Apple India — Service centre misguiding

Address: Mumbai City, Maharashtra, 400018

Website: www.apple.com/in

I am writing to you as a very dissapointed apple consumer.

I was charging my phone on my work laptop via USB and was samultenously listning to the music on iTunes.
I got up from my desk and got back on my seat in 2 minutes and my phone screen was white with an apple logo displaying.

(My phone was not upgrading any software and neither was my laptop. I had upgraded to the new iOs system about a week or so ago.
Many of my friends warned me that they experienced bugs when they updated it. So i don't know if that caused the problem).

The message on my iTunes read that my phone has gone into recovery mode and i need to upgrade it or restore it.
I immediately called up the Apple Support and they gave me instructions on taking backup and how to restore / upgrade it.

I tried upgrading it - it did not work and showed me a message which said i need to restore my phone.
I tried to then restore my phone but it showed me error 9. I did this entire process multiple times for almost two days and it still showed me the same error.
Then the Apple Support team told me to go and visit the service centre. Which i did. Immediately. All of this happened in the last week of December.

I went to the Service center at Prabhadevi, Mumbai. They had a look at my phone.
I have a slight crack on the lower right side of my phone - which i had got in June. The display and functionality of the phone was not affected at all due to the crack.
My phone was 100% fine and in absolutely great working condition before it went on recovery.
Now the gentleman at the service station looked at the phone and the slight crack and consulted with the electrician on my issue.
Then he told me that my phone has either had a software failure or a hardware failure. He tried to restore it himself 2-3 times in front of me. He also got the same error 9.
Then he told me it looks like a hardware failure but he needs to take my phone and examine it with the engineers to determine the cause of failure.
I told him my phone was under warranty and asked him about the price to get the phone fixed. He told me that the display crack doesn't come under warranty so i would have to bear the cost of getting the display repaired which is INR 15, 500. Once my display is repaired the phone will be sent to Apple to determine the cause of the failure and then if it is still not resolved there, Apple will replace my phone free of cost. But i will have to pay for repair of display. He informed me that with damaged display they would not be able to open the phone hence it would need to be replaced first and it was important. Then he asked me if i would want to give it for repair now. I told him i will come tomorrow and do it. As i needed some time to think.

The next day was Saturday. So i went to the service center again on Monday. I was greeted by a lady at the service station. I told her the entire problem again.
She repeated the same procedures as the gentleman did on Friday when i went first. After checking it again for the 2nd time she told me that the information told by the gentleman to me is not correct. She told me that since my phone has a physical small crack - which was in June - my warranty will not apply and i would have to pay INR 25, 000 to get the entire phone replaced. I was shocked and i asked her why. She said i will send this phone for repair of screen which will not restart your phone (obviously) and then it would have to go for replacement. So i will have to pay for it even though its under warranty. I told her this doesn't make any sense as the damage on the screen has not caused my phone to stop. It won't take 6 months. She did not give me any direct answers but kept on repeating herself.

As a consumer and a fan of Apple i am quite shocked at the service and response that i got.

1. Each time i went to the service station i heard a different version of the solution and they kept increasing the price i was to pay. Even though my phone is under warranty.

2. I also offered them to not repair my screen because this is not the cause of my phone not working and going in recovery. I was okay to let the screen be damaged. When they said it was not possible i told them i would pay for display replacement if that is what will start my phone since there is no other way out.

3. They did not give me any direct answers to why my phone was not working or offered me to get any diagnosis. All they kept quoting to me was the heafty amount i need to pay. I do not know what failure caused this issue.

It is quite distressing as a consumer to go through this process of with the service centre and i am not trusting them anymore becuase they never have given me 1 correct answer. Please help me resolve this - and i am very much dissapointed in Apple. Let me know what to do and what to believe.