In the end, I walked away from the complicated transaction they offered me, which could have netted me $300 but would have required $30 up front and taken up my attention and time. On the up side, I have this post for you. And you see that guy on the right, by the big screen? He was leading a class for whoever gathered on those empty cubes, which was no one, but he did the same spiel, with energy and expression. I was justing doing my tedious waiting, but every time I glanced at him, he seemed heartened to find at least one person within the zone he could consider his audience. What if everyone began glancing over and began to listen and then gradually converge and even sit on the cubes? Hope was alive. For me. For him. But it was not to be. He finished his spiel unheeded, and I walked out with with the cracked iPhone I had when I walked in.
I wish they'd just said no at the start. It irks me to think that $300 is the amount I will put time into trying to get. Only a bit of time. Just enough to feel as though I'd lost $300. How little would it need to have been before I'd have just given up and spent only 3 minutes in the store? How much would it need to have been before I'd have risked $30 and spent more time? All I know is that I learned something about myself and the amount that is $300.
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I'm on my third Samsung phone. No cracked screens on any of them. I don't use protective cases and have dropped them on concrete numerous times from a height of 3 feet or more. I'm not writing this to snark at Althouse but to note Apple could do better.
@Leland
Because it's plastic, right?
I like the glass, but I had no case on it and I dropped it on stone. Only the back was cracked, so I didn't bother getting it fixed, though I had paid extra to get Apple Care. I didn't want to be bothered, and you have to kick in $30 of your own even with Apple Care. If I'd known it would affect trade-in, I'd have gotten it fixed in advance.
I am annoyed that they wouldn't just do the math and subtract the $30 from the $330 trade in value and give me the $300. It was an arithmetic problem and a customer-satisfaction issue, but they, for some reason, have a protocol they must follow.
And yet they offered to expand my window for trade in so that it would start from today by doing a paper transaction of me selling my new phone back and them reselling it to me. I wasn't comfortable doing that
$270 after tax is more than most people get for an 8 hour workday, so not too bad of a deal for an hour or two of waiting.
Craig
I initially skipped past the headline on the previous post about minimalism and went to the one on the Apple store. The cubes seemed pretty minimalistic to me so then I had to go back and read the previous article. Don't know if the placement of posts was deliberate or not but I found it interesting.
Apple is not so good on service so I go to an Apple approved dealer in Tucson. I have had service there and, when my iPhone5 died, I bought a used, refurbished iPhone6. I started to get one (a new one) in the Apple Store but was treated rudely by a clerk. The iPhone6 is doing just fine and does what I want it to.
I stopped a Pixel on stone and cracked the screen. They let me trade it in with some reasonable reduction in value. And I was able to do it online.
I have an IPhone. When I bought it T-Mobile applied a screen protector to my screen. I think it was another piece of glass - it doesn’t scratch and doesn’t feel like plastic. I paid extra for that. I’ve dropped my phone several times and my screen is undamaged. I don’t have a case on my phone.
Newer Samsung's are glass. I typically use the phone till it does not hold a good charge and then just go buy a new one at Costco. By that time, they are only worth a few dollars in trade. I started doing this when Verizon quit doing trade ups.
...now we’re just haggling over the price.
Could have bought ten dozen eggs and two pounds of bacon with that money.
All lawyers have an internal billing rate, even if they've spent most of their careers as professors.
The horror!!!!
Welcome to customer service in 2023. Since COVID and Biden things have gone down hill quickly. I've had inexcusably bad experiences with each of Amazon, Sam's Club, Paypal and United Healthcare all in the last 2 days. Not one of them resolved my issues.
Everyone had a script that they stuck to. The scripts didn't line up with my problems and were useless. Two of the customer service representatives were in the far east and spoke English poorly. Everyone went through the motions.
I just bought a new iPad to replace my 3 year old one which had multiple problems, worst of which was the cellular feature no longer worked. How much could I get for trade in on the old one? Between $20 and $300 dollars (forget the exact values, but the ballpark is right). "Could you narrow that down?". He couldn't. It was unclear how I was supposed to proceed, so I too passed on the time sink. Same store you were at.
Turns out, it's not completely useless to have a second iPad.
My bank abandoned my old iphone 6 and an Apple update suddenly started draining the battery. Trade in was low since the phone was obsolete so I replaced the battery on my own and use it for podcasts and music and bought a new iphone 13 for my phone. Iphone 13 sucks compared to the 6 for what I use. And I still haven't gotten my bank back online on my phone.
If you are looking for a repair, look for Ipad Rehab on Youtube and their website. They are in a small town outside of Rochester NY. Jessa perfected micro-soldering repair using her skills as a microbiologist. https://www.ipadrehab.com/
Of course, Apple has been serializing their parts to stop people repairing their products, but now that may be a liability since the supply chain issues out of China.
Never had a problem with apple service. Battery, upgrade, broken keyboard, broken motherboard. Never had a broken screen, as they are (the phones) all cased with a protective film/glass. All of the incidents cost money, but the ‘journey’ was painless. YMMV.
a company i had stock in merged last year..
And we all got like $36 a share (which was about 10% higher than market price).
Yesterday, i got a letter, saying that (as i understood it);
They were sued by shareholders, that wanted MORE; and they had agreed to a settlement..
It would come to (if i read it right) about $0.21 a share.. If THIS and If THAT (more reading).
I had 66 shares, so that came to about $14 (If This and That).
I thought; well, i guess this 7 minutes of reading was worth while..
THEN i read that i'd have to send in "proof" that i owned the shares..
And that read was VERY complicated..
I THINK i needed share numbers or receipts or chicken blood, or something (maybe goat's blood?)
I decided, that $14 was the amount of money that i didn't care losing; since i think it'd be about 10 hours of work, to get the "proof"
Still.. $14 is(was) MORE than a tenth of gram of coke, or about a half of a nickle bag of weed, or 7 mugs of beer at Cy's Roost (including VID discount, and tips).
Since it's been very nearly 23 years (will be next March 5th), i have NO IDEA what $14 is in today's money.. Probably even less reason to worry about it
I have never been in an Apple store and I am struck by the ridiculous interior design and uncomfortable sitting cubes. It reminds me of TV shows and movies from the 70's about what the future might look like: the Jetsons or the Woody Allen Sleeper movie.
Why not just do the following?
a) buy your new phone without the trade-in
b) migrate all your data to the new phone
c) send your old phone off for repair while it is still under AppleCare
d) sell or donate your refurbished phone, when you get it back.
I got a whole iphone for $400 a couple years ago, to deal with non-contact veterinarians. iphone 7
No other use for it has come up, except it can serve as a backup internet connection for laptops via hotspot when DSL goes out.
More info here: https://screenrant.com/does-samsung-galaxy-s22-need-screen-protector/
But just how durable is the S22's screen? Whether someone purchases the Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22+, or Galaxy S22 Ultra, all three variants have Corning Gorilla Glass Victus. This is the strongest version of Gorilla Glass currently on the market. Corning says it can survive intense drops of up to two meters, which is a considerable increase over the 1.6-meter drop height of 2018's Gorilla Glass 6. Gorilla Glass Victus also touts scratch resistance that's two times better than its predecessor. In other words, it's very durable.
I’ve never had a good experience at the apple store. One time they made me wait outside in the rain, only to have a bouncer ask to see my confirmation email before I could be let inside. I told her I didn’t have my phone on me and I was in fact coming to pick up the phone I had purchased. A lot of other things went wrong after I finally got let inside.
Agree with you, they should have done the trade and deducted the $30. Makes no sense, especially from a customer service pov. I seriously doubt Apple is going to resell a traded in phone without doing a refurbishment/technical evaluation and that probably is made in the same place where they do repairs, replace cracked screens, etc. Duh. This inability to take initiative and make a unique common sense decision is why I despise bureaucracies. But lying on forms (back dating, etc.) is something they do regularly, as you noted.
I have always owned an iPhone and have always put in in the best Otterbox case I can buy. Every young lady I've known in the past 5-7 years owns a Samsung with a cracked screen. LOLz
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
Ann, sorry to hear of the dropping and the cracked screen.
Not every town has an Apple Store. If the closest Apple Store was more than 50 miles away (100 miles round-trip) would you (Ann) have purchased AppleCare? If so, and if you knew then what you know now, would you have bought AppleCare?
For many years my attitude toward paid service/replacement products was that they knew the odds of my needing to use one and if I was careful and bought enough stuff over the years, I could beat the odds.
Have a case for my Samsung and swear by the glass screen protectors that my teenager said was the thing 'everyone' uses.
Turns out they are right. I have had that glass screen protector cracked 3 times now on nasty drops ... just peeled it off, cleaned the screen, applied another.
Even have glass section to go over my Samsung's camera lenses, so any scratches are not to the lens itself and can be replaced just the same.
$10 for two on Amazon. Every now and then the kids are alright.
I broke a Samsung screen in 2015 and fixed it. After buying a Note 7 in 2016 (the one that caught on fire), I switched to Pixels and have owned 4 (Pixel, Pixel 3a, Pixel 6 Pro). No broken screens since. One, a Pixel 3a, had a broken charge port and had to be replaced af ter the repair shop broke it worse. I only replaced the 3a because I needed a bigger screen for work. Otherwise, no problems despite phones being dropped and otherwise handled badly.
Not a fan of Google overall, but it's nice to have a durable phone without bloatware. The screens are really tough.
What a Kafkaesque situation!
They’ll take a trade-in on an undamaged phone and they’ll fix your phone so that it’s undamaged and therefore eligible for trade-in, but they won’t take a trade-in on your damaged phone and then fix it.
They can’t extend your trade-in window to accommodate the time they spend fixing your phone so you can trade it in (with them), but they can defraud themselves by setting up a sham purchase that creates a new trade-in window. (Did any of them consider that this has them selling you a damaged phone at full price that they then make you pay $30 to fix so you can trade it back to them in better condition then they “sold” it to you in?)
"Why not just do the following?
a) buy your new phone without the trade-in
b) migrate all your data to the new phone
c) send your old phone off for repair while it is still under AppleCare
d) sell or donate your refurbished phone, when you get it back."
I've already done a & b, and I don't want to bother with c. Why can't I sell a phone with a cracked screen? I mean I see the value of the Apple Care coverage, but I still have to pay $30 to get something fixed that I am done using and I would have to go through a whole process of going back and forth with them. That's what I walked away from today.
I did not want to throw good money — $30 — into this scheme.
And that's why I'm pissed that I bought Apple Care in the first place. I normally say no to that.
I wasn't going in because I had a cracked screen. It's not even the screen, it's the back of the phone. I just bought a case for it and never saw the crack again. Used it for years. No problem. Bought a new iPhone and was just trying to trade in the old one.
"They can’t extend your trade-in window to accommodate the time they spend fixing your phone so you can trade it in (with them), but they can defraud themselves by setting up a sham purchase that creates a new trade-in window. (Did any of them consider that this has them selling you a damaged phone at full price that they then make you pay $30 to fix so you can trade it back to them in better condition then they “sold” it to you in?)"
It was the new phone that they were proposing to do a sham transaction about. It's the purchase date for that that establishes the trade-in window (of 2 weeks). So I'd get another 2 weeks, enough time to get the fix done, and then I could trade it in. I wasn't comfortable with the sham transaction! I don't know why that was okay with them, but not taking in the damaged phone and just deducting the $30.
I don't want to pay $30 then sweat out whether I can meet the window while they are holding onto the phone. I don't want my emotions on the hook. I have other things to do with my life.
$30 in the hand is worth $300 in the bush.
I don't like to risk my money!
Just say no? I did. I bought a $50 LG at Walmart. I can text, take and make phone calls and it has a camera. When something happens to it, I'll toss it and get something comparable, which will probably cost less.
I would say that I have never dropped my phone nor tablet, but if I did that I would surely drop it in the near future. So I won't say it.
As to the insurance products like AppleCare, I never buy them. They are supposedly a bad choice economically, but my main reason is I don't want to spend the time and aggravation negotiating for a repair.
It seems the fundamental problem here is bad risk assessment.
On average, buying protection plans is a losing proposition.
Sure, it is possible to have the one instance where it pays off, but taken over all such instances, you come out on the losing end.
Never purchase insurance for a loss you can cover.
You should have leaned in and told them "Don't you know who I am?" (Meade a few feet back nodding)
Love the brave shopper wearing an absolutely useless blue China mask.
Those seats look like rare/custom "double apple" boxes.
@ Althouse
Apologies, didn't pay enough attention.
And that's why I'm pissed that I bought Apple Care in the first place. I normally say no to that.
I did the same for pre-paid maintenance on a car. The value was ok, but the service... an "express" oil change shouldn't take over 4 hours and require leaving the car overnight. I eventually accepted the sunk cost and took my car for oil changes at places that can do it between 15 to 30 minutes. I was less pissed about being screwed than I was in accepting the screwing.
“I wasn't comfortable with the sham transaction! I don't know why that was okay with them, but not taking in the damaged phone and just deducting the $30.”
It’s totally OK with them because they made $300 by doing nothing.
I did not want to throw good money — $30 — into this scheme.
Yes. Upper middle class people rally have to worry about that extra $30.
That was a photo of a real place?
It looks like a staged setting for an article on adult education. I suppose I'm not very worldly, since I'm from a city that is so minimalist, it doesn't appear on Top 20 lists of cities for anything.
I never had a reason to go into an Apple Store. I buy the highest rated Android phone from 3 years ago. They are always refurbished with a new battery and look new. A phone like that has both of the features I want and lasts me for a few years.
My experiences with Apple Care contracts range from unexpectedly great (replacing a laptop hard drive for free two weeks after the Apple Care contract expired) to unacceptably bad (refusing to repair a laptop within the contract period because a sensor indicated water damage, and it later turned out that all these sensors were defective). As well as ordinary.
Most of my Apple Care contracts expire unused, so on balance it may not have made sense to buy them. But I did have one repair that made it all seem worthwhile. Something, some bit of fluff, got stuck in the charging port on a 9-month old iPad, and when the tech could not get it out they gave me a brand new one for free (after I gave them the old one).
“ Turns out, it's not completely useless to have a second iPad”
I/ have 4 or 5 of them, but only 3 are quasi active. Two iPad Pros. Smaller one, in an Otterbox Defender case, is my detriment one. I have had an iPad driven over in one of those cases, and survive. Mostly though, driving over it kills it (but not completely - you can still find it with Where Is My iPad (or anything else from Apple) app. The big one (12.9”) is my overnight one, and is in a less robust Otterbox case. The remainder are still in their Otterbox cases, but don’t have phone system connectivity. I keep one charged, JIC -such as the last smaller iPad Pro that got run over by several cars, until I could get it replaced or, the other two just run out of battery.
As you can tell, I really believe in Otterbox Defender (etc) cases. Yes, they make your iPhone or iPad big and clunky. But they keep the devices from being broken (most of the time). And they don’t really protect against dropping the phone in the toilet. But I can’t remember the last time I dropped either an iPhone or iPad on the ground and it broke or the screen was shattered. Probably drop my iPhone on a hard surface every week or two. Never any damage. For me, it’s an easy trade.
The power supply for my MacBook died last spring. Things were mostly backed up, but I had just spent a lot of time working on some book updates that I had stupidly not yet backed up. The local MicroCenter said they couldn't retrieve the hard drive data and that they'd have to send the MacBook off to an Apple center for repair. I agreed to an insanely expensive repair on the assumption that Apple would be able to retrieve the hard drive data. Nope. They just slapped in a new hard drive, so I spent a ton of money and had to redo all the work. And pissed off my editor because of the delay.
--gpm
"Insurance" or "extended protection" is just prepaid service. Like dental and health insurance, from an economic perspective it is wasted.
Real "insurance" is and should be purely catastrophic. (High-deductible health insurance is sort of a version of this, but the incentive structure has been perverted by mandatory coverage for so many things that everyone is overpaying).
I have spent my entire career doing legal work for insurance companies, with every single bill audited for most of the past 20 years. I have a clock in my head and know precisely the value of time.
I have very little patience for waiting for any commercial transaction. Less for tedious social situations.
Of course I spend long hours goofing off and doing things like perusing the Althouse comments, playing golf, hanging in bars with friends, and puttering with projects around the house. I know exactly what it is worth and I enjoy it more because I'm spending it on....well, Me. (And who could possibly be more important?--besides my lovely Bride, of course).
I have always used a rather minimal phone case that surrounds the screen but doesn't cover it. Haven't had it break despite many drops.
I read somewhere that the screen protectors are a 50-50 proposition--if you drop the phone so that the screen strikes a raised object (such as a pebble or the corner of a piece of furniture) it is probably going to break even with the protector. And it adds weight.
Wrt transferring data between old and new (i)Phone, the latest phones purchased last year was painless - essentially, after a couple of steps, just lay the phones down net to one another and wait while everything transfers. It is a replica of what you had.
"$30 in the hand is worth $300 in the bush."
Talk about hyperbolic discounting!
The old phone has some use to me. It could be a backup for an emergency call. It could be an extra camera to use in a situation where I'm afraid displaying my phone could get it stolen....
T-Mobile told me that a cracked back glass on an 11 won’t affect an upgrade. Only a front glass that’s imperfect.
Was in an Apple store last Monday and the same thing happened. There was was no one sitting on those uncomfortable looking cubes and the nice lady just started talking about graphs or some such. I whispered to the Apple tech who was working on my iPad "that makes me feel so sad that I might go over there are sit down and watch the presentation". The tech just quietly laughed and said that eventually someone always comes overs and listens to the presentation. And someone did - exactly *one* person. I felt relief - that someone else had sat down as was listening.
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