So I dropped my iPhone 4s again. For the third time. The first time I dropped it while getting out of a car and it cracked the screen. Three weeks after I had gotten it. I forewent getting it fixed because the apple people said it couldn’t be done and I’d just have to buy a new one and it was before the ibreak ufix people were on every street corner.
I then kept the phone safe with a casemate for a year and the case started getting dingy, so I bought a speck as everyone I know had loved them. Nine months later I dropped the phone face down on the pavement outside of work and finally took it to get it fixed as I couldn’t see through the madness anymore.
“Get an Otterbox for the phone this time,” everyone said. “It makes your iPhone indestructible,” they said. So I coughed up money to fix the phone and paid almost double to get the last-one-in-stock-ugly-green Otterbox Defender case while at the store so I wouldn’t accidentally drop it on my way back to my car.
Three months later.
I drop the phone flat on its face again on the concrete floor of my work’s garage. Whew, I’m lucky I invested in that Otterbox, right?
Fail.
The screen is incredibly cracked while the entire Otterbox is scratch and dent free. The only thing holding my screen in place is the screen protector on the box. Sigh.
“But you have the Otterbox,” my co-workers said. “They keep your phone safe and since it’s under warranty, they’ll fix it, right?”. Au contraire, my fellow naive believers. I looked up the warranty and it only covers the Otterbox damages.
“But,” they retorted, “you should contact them and tell them your situation and see if they’ll fix your phone.”
My thoughts on this:
1. Yes, I could have called and explained the situation. But I don’t think I would have gotten a different result as their warranty is clearly stated on their web site.
2. Their warranty kind of makes sense because it would be easy for people to make fraudulent claims by breaking their phone and then putting it into an Otterbox.
3. Why would we as consumers miss my Thought# 2 and assume they’d replace it? Maybe because we are all nice, stand-up citizens who would not really want to cheat the company but are looking for reasons to love the company more and boast how awesome they are?
4. Do you think the PR/social media intern who responded to me should have done his/her homework on who I was before they responded because they might have responded differently had they figured I would have told as many people about this #urbanlegendwarranty #fail as possible? (Not to toot my own social media horn, but five other people knowing my story may mention it to five other people each and so on. They could have figured out from my usual posts that I tend to mention all my interactions with brands, both good and bad.)
So feel free to share please. I’m moving away from the otter as I have lost faith in the product.
Patti is still learning 