I doubt this is the right place to document my drama, but I thought it would be fun to get some opinions.
- had an iPhone 4s for a year. No issues.
- new job got iPhone 5, and power button went bad but I didn’t get to the store before the warranty expired. Lived over 4 years without another issue until the battery started dying really fast. I guess that otter box defender was worth every penny. Got a cheap battery for a short term solution, but finally asked my work if it was time for a new phone, and they sent me an iPhone 7 256GB.
- work sent me the new phone directly from Verizon wireless, and someone had left a wallet case that fit, but had a hard snap on shell. Talking on the phone maybe 10 days after I got it, I had my head in the back of the Honda Pilot and the phone fell and bounced off the plastic bumper into the back of the SUV. Shattered. Shards of glass everywhere, but still functional.
- May 2017, I asked my work what I should do, and they didn’t even respond other than sending me another iphone7, not even asking for the cracked one back.
- Jan 3, the phone stopped getting cellular service. No bounces, drops, hits etc. the phone was in my back pocket that clear night I was walking around and it stopped working.
- Jan 4 I called VZW, and they recommended a factory reset, and I got all my data off first. I used iTunes and got everything including a full backup after removing all pics and videos. I progressively did more severe resets. (Reset network settings, erase all data and reset, and finally, a factory reset.)
As the nice wasn’t working, I called VZW basically hoping to make sure it would be a good idea to bring the phone for a replacement. Instead, they put me on the phone with Apple support. Now I ended up spending the entire day with some very nice people at Apple. They would suggest I try a few things and get back to them. I did them all, and the results all pointed to a bad baseband chip. I asked if I could send the phone in for a warranty replacement (were they at Apple would first verify it was truly broken). The phone would no longer even power up as it would fail every time I tried to do a restoration of the phone. It failed at the firmware step every time with a -1 error. It all seemed to match up with a bad baseband chip.
As I could see that I was not going to immediately get a new phone, I was able to get my cracked screen 7 up and running with packing tape to keep glass out of my fingers, but with a big shatter right in the middle of the screen it really stunk.
Monday the 8th the box from Apple arrived to send the phone to California, and we had an ice storm that night. So the FedEx drop Syre had closed early, but at an active corner, there was a FedEx drop box, so off it went. The box ended up getting picked up Jan 9 since the ice storm delayed pickup. Anyway, it got to California around 10 am Jan 10. Then on Jan 11, I got an email from Apple saying that they received an empty untampered box, and assumed FedEx was unable to deliver the package to me (despite having two Apple-provided tracking numbers to prove different).
That weekend I realized I better go to a screen repair place, and ponied up $100 to fix the old phone. I’m good, but this phone is not quite right. Hopefully it’s the screen protector they installed. Many taps don’t register right and the auto-spell really messes stuff up.
The “investigation” at Apple has lingered on, and on Monday, Jan 22, the customer support specialist said they’d be sending me a new phone anyway since the old one was clearly broken (as I’d recorded and published on YouTube). So all ends well it seems, but the only other news I’ve received is that the hardware repair case was closed, with no written information stating that they’d send me a replacement.
Hopefully I will soon have two working iPhone 7 and be faced with what to do with the new one. Maybe use it and sell this one with the replaced screen.
I never had so much drama with a phone before.
What did I do wrong here?
- had an iPhone 4s for a year. No issues.
- new job got iPhone 5, and power button went bad but I didn’t get to the store before the warranty expired. Lived over 4 years without another issue until the battery started dying really fast. I guess that otter box defender was worth every penny. Got a cheap battery for a short term solution, but finally asked my work if it was time for a new phone, and they sent me an iPhone 7 256GB.
- work sent me the new phone directly from Verizon wireless, and someone had left a wallet case that fit, but had a hard snap on shell. Talking on the phone maybe 10 days after I got it, I had my head in the back of the Honda Pilot and the phone fell and bounced off the plastic bumper into the back of the SUV. Shattered. Shards of glass everywhere, but still functional.
- May 2017, I asked my work what I should do, and they didn’t even respond other than sending me another iphone7, not even asking for the cracked one back.
- Jan 3, the phone stopped getting cellular service. No bounces, drops, hits etc. the phone was in my back pocket that clear night I was walking around and it stopped working.
- Jan 4 I called VZW, and they recommended a factory reset, and I got all my data off first. I used iTunes and got everything including a full backup after removing all pics and videos. I progressively did more severe resets. (Reset network settings, erase all data and reset, and finally, a factory reset.)
As the nice wasn’t working, I called VZW basically hoping to make sure it would be a good idea to bring the phone for a replacement. Instead, they put me on the phone with Apple support. Now I ended up spending the entire day with some very nice people at Apple. They would suggest I try a few things and get back to them. I did them all, and the results all pointed to a bad baseband chip. I asked if I could send the phone in for a warranty replacement (were they at Apple would first verify it was truly broken). The phone would no longer even power up as it would fail every time I tried to do a restoration of the phone. It failed at the firmware step every time with a -1 error. It all seemed to match up with a bad baseband chip.
As I could see that I was not going to immediately get a new phone, I was able to get my cracked screen 7 up and running with packing tape to keep glass out of my fingers, but with a big shatter right in the middle of the screen it really stunk.
Monday the 8th the box from Apple arrived to send the phone to California, and we had an ice storm that night. So the FedEx drop Syre had closed early, but at an active corner, there was a FedEx drop box, so off it went. The box ended up getting picked up Jan 9 since the ice storm delayed pickup. Anyway, it got to California around 10 am Jan 10. Then on Jan 11, I got an email from Apple saying that they received an empty untampered box, and assumed FedEx was unable to deliver the package to me (despite having two Apple-provided tracking numbers to prove different).
That weekend I realized I better go to a screen repair place, and ponied up $100 to fix the old phone. I’m good, but this phone is not quite right. Hopefully it’s the screen protector they installed. Many taps don’t register right and the auto-spell really messes stuff up.
The “investigation” at Apple has lingered on, and on Monday, Jan 22, the customer support specialist said they’d be sending me a new phone anyway since the old one was clearly broken (as I’d recorded and published on YouTube). So all ends well it seems, but the only other news I’ve received is that the hardware repair case was closed, with no written information stating that they’d send me a replacement.
Hopefully I will soon have two working iPhone 7 and be faced with what to do with the new one. Maybe use it and sell this one with the replaced screen.
I never had so much drama with a phone before.
What did I do wrong here?
