tannhaus's Journal: iPhone Nightmare

I'm on the telephone waiting for Belkin right now. I've spoken to Apple support twice on the phone, AT&T twice on the phone,twice in the store, and have emailed both. At this point, I've received no help from any of them. This is my story:

I really wanted the iPhone. I have a 24 inch iMac and a mac mini. I'm an avid apple fan, so the day after the iPhone was released, I went and picked up the 4 GB model. I was told then that I would not be able to get insurance on the iPhone. That worried me a bit, but having dealt with Apple support in the past and being amazed, I thought I'd be taken care of if anything weird did happen. Of course, I didn't have the option of going to a different cell phone provider. Apple locks you into AT&T for the service....no AT&T/no iPhone.

I went back the next day and purchased the Belkin hard acrylic case for the iPhone, however. I wanted a bit more security to make sure my iPhone was protected. However, like tnkgrl, the case I bought to protect my iPhone actually damaged it. Not only did the case scratch the iPhone, but last night it came apart while I was walking across a service station parking lot and dropped my bare iPhone to the concrete.

I immediately took the iPhone home and called AT&T, where I was transferred to an Apple representative. The representative told me that there was no way I should have had a problem like that with the case and that I should go the next day to the AT&T store and see what they could do for me. So, I did just that. According to AT&T, they could do nothing for me except replace the case. Since I only had the receipt for the case and not the actual box it came in, they claimed that they couldn't exchange the case but only swap it for the EXACT SAME ITEM...the case that damaged my iPhone to start with!

I've been on the phone with AT&T themselves once since then and called Apple directly twice. Even asking to speak to a manager and being transferred to a "product specialist" did not help me. Now, I'm trying Belkin. If someone doesn't rectify this situation soon, I'm selling the iPhone on ebay and cancelling my account with AT&T. This is an absolutely ridiculous situation: Apple says it's not their fault even though they forced me to use AT&T service where I would not be able to purchase insurance for their product even though I would be able to do so if I bought a product from any of their competitors. AT&T says it's not their fault, even though they refused to give me the option to purchase insurance coverage that they extend to every other product they carry...insurance that would have covered something like this and which I would have gladly paid extra for.

Of course, Belkin actually created the faulty product. So, I'm on the phone with them right now trying to file a claim. You would think, however, that if Apple and AT&T both sell a product to protect your iPhone that they would be reasonably sure that at the very least it wouldn't DAMAGE your iPhone. However, it appears to be doing just that.