Apple Genius Bars - they should be called Magic Genius Bars.
This is a short story, but too long for twitter (Goobi would have cut my arm off if I posted this with Twitlonger). My brother-in-law called me on Friday and said his screen stopped working on his 2009 16GB 3GS and wanted to know where to get it fixed quickly. Unfortunately his warranty expired in July - frak! - so it could be $200+ to replace the screen in an Apple Store. The Apple Genius took the iPhone apart and noticed there was extensive water damage (sweat, etc. - he works for a large sod farm in Indiana) and corrosion inside the device was worse than anything he had ever seen. He told my brother-in-law that it would cost him money because there was no visible outside damage to the iPhone.
Here's where it gets exciting. Fortunately his device had the famous Apple icon on the back meaning, "hey, we can bend the rules!" The Genius asked him if he could see it once more so my brother-in-law handed him the device and then the Genius accidentally dropped it, thus creating visible outside damage to the corner of the device and cracking the glass over the screen. Now I don't know how he did this but he replaced the entire iPhone for Free99, that's right, free, zero, nada, nil. This caused my brain to freeze up like I had just ate a DQ Blizzard too fast. What? How?
There were no questions asked because my brother-in-law is not a fanboy or anything, he just left with a smile, a new iPhone 3GS and his bill - $0. That's one helluva way to help out a customer. The only thing I can figure out is that if an Apple employee personally damages a customer's device, Apple will cover the damages or replace the hardware. I would like some feedback if anyone has heard of an Apple Store doing this.
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...
7 Comments