Apple Finally Came Through!
Kate and I went back to the Briarwood Apple Store one last time yesterday to make a final plea for help and to pay the $200 repair bill if Apple still refused to help. You can see the history of this here.
We met up with an Apple support person at the Genius Bar named Sutton. He immediately brought us off to a table and asked the nature of our visit. I explained the situation to him and let him know that I was very displeased to be here again. I let him know that I was absolutely positive that this was not a water damage issue and that I analyzed the leads on the phone where the previous Apple employee said was corroded.
He looked at it and pointed out a greenish mark on the plastic tip of the connector and said, “See, there’s the corrosion”. I looked at it and saw that it was simply a discoloration that had rubbed off from the power connector that was being used. I told him that plastic doesn’t corrode green when wet, metal does; and even then, it requires a significant and consistent amount of moisture to be that dark of a green. The metal leads were shiny silver. We agreed to disagree on this, I guess. I’ve been doing this for a career long enough to be secure in my assessment, however.
I am positive that the green that was seen was corrosion that had rubbed off the charger and onto the white plastic. The charger was this old Griffin car charger that also had a wall plug. It was in my car for about a year and undoubtedly became corroded. I recently used it to charge her phone because we couldn’t find her other connector. When I arrived home, I verified this to be true.
Sutton was a great guy and handled my frustrated tone like a pro. He offered to take the phone back and look at the internal water sensors to see if anything had gotten inside the phone. AT LAST! This is what I’ve been trying to get someone to do for a week! I thanked him and he went on his way.
When he came back, he conceded that there was no water damage on the inside of the phone but he did find the root cause. One of the pins had been bent. That fully explains the sudden lack of charging only a day after using this questionable charger. It must have bent one of the pins in the phone, preventing the charge!
I was excited to hear this because even if they wouldn’t do it for me under warranty, I know how to fix bent pins and would just do it myself. He offered to go talk to his manager and see if he could help us out even though the bent pin wasn’t really a warranty item.
No matter what happened from here on out, I was going to walk away a happy man! All that it took was someone to listen to me and do the five minute job of looking over the device for ACTUAL damage as opposed to just taking the faulty water sensor at face value. (I call it faulty because it’s on the outside of the phone and thus can not do it’s job properly)
When he came back, he offered to replace the phone at no cost! I was elated! He had single handedly restored my faith in the Briarwood Apple store! That store needs to use him as a template to hire ALL of their employees.
So, I still stand by my recommendation to skip the Apple Care on your new iPhone and opt for a third party insurer instead. The Apple Care plan only extends the manufacturer warranty and does not cover anything else.