iPhone Return Policy Irks Customers

The Apple iPhone hasn’t been the most customer-friendly item in more than a few ways, and the return policy for the device is not great, according to people who have broken iPhones, or iBricks as they call them.

If you buy an iPhone from AT&T Wireless, remove it from the box and it doesn’t work, you can’t go back to the store and exchange it for another.

Instead, because of a unique agreement between AT&T and Apple Inc., you have to send the phone to Apple and wait for it to be repaired. Or you can return the phone to AT&T — but pay a 10 percent restocking fee. And you only have two weeks to find out whether something’s wrong with the phone before the return option ends.

“The Apple iPhone is a customer’s nightmare if you have a problem with the phone,” Mornes says.

This is quite different from AT&T’s usual policy for new cellphones that don’t work. For cellphones other than the iPhone, AT&T gives you 30 days to return the phone for either a new phone or your money back.

“For the iPhone,” AT&T spokeswoman Luz Varela tells me, “we follow Apple’s 14-day policy.”

It’s doubtful that the policy for either AT&T or Apple will change soon. Both companies have been reporting huge profits due to the runaway success of the iPhone.