[PhantomGremlin]

> the way they handle problems very early in the life of a device is very different if you bought it somewhere else versus having bought it from Apple directly

My recent experience directly contradicts that. I bought my daughter an iPhone 6 from Verizon (because of the $200 trade in offer). My daughter's screen cracked within a month. The Apple store gave her a new phone, no charge. Couldn't have been easier. The only thing the store needed to do was to remove the SIM from her old phone and pop it into her new one.

But I agree with your general assertion. Absent a strong financial incentive (in this case a much better trade in value) or other extenuating circumstance, I would always buy directly from Apple.

Edit: just wanted to add, I think that Apple is "being good" in this, the very early phase of iPhone 6. My daughter claims she didn't drop her phone (ha ha) and the crack was very similar to pictures I've seen of "bendgate" where the break occured near the weak points of the phone. So Apple doesn't want more negative publicity about this. If it were six months from now, Apple might be much less accommodating.