[vineyardmike]

My partner used to work as an apple support person. People break their shit all the time and try to pretend it wasn’t their fault because they don’t want to pay for a repair. How you ask and call has a huge impact on your success.

Another big impact: your purchase history. If you’ve owned every iPhone for the last decade and purchase it as soon as it comes out they will be much more lenient when you tell them it was cracked in box than if you have a single second hand iPhone SE that is cracked and the crack “totally happened on its own”. They want to protect their valuable customers.

But also as other commenters have said, it’s possible that apple knows this is a real issue and is addressing it differently now.

[asdff]

That seems like a scandal if they are looking at purchase history then basing repair protocol on that history

[Crosseye_Jack]

I've seen it happen outside of Apple, heck I've seen it outside the tech world. Company deems the damage to be out of warranty however after looking at the purchasing history/power of the customer and deeming them as "someone they don't really want to piss off" they will then offer a no cost repair/replacement as a "goodwill gesture".

Think of it like this:- You have 2 clients you sold widgets too that have come in for repair. Both widgets are beat the hell up like they were using them to hammer in nails and are both clearly out of warranty repairs.

One customer as other than this widget has 0 purchase history with 5 followers on twitter and the other has been buying goods since you were a start up and has a million followers.

Who would you be more inclined to make sure they are happy and who would you say "yeah I'll fix it, but its gonna cost you" to?

(For examples of something like this, see examples of people going virial on social media because something broke / got banned, timed it right, and suddenly it was magically fixed, within 24 hours, but your avg joe is stuck speaking to a chat bot for months on end).

[asdff]

It just seems like you are wide open to legal broadsides working with a policy like this. Basically you are turning your repair program into a class based program. Poor people are disadvantaged relative to your whales but that isn't clear to anyone using the service. IANAL but it seems like it could be easy money for a law firm on discrimination grounds if they had this sort of stuff on record from an apple employee.

[Crosseye_Jack]

If you make your warranty terms perfectly clear you will be fine, there is nothing stopping you from going above and beyond the terms at your own discretion.

You would have issues if your warranty said "we will cover you for (random thing plucked out of the air) battery replacements for the first 2 years" but would only replace batteries for your whales as you are in breach of contract with your non-whales.

You have to stick to what you agreed to with your customer in your warranty terms, but you are free to go beyond those terms at your own cost as you wish as customers were aware of your terms at time of purchase.

[namecheapTA]

Car dealerships do favors constantly for repeat customers that don't haggle to death during the purchase process.

[ricardobayes]

The fact we compare Apple repair to car dealerships says a lot