[travisimo]

I was the 3rd person in knoxville, tn to own an iphone. I took it home, activated it perfectly fine, synced all photos contacts music movies fine. Set up my wep wifi, it worked fine. Everything was perfect. Then Monday morning i wake up and i have full bars but the AT&T is gone next to the bars and the edge icon is gone. Wifi is connected though. Of course, all calls failed sms failed but internet still worked thanks to wifi. Power cycled it, Restored it, Took it to AT&T, got a new sim card, Re Activated it. Nothing worked. Still not AT&T next to the bars, thus no calls still. Finally took the sim card out of the iphone, put it in my blackberry.. it worked fine. Made calls great everything worked. Put it back in the iphone. No dice.

Finally i call at&t from the blackberry, the xfer me to apple's tech support. Had to call back from another phone to trouble shoot with my sim card... 4 Hours later the rep tells me they want my iphone to have their technicians study it, figure out whats wrong and document the fix for other people. To do this they'll ship me a brand new one free of charge and give me a 100$ itunes gift card for my trouble and when i get the package... ship back my phone. Of course i had to provide them my credit card information incase i decided not to send the phone back, so they could charge me for another one.

It was really like the phone's cellular function got fried while on my desk in the night. So very very strange. Anyway thought i'd at least share the experience, i havent read or heard about anything similar to it. The 100$ was defiantly nice. i did't expect that. All in all it was apple's fault i suppose but they handled it very well.

[Mithras]

Wow, that's very good treatment.

[PBG4 User]

I have never seen Apple so eager to replace questionable hardware like they have been with the iPhone.

[MacTheKnife]

Originally Posted by PBG4 User 

I have never seen Apple so eager to replace questionable hardware like they have been with the iPhone.

They're upping the customer service quotient with the iPhone, that's evident from everything we've seen surrounding this particular launch.

[chrisutley]

Originally Posted by PBG4 User 

I have never seen Apple so eager to replace questionable hardware like they have been with the iPhone.

They really didn't have a choice in the matter. They are making a first impression in a new market. Add to that all the hype and attention on the iPhone, and it would be suicidal to give the media an excuse to start printing negative headlines and run interviews of angry $600+ iPhone customers.

I don't mean to suggest that they aren't also interested in doing what's right, but I think they decided going into this that they had to be aggressive about replacing handsets and keeping the early adopters happy.

[ChrisB]

I agree. This is a very high profile item that they are selling to the public. Everyone is watching them. if they make any customer server snafus, they will look very very bad in the public eye. On the other hand, if they deal with these problems in an extraordinary manner to benefit the customer, they are increasing their positive image in the eye of the public. It's good PR. Let's hope they keep it up.

[silvercel]

This is how Apple finds things to improve. There is a collection Quota for defective units when a product is released.