Yesterday morning my iPad2 fell from my truck when I opened the door and landed on the pavement face-down. All four courners were shattered, and spider cracks crisscrossed the screen.
I made an appointment at the Genius Bar at the store here in Houston near me. I had read this thread prior to scheduling an appointment, so my expectations were low.
When I showed up, I kept the broken unit in my bag and told no one what I was there for. When My time came, they came to me and asked how they could help me. Looking properly distraught, I shhepishly pulled out my poor iPad and showed her, and asked what my options were.
She took it, looked at it, looked up how long I had it (65 days, according to their records, and I had purchased it with Apple credit directly from them) and told me she would take it in the back and she would see what she could do. A few minutes later she came out and told me that my warranty doesn't cover this, and that normally I would have to pay $270 for repairs and replacement... but..they would replace it just this once for nothing. She then produced a brand-new unit, still in the plastic, and set it up for me and updated it right then and there. I signed my name and that was that. She even mentioned that they could save the engraving if I could wait to have it mailed off for six weeks.
It did seem that the unit was only in the plastic, but not the packaging, which tells me that these units are fleet units reserved for the emploees. My unit also was the low-end model (16GB WiFi), which is probably what they use for the fleet units.
There was an over-all feeling of "this is not something we do all the time", and I think it still depends on whether you walk into the store with an appointment, if you come in with a sense of expectation, and if the particular agent/manager combo you get are intrested in helping you, or just there for a paycheck. I did get the impression that this is something that the employees have to stick thier neck out the tiniest bit for, so they may be cautious about replacing a unit at all. It may also have to do with how many they have already replaced in the last few months, and if they are alloted any more for a given period.
Having worked in IT since the mid 90's, I can tell you that this kind of service is unheard of. I have vendors I worked with for years, some of which I consider personal friends that wouldn't replace a unit due to accidental damage for free. I went to a Sony store to try and get a brand new Viao laptop replaced that was dropped, and they wanted 800 bucks to repair it, and that thing was three weeks old!That free replacements happen at all is amazing.
So to sum up, the dream is still alive.
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