Broken iPad 2

A

alvinlee

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Jan 25, 2011
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Hi,

Just thought I would share my frustrations with who ever has time to read this rant.
I was clumsy enough to drop my ipad a few times, on wooden floors and once on tile. The tile caused the top right to get a little kink but nothing serious. That was until it fell again and screen (glass) cracked. Screen protector held all pieces in place and it still can be used.

So take it back to Incredible Connection Cresta, knowing that warranty does not cover accidents (or stupidity as the wife calls it) but hoping to get a quote to get it fixed by the "agents". Week goes by and after constant prompting for feedback I get this :
Core Technician: "We hereby regret to inform you that we have tested and diagnosed the above unit and found it uneconomical to repair."
I then request the formal quote that deems this uneconomical to repair, to which I get this reply:
Core Technician: "We regrettably do not get replacement parts for Ipads in South Africa.We do not repair units, we only replace the entire unit."
So as you can imagine the quote was more that the original price I paid, about R400 more.

Issue 1. Incredible Rip off charged me R450 quotation fee to send the unit in. This was after they originally wanted R2000 as a repair fee. When we went to fetch the unit, the IC tech said that customers don't want to believe them when they say it won't be repaired so they send it any way to (incompetent) Core - At the cost of the customer. I would have preferred being told that the Core people are incapable of repairing your unit, so save your R450 and find some else to fix it. I would have appreciated that more and IC would have earned a little respect for that.

Issue 2: Core does not get replacement parts?? What am I missing? Ryno from fixit-online.co.za quoted me R2400 to replace glass. This is including OEM parts and labor!! Partstore.co.za quoted R2900 to do the same job. So how is it that Core cannot/do not get spares yet these two companies can??

Plan to take the ipad to Ryno tomorrow and he claims that it takes 4hours to change. So I hope to get back tomorrow. That would be great service.

Ok, got that off my chest. So if you happen to, by accident, break your ipad and know that the warranty won't cover it, don't bother going to Core. Now back to work.
 
/reminds self to put on protective cover on tonite - which I paid for R1200 but never fitted yet!
 
Just to add my rant to yours.

My iPhone 3GS started having reception problems right after I upgraded to iOS 4.3.3. - signal would drop, connection would show No Service and eventually it would end up in the 'sync to itunes' mode leaving the phone unusable. Now, I've had the phone for a year and 3 weeks when I did the upgrade, meaning its 3 weeks out of warranty, and its been working 100% on iOS 3.1.3. until I loaded 4.3.3. So, having tried most of the solutions suggested via google I got nowhere. Reloading/restoring the phone would get me out of 'sync with itunes' mode but the reception problem persisted and the phone would eventually end up in the 'sync with itunes' mode.

I'm on Vodacom contract & work next to Vodaworld, so I took the phone into Vodadom. First thing they notice is I'm 3 weeks out of warranty so I get told "sorry sir, we don't fix iphones you'd have to buy a new phone" & promptly handed me a quote of R5000 for 'repairs'. Obviously no responsibility on their part.

So off to Apple, or the Core Apple store in Vodaworld. What a monumental waste of my time, they were friendly & helpful and all but the phone was with them for 2 weeks and they couldn't even restore the stock software. Not even once, while I was doing it routinely about twice a week at that stage. They suggested that I replace the phone (at my cost obviously).

So I fetched the phone, brushed up on my jailbreaking skills and started playing around. I knew it wasn't a hardware problem so I tried different combo's and firmwares and eventually fixed both the 'sync with itunes' and the reception problem by creating a custom firmware and restoring the phone with that. Strange that the jailbreak community was more helpful than Apple .. not surprised really as they wouldn't even acknowledge a problem with their software upgrade. I'm currently using the phone, it works 100%.

Anyway, by now you know I don't have much regard for the fools. But while I was in the Core store one day, a guy came in with a dropped iPad - also out of warranty. They told him that it cannot be fixed & he has to buy a new one. Which he did. On the spot. I couldn't believe it.

Moral of the story .. if you happen to damage your iDevice in a way that warranty won't cover it you're pretty much on your own. Everyone simply expects you to buy a new one.

I would have been out of pocket 5 grand if I hadn't sticked to my guns. I also realise we're living in a throw-away society but certainly not on a R8k gadget? Surely there has to be some form of consumer protection against this kind of practice?
 
Finally got the time to take the iPad in for repairs. Took it Ryno of fixit-online at 10am and it was ready for collection at around 11h20. Excellent service
Btw, sent an email to partstore asking if my warranty will be intact after repair and the answer was NO.
 
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