2009.03.15 Customer Loyalty
Like everybody else, sometimes I am an idiot. I had an attack of idiocy in the middle of the night last night as I was going to bed. I had just washed my hands, and there were poorly rinsed and even more poorly dried, and I was collecting my things to head to bed and turning off lights as I went. Carrying a collection of expensive electronic equipment and clothes, I tried to use my elbow to turn off the light switch by the front door. In the instant the dark engulfed me, my prized iPhone toppled out of my grasp. I made a grab for it, but the effort was retarded by my work laptop wanting to follow in the manner of a demented lemming, so I only managed to bat it higher up in the air.
It glinted in my vision for a moment, and then it fell beyond my reach and onto the tile. It made a sound. It was not a bouncing sound.
Turning on the light revealed that I had smashed the glass screen. Crazily enough, it still worked just fine - as long as I was willing to slice my finger and face by touching the crazy-sharp shards. I looked up online what a replacement would cost me: $499. Ouch.
What option was there? I could just get a different phone, obviously, but I'd be operating with limited faculty - I've grown enormously attached to the functions of the iPhone. I had a glimmer of hope that perhaps the screen could be replaced, but it was a faint glimmer, with a sheen of lingering idiocy. Yeah, I would pay 0.5 kilobucks to keep my spare brain ability.
So I went to the Apple store, wearing some grim fatalism about my addiction to my few prized toys. It turns out that Apple can feel pity for its idiotic customers, and will replace the phone at the original, subsidized price: $299.
Except, they didn't. They gave me a replacement for free. Why? Because they're amazingly cool, that's why. Also, possibly, because when they looked up my account they noted that I was an early adopter - one of the fools that ordered and waited for an iPhone 3G in the initial release. And maybe that early adoption aspect is something that matters to them. Maybe they thought it was a worthwhile expenditure for an opportunity for earning customer loyalty.
It totally worked.