Apple is dead for me….
I would like to share my experience and express my disappointment with Apple as a company. Unfortunately, I feel that the reputation Apple has built over many years has been completely damaged by the way my case was handled. At Christmas, my child received an iPad as a gift. It was purchased from an official Apple Store for £475, and we also bought additional accessories and devices worth around £300. We chose Apple because we trusted the brand, its quality, and, most importantly, its customer service and warranty. After only six months of normal use, the charging port stopped working. It appears that something may have happened while inserting the charger, but I absolutely do not consider this to be my child’s fault or misuse. However, even if Apple believes that the damage was accidental, the device was still within the one-year warranty period, and I was unable to receive any meaningful warranty support. Instead, I was offered a repair costing £420 — only £55 less than buying a brand-new iPad. In my opinion, this is completely unacceptable. The word “warranty” seems to have lost its meaning if a customer is still expected to pay almost the full price of a new device after only six months of use. We also contacted a service centre in Milton Keynes, where we were told that we should have purchased AppleCare. In other words, we were criticised for not paying extra protection costs in advance. AppleCare would have required monthly payments of over £3 plus a £50 claim fee, which would have cost us around £70–£80 in total. We would then still have had to wait around three weeks for a repair. Meanwhile, independent repair centres can replace a charging port for around £20 with a non-original part or around £35 with an original part, usually within the same day, and they provide a real guarantee for their work — something that unfortunately does not seem to exist in my experience with Apple. My entire family uses Apple products. However, this situation has made us seriously reconsider continuing to buy Apple devices in the future. The main reason we were willing to pay premium prices was because we believed in Apple’s quality, reliability, and customer support. Sadly, this experience has shown us that this level of protection and service is no longer what we expected from Apple. I genuinely believe this was my last purchase from Apple.