Another Trip To The Apple Store

It seems like I spend a lot of time at the Apple store trying to get things fixed. My current laptop has had the LCD replaced, and the main board twice now. My previous laptop also spent a few visits behind closed doors there as well. Truth be told, in the shower today I was trying to think of any other devices I’ve ever owned that have been in for repair as often, and I can’t think of any. I’ve had each of my cameras in once to the shop, once to repair a cracked LCD (I dropped it), and once for a cleaning. So other than when I drop things or get them dirty, not many of my devices crap out on their own.

While in North Carolina, the power button on my iPhone mysteriously went missing. Looking at what’s left, it appears it’s just glued in with a bit of glue, and that if that glue fails it falls out and goes bye-bye. I talked to John Biehler last night, and he knows of three people who had a similar problem, and the Apple store simply replaced their phones on the spot. So last night I made a genius bar appointment, expecting to walk out with a new phone.

The first problem that occurred was that when the Apple store employee put in my serial number, it came up as a “iPhone 8GB Black” phone. I didn’t notice at first, but it also showed my warranty was up. I took notice when she said it would be a couple hundred dollars to fix the power button on my phone though, to which I replied no way. Anyways, it turns out the serial number on the plastic SIM tray was wrong, so she used the one as reported from the device itself, and that was right.

Anyways, eventually she agreed to warranty the phone and get me a new one. Unfortunately, they are currently out of stock of the iPhone 3GS in my colour and size (like seriously, it’s not like the device just came out and there’s a huge demand — order some more stock so you don’t run out), which means I need to make yet another trip into Vancouver at some point and get a new phone. I’m disappointed that there isn’t a better system for doing this — I offered to have a courier pick it up or something to that effect, but they weren’t willing to budge. It’s obviously a pretty big pain for me to head into the city, especially during any part of the day when there’s traffic on the highway.

Hopefully in about a week I’ll have a brand new iPhone. But truthfully I’m a little tired of spending time in the Apple store, or having them take my computer away for a week or more at a time to fix problems.