Last week I had the bad luck of dropping my iPhone flat on concrete. Go ahead, take a moment to cringe — I know I did.
Fortunately enough it fell flat on its back rather than the display (that would have been much worse), which meant a few kinks to its sensitive aluminium body. That was painful to look at, but it’s nothing a thin case wouldn’t cover up. It was when I noticed the crack on the iPhone’s protruding lens my stomach hit the floor.
All the articles criticising Apple’s protruding lens were racing through my head, and I couldn’t help but feel that had it been my iPhone 5, I would have gotten away with just a bit of cosmetic damage rather than a cracked camera lens. Any photos I tried to take in direct sunlight looked weird with lens flare and low-light photos looked grainy — I had to get it fixed.
That’s where this sad story comes to an end, and praise for Apple begins. Because despite their crappy design decision to include a protruding camera lens, I walked into my appointment at the Apple store’s Genius bar in London today, and while I was preparing my ass for a hefty bill, they managed to replace my device with a refurbished one at no extra cost.
The Apple Genius basically felt that because my phone had very little cosmetic damage and looked taken care of, he was happy to replace it for me with a refurbished model. To give you some perspective about how awesome this is, he told me that they had a number of customers bring in their phones in battered conditions, and needless to say, they had to pay for a fix.
This is a one-off case where I may have been lucky, and he was sure to emphasise that generally speaking, they’d need to charge over £200 for the replacement. But even so, today’s experience just highlights one more thing that makes Apple an awesome brand: great customer service.
Have you had a positive experience at the Apple Store? Share it in the comments!
