I have never been a true fan of MTN (Most Terrible Network) and over the years experienced many unpleasant customer service issues. It came with great frustration that my 15 month old iPhone 4 started having issues with the power button. One day, the iPhone’s power button just stopped working and after doing some research, I found that this has been a frequent issue across some batches of iPhones, where the socket for the power-button started to disintegrate, resulting of a stuck button.
Most unpleasant, as I now lost the ability to quickly lock the phone or silence calls. While such issues would have been quickly resolved at an iStore overseas, the South African iStores as well as Core (the official and only Apple distributor) are not getting involved with repair and warranty issues.
In a discussion with executives at Core, it was explained that Core does not get involved in the repair and warranty process as this has resulted in the past resulted in many issues with the customer being “ping-ponged” between their cellular service providers and the distributor.
I consider myself lucky, as I had insurance cover through MTN Insurance on my phone and after lodging a claim last week Saturday, a courier arrived at my offices on Monday to swop out my defunct iPhone with an iPhone loan-phone until the phone is being assessed / repaired.
I honestly did not expect that the repair of a power button would cost R2800 and was relieved to hear that due to my insurance, I would only have to pay R150 for the repairs to go underway. The insurance process was telephonic and/or via email and took no more than a few minutes.
