I decided in the last show how I had finally broken a phone. I finally broke the back of my iPhone 16 pro. I did. I decided to go against Casey's recommendation and order myself an express replacement through AppleCare. I mean, it's great if you're willing to spend the extra money, which I think in retrospect, I probably still would have done it. I just felt a little bit hoodwinked by my own

ignorance, but nevertheless, it did work out pretty well for me. So how did it work out for you?

Out of curiosity, how smooth was the process of getting the express replacement for you?

I thought it was fairly straightforward. I can't, I think I...

How fast did it come? A day or two? I think it was maybe two days at most. I don't think it was very long at all. Hmm. Yeah, that's not the experience I had. Oh no. When it came, how easy was it to send the old one back? I'm pretty sure I just put it in the exact same box and then dropped it off at like a UPS store or FedEx store or whatever the case may be. because they included like a shipping label and they even included the tape with which to reseal the box. Like genuinely, my experience was really good as long as you can get over the fact that it was not as cheap as it could have otherwise been had I gone into the store. Hmm. You seem deeply dissatisfied. Well, I ordered mine on the Friday.

It said, estimated, you know, one to two business days.

I'm like, wait, maybe I'll have it like Tuesday.

By the following, like, Thursday, I'm like, hey, I don't have it yet.

And the online tracking status page still hasn't, it still says it hasn't even shipped yet. No, if I recall correctly, I did it late-ish in the day, I'm going to make this up on like a Wednesday, and I think midday Thursday it shipped, and I think I got the package, you know, like you said, like two business days later, something like that. I don't remember exactly, but it was something along those lines. Yeah, that's how it says it's supposed to go. Yeah, yeah, and it did, that's what it did, roughly.

Mine hadn't shipped for a week, and so I messaged support saying, hey, you know, can you give me an update on this? Like, what am I looking at here? And after a lot of chatting, because, like, now Apple like support chat is very

defended by AI chatbot walls.

I mean, chatting because like now Apple like support chat is very um defended by AI chatbot walls.

I mean, they all are, but yeah.

I know.

But like you really have to like bust through a lot of AI support bot walls before you can

get an actual bot person to talk to you.

Um, anyway, after a week they hadn't sent it.

After I message support, all of a sudden it gets sent like the following day I get it so I get it and at this point it still says it hasn't even been shipped on the status page but a box shows up with an eye I'm like okay great and you're right it had a little piece of tape to send the phone back. Did not, however, have a return shipping label.

Now, I've done trade-ins before with Apple, and I know the trick of, like, oh, you peel off the top label and below it is the return label. And that was not the case here. It was like a single-layer sticker label. There was nothing below it. There was no return label. So, I'm like, all right, go back to Apple support. the chat is useless and won't get me anywhere.

I finally call them sitting on hold 40 minutes. After all that time, they finally like, well, I don't know what happened, but here, we'll dispatch you a new one and you know, you should get it by email within the hour. Okay, bye. Never shows up by email. All right. I know you did, but can you just state, can you just state plainly that you checked all the spams, all the, all the sives? If you don't say that, you know, somebody's going to be like, wow, then you check your spam folder? Also, when a support person says they're emailing you something, you might as well stay on the line until you get the email. That tends to keep them honest. Yeah. Well, and they, they sent me an email confirmation that even told me the tracking number on the label, but didn't, there was no label. They said, oh, it'll come in a separate email. Never did. So the next day I have to contact them again. So like, then I have to call them again. And finally, they dispatch another one. Then I get that actual FedEx label email. So I now have

FedEx box ready to go.

I've packed it all up. And then

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