Warranty service for hacked iPhone?

July 4, 2008 11:21 AM

iPhone is freezing constantly. How do I send it back to Apple?

I live in Canada and so have my phone jailbroken so I can use it with a canadain carrier. Unfortunately the last week or so the phone has started freezing to the point of being unusable. Of course this can be blamed on the "hacking" but the last software update was months ago. I suspect this is a hardware failure and as such, Apple needs to take care of it. I bought this phone last November, so it should still be under warranty.

Any ideas how to play this with Apple support?

posted by aeighty to technology (8 comments total)

My understanding is that once it's jailbroken the warranty is void. I don't think Apple will agree that they "need to take care of it."
posted by kate blank at 11:27 AM on July 4, 2008

Do you have access to an American shipping address? If you do you could set your iTunes to the US version, restore the phone to factory, then play it off as you're staying in Canada with relatives right now. Who knows, they may be sympathetic to you having jailbroken your phone and just fix it anyways.
posted by ChazB at 11:29 AM on July 4, 2008

Google "iPhone DFU restore".

Download the v1.1.4 firmware image and do a full restore...
posted by thewalrus at 11:38 AM on July 4, 2008

Yeah, I've restored it completely to factory state. What do I tell them if they ask me what my relationship with AT&T is though?
posted by aeighty at 11:39 AM on July 4, 2008

What do I tell them if they ask me what my relationship with AT&T is though?

If you never activated with AT&T, you should be able to tell Apple you bought the phone a while back, but found it wasn't a good time for you to switch to AT&T, just got ready to switch to AT&T recently and found the phone isn't working. They're not going to waste their time trying to catch you in a jailbreak lie when they could much more easily just fix or swap it.
posted by scottreynen at 11:47 AM on July 4, 2008

Finally we can all agree that the iPhone is cool.

Sorry.

I thought Apple pretty much repaired their stuff "no questions asked"? If it appears to be in it's virgin state, just send it back to them...
posted by twine42 at 3:38 PM on July 4, 2008

Agreeing with twine42 here. I once stepped on my Nano, barefoot, and cracked the screen pretty badly. Took it back to the place I bought it, told them exactly what happened, and they shipped it to Apple. Like a week later they called me to come pick up the brand-new replacement they sent. How much was it, I asked? Nothing, Apple covered the whole deal.

Oh, and this was from Guatemala City. No other company has treated me so nicely.
posted by papafrita at 4:04 PM on July 4, 2008

I'm going to echo what everyone else is saying about Apple's CS. I've had 4 service issues with my Macbook out of warranty and they've covered it 100% free of cost. I would suggest buying Apple products *just* because their customer service is far superior to any other electronics company I've ever dealt with.
posted by drkrdglo at 4:19 PM on July 4, 2008