A Facebook user, Eunice Koh, shared that her Apple Watch stopped working after a year, and when she wet to the Apple store at Orchard to get it sorted out, she was allegedly told that she had to pay $400 to send it in to run diagnostic tests on it to see what’s wrong, and possibly pay more to fix it.
Here is what she said
To anyone who is considering buying an Apple Watch, here is my honest review of the product and Apple customer service.
My watch’s screen blacked out shortly after crossing the one year warranty mark – issue is only with the screen as diagnostic tests have confirmed that the rest of the watch is still working well; although without the screen, the watch is practically unusable. The watch had been well taken care of and never used in water although the watch is supposed to be shock-resistant and water proof. Incidentally, this exact same watch model and size (series 6/40mm) has been identified for a free repair service program by Apple due to to the same exact black screen issue as what I am encountering.
Booked an appointment with a so-called “genius” at Apple store at orchard, but the team of ‘technicians’ could only come up w all sorts of excuses why the watch cannot be fixed or why they can’t even run diagnostics tests on the watch (can’t test due to the blank screen/ can’t inspect the hardware as there’s no screw to open it etc). The only option they could offer me is to either pay $400+ to send it in to the warehouse to figure out what’s wrong and possibly pay more to fix it, or pay similar price to purchase another watch. The ‘technician’ also insisted that my watch’s serial number is not eligible for the free repair, even though it was bought in May 2021 and likely falls within or close to the manufacturing batch that is eligible (Apr – Sep 2021) for the free repair. They refused to help me appeal for the watch to be considered for free repair, and kept insisting that the best solution is for me to buy a new watch on the spot. I couldn’t help commenting how the watch could so coincidentally spoil just shortly after warranty, to which the ‘technician’ responded defensively by claiming I was making ‘serious allegations against Apple’ and said she would ‘refer me to their legal team’ -.-
After the wasted trip to the store, I called the Apple customer service hotline, which suddenly was able to run a remote diagnostics on my watch despite the physical store refusing to do so. They also helped to put up my request to an “approving authority” on the basis that my warranty had ended very recently, all other parts of the watch are functioning well and this is an issue likely not caused by misuse, but an issue that affects this particular watch model as acknowledged by Apple. However, after days of waiting, they informed me that my request had been rejected without giving good reasons. What’s worst is that in all these correspondences, there is a strong self-righteous tone, simply because I was not covered under Apple Care and was a few days past the warranty period. But shouldn’t a product that cost this much be made to last for a reasonable amount of time i.e. definitely not just 1 year?? Feeling v disappointed w Apple and will be switching out to Android for all my other Apple devices.
