On Saturday 9/26 I went in to the AT&T corporate store in San Bruno, California and purchased a iPhone 6s 128 under a new 2-year term agreement. I asked if the sales person should set up the phone in the store or at home and was told it didn’t matter, so I took the phone home and set it up. Since the iPhone connects to WiFi immediately upon setup, I didn’t realize that the data service was not working on the phone till the next morning when I woke up to a dead battery. I immediately got on the phone with AT&T support the morning of 9/27 and after two calls it was felt that I had a faulty SIM card.
I went back to the same San Bruno and walked them through my issue. They tried another SIM card and after that did not work, I was told by the manager Gema that I needed to go to an Apple store to get my issue resolved. I asked Gema for a phone exchange and also offered to return the phone and buy another, but that was met many excuses and a stern “NO.” She told me that Apple would not allow them to take the phones back since Apple wanted every return to go to an Apple store (confirmed a lie when I went to the Apple store). She also printed a copy of my receipt and was kind enough to use a highlighter to illustrate the section on the back regarding Apple products not conforming to standard AT&T policies. This is where I am confused – when I go to your website here http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/returnpolicy.html I see NOTHING about AT&T sending you to an apple store when you were sold a faulty device within 24 hours, do you? It says you have a “No-Hassle Policy” even after reading through the footnotes.
I would let this all go since I was able to get myself in to an Apple store (not easy right now) where I got the phone fixed and was treated well (I won’t bore you here with the rudeness of the sales person and the Manager Gema when they told me to get lost), but I feel like there are some deceptive practices going on that may not be legal. Lemon Laws apply to consumer good, not just cars, so you can’t sell broken goods and tell the customer it is their problem. Obviously this would be of interest to the local Better Business Bureau, but if this is how you handle iPhone returns Nationally vs what policies you sate on your website it may be a bigger issue?