The Happy Ending

[firstfrost]

So, last post had the Tragic Death of the iPad. (Though it actually worked surprisingly well for all the broken glass). Many people encouraged me to take it to the Apple Store and throw myself on their mercy to replace it, so that's what I did Thursday.

mjperson came with me as moral support and because he had a question for them too. As it turns out, he ended up kind of being my minder, to cover both my noodleheadedness and what he considered to be insufficient mercy-throwing.

"You didn't say it was only two weeks old."
"Three weeks by now. And that was just the guy I was making the appointment with! I'll tell the actual guy!"
"I don't think you're very good at this."

Then, with the actual guy, I did not leap in quickly enough to say that it was two weeks old, so Mike leaped in to point it out. Later:

"You're *really* not very good at this. I mean, we practiced and everything! You just can't bring yourself to say 'it's only two weeks old, can you replace it?'"
"I was going to! I just... hadn't gotten there yet. I *did* say it was a birthday present! And he could tell how old it was from looking up the serial number. But... yeah. I just can't bring myself to say 'can I please have a new one for free?'"

But they gave me a new one for free anyway! Hooray for them! I got the feeling that there was an unofficial policy of "one user damage replacement for new device, per user *ever*" and I have used mine.

Then there was this bit towards the end:

Guy: "Is this your address? (51 Ibbetson Street...)"
Me: "Yes."
Mike: "That isn't your address."
Me: "Yes it is."
Mike: "No it isn't."
Me: "... er. Yes, that's my old address. I, um, I did live there for fifteen years, it still looks right."

So now Mike gets to claim that he rescued me from both not getting my iPad replaced, and from not being able to find my way home afterwards because I don't know where I live. But, I have a new iPad, so he can claim that he rescued me from being eaten by bears and defeated an alien invasion at the mall, and we're both happy.

Comments

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

Again, I don't know much, but if what I've been hearing on the web is even vaguely true, it explains an awful lot about how and why Apple got so successful -- apparently, people who have observed stuff like that (probably in high-speed movies) say that iPads' (or maybe all iDevices, not sure?) screens turn off while falling. They probably register all kinds of things from their sensors, like speed, time etc. So, yes, I wouldn't doubt for a second that the people who gave you a new one probably charge half-price to the usual "it broke under circumstances we know about" and your situation probably made them think "weird, it shouldn't have broken just for that". Or they just figured you deserved one because it was just two weeks old. I dunno. But I've heard that some companies, like Apple and iRobot want engineers to take a look at weird accidents and to be able to recover accident data from the devices (I heard that iRobot wants any Roomba that fell off stairs back for "debriefing"). I have a lot of respect for companies like that, I hope they get even better.

And yeah, controlled experiments are very useful and no doubt they run them, but there's nothing like finding out what actually happens in the real world.