I just FINALLY got off the chatting system with Apple Support. That was a waste of 2 hours of my life that I will never get back. My boyfriend bought me the iPhone 8 Plus on Thursday, December 21st. Everything seemed on the up and up... the Live Photo’s were awesome. That was until the evening of Thursday, January 4th... exactly 14 days since the purchase of the phone. My boyfriend and I went to take a selfie and the camera would not flip around. This had never happened before so I power reset the phone hoping that this would correct the problem, nope! Then I proceeded to erase all the settings, “maybe I pushed something wrong...” I thought, nope! Then I erased my entire phone and all it’s newley added content as a “fingers-crossed, last resort”, again nope! I spent that whole evening messing around with that phone trying to get it to work which it never did. I even went online to try to schedule an appointment at the Genius Bar with no luck at any Apple store around me. There was zero availability for all the listed dates. What a waste?! The next day, Friday, January 5th at 12:07pm, I called the Apple store in Rancho Cucamonga trying to set up an appointment. The gal said she could run a diagnostics report from my home that I thought was pretty cool and her analysis was in fact that the front facing camera kept failing the tests. She said not to worry about coming in that she would send me a new phone blah blah blah I had been on the phone with her for 48 minutes before we concluded everything, or so I thought it was concluded. On Sunday, January 7th I received an empty box which raised my eyebrow... “maybe the phone is still on its way,” I thought to myself cause why in the world would I want to be inconvenienced by sending in this phone and having to go without...? I didn’t have time to deal with all this BS again until Tuesday, January 9th. I began my first chat with someone at 7:20pm and wasted another 36 minutes of my life. I wanted to confirm that in fact, a phone was on its way to me since per policy, I would only have ten days to send back my old phone. She explained to me that a regular repair had been issued for my phone, that no phone was on its way to me (now fuming) but that she could cancel that and we could do an Express. Then we got disconnected... awesome right?! More so fuming now... I reconnect with someone else now again I have to explain the situation cause I LOVE repeating myself... She tells me that a hold of $799 would be placed on a credit card of mine in order to do this Express process... Why the hell am I being inconvenienced?! This was a brand new phone that I got for Christmas. I shouldn’t have had ANY issues with a brand new phone and now I’m being asked to put $799 on hold on my credit card, like Christmas didn’t just happen. Needless to say I was and am currently not happy about the entire situation. Enter the “Senior Advisor” ooooohhhhhhh ahhhhhh nope! He was nothing more than a glorified parrot, repeating what that gal had already told me... More time wasted. However he did mention that he could waive the $29 fee for the Express Process. This was the first time this fee was even mentioned but glad to know he would waive this hidden fee. So now I sit with not $799 but $888.49 including tax on hold on my credit card for a phone that should have been working properly to begin with. This whole process has been painful but I am past the measly 14 day return window that both Verizon and Apple have as their so called policy. I think that Apple should stand behind their products and honor returns when their products are deemed ineffective or malfunction... it shouldn’t be that there is this HUGE difference between 14 and 15, 17, 19 days... Really?! We as customers pay LOTS of money for these products so the least you can do as a Multi-Billion dollar corporation is stand behind your products and respect your customers.
