| rev:text
| - I needed two cables for my iPhone and decided I'd give the local shop my business, rather than going to the Apple store at West Towne.
Two months later one cable stopped working. When I bought the cables I asked about a warranty, since $20 is a lot to pay for a cable, and they said it had a one year warranty. So I went back to Graphite and said I wanted to get a new cable under the warranty. The sales guy looked at the cable and said "Hmm, I don't think you can exchange it because it looks like water damage." Water damage?! On a cable? He then went to the back room to "talk to the technician" and came back to tell me the technician said no.
I got a little irate.
$20 for a cable that fails after two months, and the excuse is "water damage"?? The sales person then said "See, there's a black mark here on the lightning end," and I said, "Yeah, it looks like a short, which is why I'm asking to exchange it." What's the point of a warranty if it doesn't cover normal use -- I don't abuse my cables, and I had no idea what the concept of water damage even meant.
I then went to the Apple store and they exchanged the cable under my phone warranty. (I'm not sure what would have happened if the phone hadn't been under warranty.)
I did a little online research afterwards and discovered that the cables have the following serious design flaw, which some people call "water damage":
If the cable is plugged into a power source, and the lightning end touches a conductive surface -- like some damp on the floor or your car or your porch floor, or just sweaty fingers -- a current crosses the little gold contacts, which may result in one of the contacts popping off or cracking. It's hard to see, but the tiny connectors are usually shiny gold, and a bad connector will be dark.
Apple should print a large warning label on the packaging saying "always disconnect this cable from a power source when not charging your iPhone or iPad. Failure to do so may damage the cable." The Graphite people might mention this too, especially when a customer asks about a warranty.
So why the two star rating? First, I was very frustrated by the whole mysterious water damage "explanation." If they had explained, I would still have asked for an exchange, but at least it would have made sense. The Graphite people may know what they mean by "water damage," but a typical customer like me has no idea. Secondly, they should have been trying to help solve my problem, rather than coming up with reasons it wasn't their problem. For example, they might have said "This may fall under your iPhone warranty" or "Yeah, it's irritating that these fail, but I think the Apple Store can help" or "We're sorry your expensive cable failed after only two months, here's a new one."
If I have this problem with a $20 accessory, what would happen if I'd bought my MacBook there, and it needed work? Would they take a "can't do" attitude then too?
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)