Hi Everyone,
I am quite new to this but all help and information would be much appreciated.
I will make this story as short as I can.
Back in February I lost my iPhone 4. When I relised it was gone, I rang it and it was off straight away. Obviously this had been stolen & thought I would never see it again. I called my contract provider, who blocked it for me and I then contacted the police to report this & I got given a crime reference number. I then bought a brand new iPhone 4s a few weeks later, at a cost of £500, as I had no insurance on my stolen phone (you learn from your mistakes).
In April, I was aranging a call back with apple through their support site for a different matter, when I noticed that on my apple support profile it said I have had 2 repairs from their company. I knew what one of these was, but not the other. So curiously, I clicked this to see what it was. It was my iPhone 4 that I had lost 1 month prior to the date on the repair profile. It had been taken in to an apple shop in the Manchester Arndale Centre (this is not too far away from me as I live close to Liverpool) this had been repaired in the store and given back the same day!
This phone was registered under my name with apple and was also blocked by my mobile phone provider.
It was impossible to find a contact number for apple to question them about this because this is hidden very well on their website. Eventually I found one and I contacted them the next day. I was so angry that they had allowed stolen goods to go through one of their stores and that they had obviously not done any checks. If they did check, they would have been able to see my name linked against the phone.
Apples customer services was very poor and almost non existent.
I have wasted so much time calling them and I have spoken to many colleagues at Apple. I have now given up calling them because it is pointless! The first colleague I spoke to told me that the phone had been replaced and the person that had taken the phone into the arndale centre had gotten a brand new one. Every colleague I spoke to advised me that they never do checks, which in my own personal opinion I think is totally wrong! Also, every colleague I spoke to advised me to contact the police, which I had done, but they didnt want to listen. I am now out of pocket, which could have been easily avoided if apple did a few simple checks, such as checking peoples ID and matching it against the registered user of the phone. Everyone I spoke to didnt want to help me and I feel like Apple, the big world-wide company, couldnt care less. I feel that they only care when your actually buying all of their over priced products and not when you have a problem with them or their services. They also "dont do compensation"- their words not mine. I do want an apology but I have never got one!
I did write to apple, which was a complete waste of time. The reply I got back indicated that they had not read my letter what-so-ever and it seemed to be a automatically generated reply.
Basically, I am now writing to you for your help with what can I do now? Where can I go with this? I feel like I am stuck. I have been in touch with citizens advice/ trading standards today, who didnt seem to understand why I was calling and advised me there is not much I can do other than contact the police- which I told them I had already done.
Any help would be much appreciated. I honestly don't believe that I am the only one that this has happened to because I would never have known either... I came across this by accident.
Sian :)
