I have a hard time believing that story, mostly for all the reasons the other commenters listed, but also because I just don't see Apple sending a store manager

I have a hard time believing that story, mostly for all the reasons the other commenters listed, but also because I just don't see Apple sending a store manager to represent them in court. In my time there, even the smallest legal threat (e.g. "if you don't fix my X for free, I'm going to sue you") was an instant conversation ending statement. The only valid response for any of us employees after that was "Thank you but we can no longer help you, here is the number for the legal department". Given that, I just can't actually see them sending a store manager, even to a small claims thing. If they didn't actually care, they wouldn't have sent anyone at all and taken the default judgment (since small claims are definitionally, small) and if they did care, they would have sent someone who can actually represent the company legally.