WARNING! Close hacking websites before you take your iPhone to the Apple store!

SmartAlx

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Jun 7, 2007
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Okay, I have a warning for you all:
Be careful what you have on your safari screen and bookmarks when you take your iPhone to have it exchanged or serviced. Part of my touch screen stopped working… Ala
Certain areas of screen stopped working so I took it back.

The Apple employee was very pleasant and friendly. He went through the rigmarole of resetting it and trying to make it work and I showed him the various ways that I could make it not work properly and he eventually concluded that sure enough, the phone broke.
As he was going through the process to make the exchange, he asked me jokingly “come on now, be honest. You hit it didn’t you?”
“What? Of course not!” I exclaimed. “I love my iPhone!”
He replied that this was the third phone he saw with this problem. I'm guessing he couldn't trick any of the other people of abusing their phone either.


It was at that time that one of the other geniuses came up and became curious that a new iPhone came out of the drawer and was being exchanged for a perfectly broke one.


You could tell that this new genius was more of the artistic “love the Mac” type rather than the normal “ultra-happy-to-serve be a good mega-Apple store genius employee” type. Oh sure, he was friendly and lived to serve the customer, but his hair was a bit rumpled and his black iPhone shirt wasn’t perfectly pressed with razor sharp creases. Sure he was clean and all, but he wasn’t absolutely prim and proper. I’m not saying he didn’t belong there either. I’m sure he was an excellent customer service representative and served each customer with vigor and joy. But his image didn’t seem to be in sync with the nose up in the air high class character of the typical Galleria employee*. I liked him instantly. LOL I’ll call him “the artist” for clarities sake.

He asked, “You're exchanging it? What’s wrong with it?” I proceeded to show him the problem while the other genius continued with the transaction. The artist proceeded to fiddle with my soon to be ex-iphone and wanted to know how to replicate the problem. I figured the easiest way to show the problem was by showing him that the shuffle button in the ipod didn’t work. He played with it for a bit and then wondered if it was just the ipod.
I said, “no it’s the screen. If you go to Safari and type something in landscape mode, you’ll see the problem. The ‘s’ or the ‘m’ doesn’t work.”
So he opened Safari, and after a moment exclaimed, “Oh, nice website!”
I looked up and saw the last webpage I browsed (http://www.hacktheiPhone.com/) loading.
Whoops.
I chuckled nervously. I quickly exclaimed, "Oh yeah. I haven't done that to my iPhone yet."
Whoops again: "Yet"
The artist soon noticed my discomfort and decided to dilute the situation by admitting that he too had visited the website.
“Yeah, that’s a fun site,” He said. “I actually was looking at it last night.” Then he paused and said after some thought, “Maybe I’m saying too much.”
The guy who was helping me replied curtly, “Yeah, you’d better stop talking right now.”
I had a good laugh at that, but it didn’t last long. The Apple guy was not laughing. The attitude surrounding the transaction became very businessslike and to the point after that. The friendliness had ended and it was clear that all this guy wanted to do was to get me out of the store.

So, let this be a lesson to all. Before you take your iPhone to the Apple store (and probably the AT&T store too) make sure you don’t have anything compromising on it.

*oh, and I hope you don’t think that I am being overly harsh about the general character of ANY Apple employee. I’m quite new to the Apple scene (my first visit to the Apple store was to purchase the iPhone) so I’m pretty ignorant of the rest of the stores. I’m sure everybody is quite nice. But this Apple store is in the fabulous Galleria Mall in Houston, Texas. It’s the very first Galleria mall in the world. It has all of your top notch stuck up stores like Armani, Gucci, Fendi, Tiffani, Versace, and we are even getting a Barneys. The stuck up employee is par for the course. But all of the Apple employees were extremely friendly and eager to help everybody that looked even remotely like they might need help. It's a very nice experience visiting this Apple store. I'm sure the rest are equally pleasant.


EDIT: But then again:
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2007/07/apple-store-to-being-charging-entrance-fee.html
Maybe some Apple stores are snobby.
 
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wjp09

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Feb 25, 2007
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so did you get your new iPhone?
Good read btw I recommend ppl not just skim through it.
 

SingleDouble

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Jul 13, 2007
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I'm sure you looking at the hacking site has nothing to do with the service you received. I can assure you they've seen much worse and couldn't care less.
 

SmartAlx

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Jun 7, 2007
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so did you get your new iPhone?
Good read btw I recommend ppl not just skim through it.
Yes, I got the new iPhone. I don't like it as much as I liked my iday one though. It doesn't feel as well built for some reason. Plus I have the 7 series LCD screen and I can most definitely tell the difference. It looks blurry by comparison. But please let's not take this any more off topic, ok?

[/hijack]
 

SmartAlx

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Jun 7, 2007
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I'm sure you looking at the hacking site has nothing to do with the service you received. I can assure you they've seen much worse and couldn't care less.
No no! The service was beyond par! Excellent service as always! Can't say they exchanged the phone "no questions asked," but they did exchange it.

This one employee just didn't like the idea of anyone hacking the iPhone, but ESPECIALLY one of his fellow employees.

THAT was probably the worst thing. Maybe it wasn't that I might hack my iPhone, but that an Apple employee might hack his iPhone, especially since he got the iPhone for free.
 

TrippalHealicks

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Mar 2, 2007
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i think their reaction was based on the fact that if you (willingly) tell them that you hacked the phone, they're really not required to fix it. You have breached the warranty agreement, at that point.
They just mean you should stop talking before you screw yourself over. lol
 

SmartAlx

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Jun 7, 2007
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They just mean you should stop talking before you screw yourself over. lol
Actually, he was telling the other employee to stop talking, not me. But yeah, I agree. That is a good warning to add:

Don't admit that you have hacked your iPhone, be it to add ringtones or to add songs via drag/drop.

I wasn't even going to admit that I pressed *3001#12345#* to get the LCD model number.
 

spacerog

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Jun 11, 2007
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www.spacerogue.net
So he opened Safari, and after a moment exclaimed, “Oh, nice website!”
I looked up and saw the last webpage I browsed (http://www.hacktheiPhone.com/) loading.
Whoops.
I chuckled nervously. I quickly exclaimed, "Oh yeah. I haven't done that to my iPhone yet."
Whoops again: "Yet"
The artist soon noticed my discomfort and decided to dilute the situation by admitting that he too had visited the website.
“Yeah, that’s a fun site,” He said. “I actually was looking at it last night.” Then he paused and said after some thought, “Maybe I’m saying too much.”
The guy who was helping me replied curtly, “Yeah, you’d better stop talking right now.”
I had a good laugh at that, but it didn’t last long. The Apple guy was not laughing. The attitude surrounding the transaction became very businessslike and to the point after that. The friendliness had ended and it was clear that all this guy wanted to do was to get me out of the store.

You know why? Because Apple store employees are actively discouraged from visiting or posting to any non-Apple website about Apple products. That guys little slip of tounge of "I was looking at that site last night" could very well have been enough to get him fired if it was overhead by a manager. It had nothing to do with the fact that _you_ were looking at the website, it was the fact that the employee admitted that he had looked at.

Yeah, I know sounds anti-american, constitutional rights and all that, but Apple store employees are under very strict rules about what they can and can not say publicly. Admitting that they visitied a non-Apple website while working in the store is probably a big nono.

- SR
 

DRabbit

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Jul 2, 2007
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Yeah, I know sounds anti-american, constitutional rights and all that, but Apple store employees are under very strict rules about what they can and can not say publicly. Admitting that they visitied a non-Apple website while working in the store is probably a big nono.
Okay, this is a whole different topic really, but I wanted to comment on what you said only because it has NOTHING to do with the constitution. LOL. Your right to free speech as stated in the constitution means the GOVERNMENT cannot restrict what you say. A privately owned company that makes you sign employment contracts restricting your speech related to itself (or its industry) is completely legal, and "constitutional" in the sense that it isn't prohibited by the constitution.

Nothing meant to start an argument... I just get tired of hearing ignorant "free speech" rants. ;)
 

kdarling

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Jun 20, 2007
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You know why? Because Apple store employees are actively discourgaed from visiting or posting to any non-Apple website about Apple products.
Boy has Apple come a long (wrong) way from the good old 1984 days. Mind control. Hand waving. Smoke and mirrors. Fear of employees knowing or saying too much.

You can see it reflected in the Apple iPhone forums. They're just a bit creepy, the way people have to say nice things about the phone, or risk tons of teenagers on their back.
 

Fred87nc

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Jun 19, 2007
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Man I went to the APPLE store yesterday with my friend cause he was switching his Faulty iPHone, I waved my Fully Modded, full Background, Ringtones iPhone Like i just didn't care to see if anyone said anything, damn Genius guy looked at it like it was something normal, well this guy didn't even open the broken iPhone box, he just asked what was wrong, we explained and he switched it out, (was under 14 days guarantee) for a brand new one.
 

SmartAlx

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Jun 7, 2007
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I'm just wondering why the OP didn't have EverythingiPhone open on his iPhone. :p


-Chris
Actually I did have it open on another window. It wasn't in the foreground because the last thing I was doing was searching for the earlier version of iTunes, a link of which is available at hacking websites.
 

dsan79

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Jul 22, 2007
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Actually I did have it open on another window. It wasn't in the foreground because the last thing I was doing was searching for the earlier version of iTunes, a link of which is available at hacking websites.
Can a faulty iPhone bought at an AT&T store be exchanged at an Apple store, or does it have to be done at the same AT&T location? Just curious because mine is crashing. Thanks.
 

SmartAlx

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Jun 7, 2007
1,087
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Can a faulty iPhone bought at an AT&T store be exchanged at an Apple store, or does it have to be done at the same AT&T location? Just curious because mine is crashing. Thanks.
Well, they didn't ask me for a receipt, but they did know that I bought it there. They probably scanned the box and pulled up the info.

Sorry, I'm not sure. LOL. Why did I answer then?
 

PhatKid

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Jul 25, 2007
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Well, they didn't ask me for a receipt, but they did know that I bought it there. They probably scanned the box and pulled up the info.

Sorry, I'm not sure. LOL. Why did I answer then?
Did you do this post from your phone or do you usually make your LOLs all caps?
 

wildonrio

New Member
Gold
Jul 4, 2007
2,002
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Provo, UT
Okay, I have a warning for you all:
Be careful what you have on your safari screen and bookmarks when you take your iPhone to have it exchanged or serviced. Part of my touch screen stopped working… Ala
Certain areas of screen stopped working so I took it back.

The Apple employee was very pleasant and friendly. He went through the rigmarole of resetting it and trying to make it work and I showed him the various ways that I could make it not work properly and he eventually concluded that sure enough, the phone broke.
As he was going through the process to make the exchange, he asked me jokingly “come on now, be honest. You hit it didn’t you?”
“What? Of course not!” I exclaimed. “I love my iPhone!”
He replied that this was the third phone he saw with this problem. I'm guessing he couldn't trick any of the other people of abusing their phone either.


It was at that time that one of the other geniuses came up and became curious that a new iPhone came out of the drawer and was being exchanged for a perfectly broke one.


You could tell that this new genius was more of the artistic “love the Mac” type rather than the normal “ultra-happy-to-serve be a good mega-Apple store genius employee” type. Oh sure, he was friendly and lived to serve the customer, but his hair was a bit rumpled and his black iPhone shirt wasn’t perfectly pressed with razor sharp creases. Sure he was clean and all, but he wasn’t absolutely prim and proper. I’m not saying he didn’t belong there either. I’m sure he was an excellent customer service representative and served each customer with vigor and joy. But his image didn’t seem to be in sync with the nose up in the air high class character of the typical Galleria employee*. I liked him instantly. LOL I’ll call him “the artist” for clarities sake.

He asked, “You're exchanging it? What’s wrong with it?” I proceeded to show him the problem while the other genius continued with the transaction. The artist proceeded to fiddle with my soon to be ex-iphone and wanted to know how to replicate the problem. I figured the easiest way to show the problem was by showing him that the shuffle button in the ipod didn’t work. He played with it for a bit and then wondered if it was just the ipod.
I said, “no it’s the screen. If you go to Safari and type something in landscape mode, you’ll see the problem. The ‘s’ or the ‘m’ doesn’t work.”
So he opened Safari, and after a moment exclaimed, “Oh, nice website!”
I looked up and saw the last webpage I browsed (
http://www.hacktheiPhone.com/) loading.

Whoops.
I chuckled nervously. I quickly exclaimed, "Oh yeah. I haven't done that to my iPhone yet."
Whoops again: "Yet"
The artist soon noticed my discomfort and decided to dilute the situation by admitting that he too had visited the website.
“Yeah, that’s a fun site,” He said. “I actually was looking at it last night.” Then he paused and said after some thought, “Maybe I’m saying too much.”
The guy who was helping me replied curtly, “Yeah, you’d better stop talking right now.”
I had a good laugh at that, but it didn’t last long. The Apple guy was not laughing. The attitude surrounding the transaction became very businessslike and to the point after that. The friendliness had ended and it was clear that all this guy wanted to do was to get me out of the store.


So, let this be a lesson to all. Before you take your iPhone to the Apple store (and probably the AT&T store too) make sure you don’t have anything compromising on it.

*oh, and I hope you don’t think that I am being overly harsh about the general character of ANY Apple employee. I’m quite new to the Apple scene (my first visit to the Apple store was to purchase the iPhone) so I’m pretty ignorant of the rest of the stores. I’m sure everybody is quite nice. But this Apple store is in the fabulous Galleria Mall in Houston, Texas. It’s the very first Galleria mall in the world. It has all of your top notch stuck up stores like Armani, Gucci, Fendi, Tiffani, Versace, and we are even getting a Barneys. The stuck up employee is par for the course. But all of the Apple employees were extremely friendly and eager to help everybody that looked even remotely like they might need help. It's a very nice experience visiting this Apple store. I'm sure the rest are equally pleasant.


EDIT: But then again:
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2007/07/apple-store-to-being-charging-entrance-fee.html
Maybe some Apple stores are snobby.
This is the most verbose post I have ever read in my life. You describe everything! haha
 
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