comes out or an Android (since I’m hearing lots of good things about it). This incident though …. just made the case for the latter a lot stronger.
I don’t feel like Apple appreciates me as an individual consumer. On the contrary I feel as if they want to squeeze every single penny they can out of me. Perhaps its time for me to spread my eggs in different baskets.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space