At this point my wife calls over the manager who looks and says he doesn’t see anything in the camera lens. He pops out the SIM card and sees both the water stickers are white and says there is no water damage. Then he asks if she really wants Apple techs to make the water damage a reason for charging for a replacement phone. My wife isn’t very technically oriented so she just took the phone and left in confusion and frustration. I took the phone to Verizon, their tech closely looked it over and 5 minutes later issued a warranty replacement, no questions asked.
It seems like Apple has changed a lot. I had no issue if they took the phone and let their techs review it, but they made my wife feel like it was her fault by trying to claim water damage and having the techs look at it being an irreversible decision. It’s interesting because this did happen at an Apple store years ago when they claimed the water stickers were red, I was able to view the stickers and show the manager who promptly exchanged the phone. I believe there was a class action lawsuit related to this. Now if there was truly water damage my issues would have been 1) prove that caused the defect / Maguson-Moss Act, and 2) aren’t iPhones advertised as being water resistant? The IP68 rating means 30 minutes at 6 meters of water. I thought I had read about an emerging class action lawsuit where water damage would be a manufacturer warranty/failure issue itself because of how the phone is advertised.
Anyhow just venting and seeing if anyone else has had issues with Apple warranty claims. It makes me feel like they are pushing the Apple Care warranties hard by denying manufacturing claims.
