Apple have tightened up their dead pixel policy

Well that was a colossal waste of time.

I’ve been a bit sad in the last couple of days that I would have to hand in my shiny new iPhone over a couple of dead pixels, but the Optus employee encouraged me over the phone to bring it in as soon as possible. Google didn’t turn up any real information about Apple’s iPhone DP policy so I just assumed it was good.

Deciding to keep my data safe, last night I used the erase all data option (turns out this is a secure wipe taking two hours) and headed into the store this morning. After I pointed out my problem, the lady behind the counter took the phone out back – only to return mumbling something about how I would get a refurbished phone, not a brand new one and then put me on the phone to the Optus service centre.

After 15 minutes on hold (still standing in the store, mind you) it was finally revealed that the Apple policy is phones with an “acceptable” number of dead pixels will not be fixed under warranty, you have to pay for it. And the guy on the phone was fairly sure 2 is an acceptable number. Needless to say I ain’t paying what could be an expensive repair bill for 2 pixels.

Apparently they had another call this morning about the same issue, so hopefully it’s a serious enough flaw that more pixels die and I can actually get it fixed (that’s a pretty strange wish to have, I admit, but Apple are being bastards about this).

As annoying as dead pixels are, I can understand why 2 doesn’t qualify; I really just wish Optus had their story straight from the start. As I said in my last post, I wasn’t even going to bother until the second pixel died. Two in a week indicates a potentially serious issue, and I had already been told there was no problems getting it replaced. The staff in store even said it would be fine and were as surprised as I was when I told them the news.

Oh well, the restore worked (although it took forever despite not syncing any music). So technically all I lost was half a day and a few of the flash memory’s write cycles. It could’ve been worse.