Apple care catastrophe

’ve been a loyal iPhone user since the iPhone 6, and I’ve been paying for AppleCare+ since the iPhone 10. Recently, I upgraded to the 15 Pro. After less than a year, I accidentally dropped it—hard. The back glass shattered so badly it exposed some of the phone’s interior. Luckily, I had AppleCare+, so I went to the San Francisco store, expecting a replacement for the standard $100 deductible.

At first, the salesperson reassured me it would be quick and easy. But after consulting her manager, she came back with a new story: my damage was “catastrophic,” which apparently wasn’t covered under AppleCare+. According to her, this was in the terms and conditions.

Reasonable enough, I asked her to show me where in the policy this was stated. Cue the chaos.

First, she ran to her manager, who apparently told her they’d print out the policy for me. (Spoiler: no Apple Store has a printer in 2024.) She came back moments later and said I’d need to look it up online. I reminded her that my phone was broken, so again, I asked to see where the denial was justified.

This time, the manager returned with a laptop, wordlessly dropped it on the table, and started to walk away. I had to stop her and ask her to actually show me where the terms excluded my damage. Begrudgingly, she pulled up the policy and left me to read.

Guess what? No mention of “catastrophic damage.” No exclusions beyond cosmetic damage. In other words, accidental damage—no matter how severe—is covered.

When I waved her back over to point this out, she rolled her eyes at me. (Genius behavior, right?) I highlighted the fact that the word “catastrophic” didn’t exist in the policy. She went back to “see what she could do.”

Enter a third manager, the Genius Bar lead, who arrived with yet another excuse: because they couldn’t retrieve the serial number from the phone, they wouldn’t replace it.

At that point, I had to say, “Your inability to do your job is not my problem. Things break. That’s why I pay for insurance. I bought the phone, I bought the policy, and now you’re making up exclusions that don’t exist.”

Finally, they relented and offered to send my phone to a repair center—for $90. They warned me I might be charged the full cost of the phone upon inspection. For now, they gave me a loaner iPhone X (an X? In 2024?), and I signed some paperwork that promised a survey about my experience.

Shockingly, no survey ever arrived. No timeline was provided for the repair, no contact details, no updates—nothing.

Here’s my takeaway: these employees took it upon themselves to interpret a policy they clearly hadn’t read, probably relying on some half-baked explanation passed down from someone else. Instead of actually helping, they invented obstacles to avoid doing their job.

It’s practically impossible to contact anyone at the store for clarity, and the whole experience reeks of corporate laziness. Needless to say, I’m not letting this go.

Have any of you dealt with nonsense like this at Apple? Because wow, “genius” doesn’t seem to mean what it used to.