Remember who you're dealing with here... :doh!:

Awesome story about the phone, and exceptional customer service by Apple in this case.

I have a similar story about Dell--

My freshman year of college I spent over $1k on a Dell laptop, and it was top of the line at the time. Flashforward to Christmas break and I'm flying down to see my folks, and on the plane I spill one of those cokes you get on the airplane all over it, it immediately shut off and would not turn back on. Anyway, I'm freaking as I'm a poor college kid and can't really afford to buy a new laptop. Later I call Dell up and they send me a box and I send off the laptop. A week later I get it back and it is working perfectly. They never asked what happened and didn't charge me a dime either. Btw, I never bought the accident coverage option, I don't think it was available/existed at the time.

Excellent customer service example. Not sure if Dell currently is as generous, but I don't intend to take my laptop for a bath to find out...

While I like to bash Apple fanbois and make fun of Apple, in general, I have no doubt they make quality products.

Fixed.

Apple did the same thing for my iPad. I had a small crack in the corner from my nephew dropping it. Such things are not covered under warranty, but they game me a new one anyway. I was pleased.

I had Sprint earlier this year and I rooted and was flashing custom ROMs on my GS2. I bricked the phone, but I took it to a service center and they fixed it. No charge and no questions asked.

That's awesome. Apple does have a similar deal with the insurance....at least I thought they did.

Buddy of mine dropped his iPhone, cracked the screen. When he took it in, guy wouldn't/couldn't fix it, so they offered him a new phone.....at full retail. He ended up finding a place to have the screen fixed, ended up costing him $150 or so.

Mine is as you said above. If something happens with my phone and it needs replaced, I pay a fee (I think $100) and I get a new phone.

Despite the price of the iPad, their manufacturing construction is such that they're considered "Not repairable". They don't fix them, they simply ship any damaged unit back to the factory and give you a new one on the spot. They will never open them up, or bother with a screen replacement.

There's actually a little "Dent tool" that AASPs get for measuring the depth of a dent on a device. If the dent is deeper than 1mm, and something similar on length, it's considered damaged.

Getting a deal like yours is pretty much just luck. Apple is strongly adamant about not repairing or replacing user damage, and there's about 50 checks you have to do, and a litany of questions you have to ask according to the Apple warranty procedures. Apple puts a lot of pressure on AASPs in this regard. But it depends on the tech that's fixing it to classify whether it's considered user damage or not.

Reprogramming a phone isn't the same as handing you a new phone.

I'm sure the "insurance" you refer to is thee your carrier. And most will exchange a phone for a fee and a monthly cost. Apple or other.

FYI... Apple also offers flat rate repair services for fixing stuff that's out of warranty. Most people don't know this, as Apple doesn't really advertise it outright. Prices fluctuate according to how old the machine is and what type of repair. But it can actually be a really good deal in some situations. Especially on something like a damaged logic board in a Macbook Pro.

When I used to run Dell hardware I always had good luck with their hardware support. I just had to escalate to level 2 at least to get what I needed. My case was a broken motherboard after I stood up while I had a headphone jack wired into my stereo across the room. Replacement was no issue. I can't speak to their support these days and my days of buying hardware from them is behind me. If I were to build a workstation for nothing but Linux or Windows I'd probably do it on my own.

Apple support is just as good if not better. It helps if you know the right people at the right store. If they know you as being a long time and reliable customer, they've got room to help.

Unfortunately they've split support into Mac and iOS. If you've got a problem with an iOS device you're dealing with someone who doesn't know crap about anything, other than how to check your warranty after they hard reset your phone. The Mac guys are still top notch. I also learned the last time that I was in that if you need to do a clean install that they're happy to do it for you.

Yes, nerds, this goes against our core ethos of fixing it ourselves but the difference is that they image the machine over their local network. One hell of a lot faster than waiting on optical media. They also have current versions of old cats too, so if you're selling an old MacBook Pro that came with Leopard they can drop it right on there in about 20 minutes.

As far as our troll goes, all operating systems and pieces of hardware are just tools. Some are better suited than others. I run OS X, two versions of Windows and at least a couple versions of linux personally. I've got iOS devices that handle a lot of my day to day and recently I acquired an HTC One V (with Beats audio!!!) that I'll probably use as a burner/hack phone. More of a toy than anything, but I'm excited to dig into Android.

I just haven't had the chance to back up the custom build that came on the phone (not publicly available) and get (I suppose) jelly bean up and going.

I don't know - I've found that the instore employees have a decent amount of discretion. Perhaps not as much with iPhones and iPads, because they're not repairable, but with laptops I've had great success. Over the years I've brought my Macbook Pros in for various repairs, some my fault and some not, and I've never paid a dime.

I cracked the screen of my EVO. Dropped it square on the ground getting out of the car. I took it to the 119th and Blackbob sprint store and the chick replaced it for free. I flirted with her a bit though that mighthave helped.

I actually did this is as well, though I used a piece of software call Odin or something like that and I managed to reset it. I didn't think Sprint was going to be able to help and thought I was fooked. This is a good example of the flexibility of Android, the phone worked good as new (now I do not root anymore).