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I had a similar issue with Apple a few days ago. I was running and an AirPod fell out of my ear and I just happened to be by a drainage drain. It fell through t

• leshenka 3y ago
  Can't believe they can't just re-flash the firmware, shouldn't it take like five minutes?
• BoorishBears 3y ago
  Have you tried just pairing them again like-new? As in put both in one case, close it, open it, and hold the sync button until it glows white? I've personally lost more Airpods than I want to admit and now have roving pairs of unpaired AirPods in my apartment, which I randomly re-pair when I'm in a hurry and don't want to find the correct pair. I'd imagine that's as much of a torture test for the pairing system as could exist and it still works...
• asvitkine 3y ago
  Can you not return at least the replacement AirPod you bought at least for a refund? Not sure where you are, but there are usually consumer protection laws that require that to be possible.
  • Nextgrid 3y ago
    I've had the exact same issue and this was the resolution - they swapped the replacement AirPod again and the new replacement worked as expected.
  • millzlane 3y ago
    They should be able to. It would be classified as a repeat repair or DOA. To get a replacement airpod they have to create a repair. Almost all of the "repairs" are covered by a 90 day warranty.
• heavyset_go 3y ago
  I have an iPad I left on a shelf for a while that is now a paperweight because during that time, in what I assume was a transition from iTunes to Apple accounts, the account it was logged into ceased to exist. I was actually able to reregister an account using the same email address as the one I previously had, thinking maybe that would work, but still couldn't log back in.
  • MrVandemar 3y ago
    In other words: you don't own the device you paid for.
    • mckn1ght 3y ago
      Sure they do. You’ve never accidentally broken something you owned?
      • ntp85 3y ago
        Broken, as in physically broken? Sure, but that can be fixed/repaired if it's not beyond any hope of that. Broken, as in "the software is broken"? Well, at least all my devices are repairable, if that happens. Even if it might require the nuclear option of reinstalling/reflashing. But at least there are no shenanigangs such as these and the ones OP described happening.
        • mckn1ght 3y ago
          But now we’re just going down a path where it’s not a binary broken/not broken but “how broken is it?” If I change the oil in my car but forget to put the plug back in and then start it and drive off and seize my engine, it’s basically broken. With enough effort, it could be rebuilt. Is it the responsibility of the manufacturer to expend the necessary effort to do so, though?
          • pferde 3y ago
            I'm sorry but that's false equivalence. If you do something to your device and it stops working as a result, sure, that's on you. But if your device is untouched, but stops working because the manufacturer rejiggered some virtual ones and zeroes on a server possibly halfway around the world, that's a completely different situation.
• AnonHP 3y ago
  > I worked at Apple years ago in Apple Retail. You haven’t said if you emailed Tim Cook to see if they take it more seriously. I’ve read anecdotes of some people getting their problems solved by writing to some top names at Apple. No guarantee that it’d work, but it’s worth a try.
  • jb1991 3y ago
    Steve Jobs used to occasionally reply directly to tech support emails, for better or for worse.
  • KennyBlanken 3y ago
    Or, more simply: go back to the store, calmly tell them that your property was made non-functional by their staff, and you want them to make right on that. If they decline, calmly say you'll resolve the matter in small claims court with a suit for damaging your property. People: stop letting corps push you around. Exercise your rights.
    • saagarjha 3y ago
      What do you think the response from the Genius is going to be when you do that?
      • wombat-man 3y ago
        probably will hand you a card with an email like legal@apple.com and ask you to leave?
    • wombat-man 3y ago
      I think you should reconsider mentioning legal action. As soon as you do, they may need to stop helping you, and might refer you to council. Do what you can to resolve the matter, if you want to file in small claims do it, but warning/threatening them ahead of time is not helpful.
• mckn1ght 3y ago
  I wonder if the new one is a different generation than your original set, I don’t think they’ll work together if that’s the case. They have tiny model numbers printed on them, do they match? They probably gave you the right one since they’d see the model you already owned in your profile and match it in their inventory, but maybe…
• solardev 3y ago
  I don't think there's any company out there that would actually care to fix a situation like this. We're all just disposable customers to them...
  • happymellon 3y ago
    Maybe, but I know that Google or Samsung don't care about me. There has never been any pretence that Hoover give much more than a Walmart greeter level of concern for you, Microsoft would throw you under a bus for an extra cent. Americans seem to think that Apple really cares about them and not just in a way to extract as much as possible from your wallet.
    • Bouncingsoul1 3y ago
      Apple would throw you under an Airbus...
  • jakewins 3y ago
    My experience with pretty much any consumer company is the opposite? They generally help out. Random example: I had an expensive Sonos speaker just the other week that broke in a move across the Atlantic. Sonos support helped for nearly an hour trying reset options, then gave me a 30% discount coupon for any product, even though the speaker was long out of warranty.
    • thesuitonym 3y ago
      It's really hit or miss, and kind of depends on the product category, and the manufacturer. Sonos has an uphill battle convincing people to even think about an option other than AirPods. Some manufacturers will give their support reps tremendous freedom to just send free shit out for positive word of mouth. Apple is in no need of positive word of mouth, and in fact thrives despite a very vocal subset of consumers that are adamantly against anything Apple does (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly). That is, Sonos has to work to keep you a customer, but plenty of Apple customers will just buy Apple no matter what.
• NullPrefix 3y ago
  >something must have gotten messed up with the software [...] I can spend $250 for them to diagnose the issue It's a choice you made when buying apple
• autoexec 3y ago
  This is why I love wired headphones. Even if I lose them, I can replace them quickly for a lot less than $250 and I never have to worry about syncing or batteries or disconnecting or any of the other problems that routinely plague bluetooth devices.
  • jb1991 3y ago
    There are pros and cons, sure. But AirPods are actually very nice.
    • wannacboatmovie 3y ago
      "I dropped my wired headphones into a sewer" is likely not a very common occurrence. In fact they have a built-in anti-sewer lanyard... Unlike AirPods which fall out of your ears continually.
      • dzhiurgis 3y ago
        Wired headphones used to drop much more frequently for me - cables get snagged and headphones yeeted. Cables used to last much less than wireless.
        • kibibu 3y ago
          I snagged my wired headphones and ripped my phone out of my hand, which then detached and hit the concrete. That said, I use wireless over-ears which are also very unlikely to fall in a sewer unless you live somewhere with open sewers
        • dredmorbius 3y ago
          And replacing wired headphones will run you ... what fraction of Airpods' cost? If you're not especially partial to quality, $5 to $25 will get a replacement set. Roughly 10% of the cost of Apple's kit.
      • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        You can easily buy lanyards for your airpods pro.
• gnicholas 3y ago
  > or I can spend $250 for them to diagnose the issue (the price of a new set of AirPods). FYI they are on sale right now for $199 on Amazon, and Costco has them for $10 less. Hopefully you can get Apple to do the right thing though! At the very least you should be able to "return" the AirPod you bought from them, since it doesn't actually work.
• andyferris 3y ago
  That sounds terrible. In Australia at least I’d feel confident that getting in contact with the ACCC (govt consumer protection agency) would at least get that (eventually) resolved (new AirPods). A software bug that bricks a new device is definitely a defect of workmanship and warranted for the expected life of the device.
  • averageRoyalty 3y ago
    Even threatening Apple with the ACCC is almost always enough to get a full repair or replace. ACCC policy is very clear and strict. If you have to go speak to the ACCC, Apple have likely already broken the law. https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/problem-with-a-product-or-service-you-bought/repair-replace-refund-cancel https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/problem-with-a-product-or-...
• keithalewis 3y ago
  As Woz said at his funeral, "Steve gave us some of the greatest tools known to mankind: Apple fanboys."
• MawKKe 3y ago
  any possibility that the apple rep screwed up and unpaired/replaced the wrong pod? i.e your "pair" would now have two pods, neither of which are actually associated with the hardware you have access to
  • vermilingua 3y ago
    They wouldn’t fit in the case.
    • MawKKe 3y ago
      to clarify what I mean: GP lost the right one, but is it possible the replacement pod was never actually associated as the "right" one due to a mixup? In this situation, the charger case would have left and right pods, but neither of them would be associated with the "pair"
• thepostman0 3y ago
  You still love apple products? This sounds like Stockholm syndrome, I seriously mean that. You are paying your captors.
  • 112233 3y ago
    When sonething Apple does not work (e.g. icloud sync) it simply does not work, there is nothing you can do. If windows or linux does not work, there is easy 50 step manual fix on arch wiki, toutube, tomsguide (you have to try all to find the right one) Do you know how nice is to be able to tell others, that there is nothing you can do, and mean it?
    • danmur 3y ago
      lol, plausible deniability
    • nikanj 3y ago
      The 50 step manual fix is actually just generated by chatgpt and sounds plausible, but does not actually work. It's just a red herring to get page clicks / ad views.
      • CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
        Ah, you tell me this now I just go to step 47!
      • debugnik 3y ago
        Except these kind of guides have been available for over 15 years. Maybe now it'll be harder to find the genuine ones, though.
      • leemailll 3y ago
        that's the thing. the horror. the horror is not controlled by ai, but people use those junks to abuse search ranking of google. I guess we may find again the old old yahoo! is useful
    • rahoulb 3y ago
• vinay_ys 3y ago
  My one year old AirPods Pro has a problem charging the left ear pod. And, this is my 3rd AirPods in as many years. I have promised myself that I won't buy another one once its battery dies like the previous two AirPods.
  • KennyBlanken 3y ago
    It's well known that the contacts occasionally need cleaning, and there are all sorts of tools to do so that cost barely a few dollars.
    • vinay_ys 3y ago
      I have cleaned contacts everywhere with electronics alcohol wipes. I see that the pins inside the left holster are not as protruded as they are on the right holster of the case. I have tried to pull it gently with a tweezer but it has not helped. Its 1 year warranty period just expired as well.
• ksec 3y ago
  >I worked at Apple years ago in Apple Retail. I assume that was before 2016 or possibly before 2014 ? Apple retail has changed, a lot over the years. But people still don't believe it.
• skummetmaelk 3y ago
  When you have near complete vertical integration there is no reason to handle edge cases. Everything plays well together because you made it all. Until it doesn't, and then it just doesn't work at all.
• FriendlyNormie 3y ago
  [dead]
• speedbird 3y ago
  Similar - 2021 MBP 16". splash of red wine on the keyboard and despite all the usual solutions a few keys don't work. Works fine with external keyboard. Apple Store: we can send it away to be fixed but you must agree to a charge of up to $1600 because we don't know how far the damage has gone. Me: It all works except a few keys. Apple: That's the deal, and actually we'd recommend its not worth repairing and you should buy a new one.
  • troupe 3y ago
    You might try a third party repair place.
  • FireBeyond 3y ago
    Sounds similar. Charging circuit on an MBA. Laptop worked perfectly on AC power. Battery health via various tests and Apple diagnostics, healthy, just 0% charge. "That will be $890 to repair. Maybe you should wander around and have a look at the new MBAs."
• londons_explore 3y ago
  Ya know, for $5 from AliExpress you can get a pair of airpod clones and a charger case. They are remarkably good considering their price is just 2% of the money apple wants! And they won't mess you about with any 30-minute-till-they-work behaviour.
  • layer8 3y ago
    Their audio quality is distinctly worse, I tried a couple.
• techdragon 3y ago
  I had this “should be 30 minutes” but is really “never”… after getting an AirPod replacement in August this year. In my case it was actually a pretty easy to fix once I knew what it was. You have to do a little fiddling to check this since it involves a couple reset/pairing cycles with just a single AirPod in the case … but if you check I bet the replacement has an older firmware since it’s been sitting in the stores spare parts room. So you trigger the firmware update with just one AirPod in the case (which was pretty easy and I could just follow the Apple information) and then once the firmware is the same then yeah they will both do the automatic pairing like the Genius Bar tech expected them to… the issue might be related to a recent firmware changing something and the stores not having updated process to ensure the firmware is correct because apple are probably going to prefer this having a software fix not a fix that takes up more human store employees time.
• zitterbewegung 3y ago
  My anecdotal evidence is below . I went to the Apple Store to get replacement AirPod Pros and while I had to do it a few times it was still under warranty and they gave me a set of replacement Airpors pro. I received a broken Pro Display XDR (red line on it) and they gave me a replacement but I had to pick it up and also give them the old one. I was having screen problems with my first MacBook Pro I bought with my Pell grant (zebra pattern with the backlight) they gave me the newer model of my MacBook Pro. This is where they earned my loyalty. The worst experience I had with Apple is that they lost my Touchpad Macbook but they eventually returned it.
  • FireBeyond 3y ago
    > I was having screen problems with my first MacBook Pro I bought with my Pell grant (zebra pattern with the backlight) they gave me the newer model of my MacBook Pro. This is where they earned my loyalty. I had a MacBook with screen and display issues. Multiple times they denied any issue. Even when I showed them that if we did a fresh install of macOS I could reliably and repeatedly cause a kernel panic in (IIRC) Safari, when doing something with the GPU. While there was an active recall for the same issue. Similarly, they insisted nothing was wrong with the logic board on another Mac. There was. And then when the charging circuit died on my step-daughter's MBA (healthy battery, laptop worked fine on AC, just couldn't charge), I thought $2-300. Nope "The repair estimate is $890. Maybe you should look at a new Mac instead?"
• Ensorceled 3y ago
  Anecdotally, I've had several good experiences with Apple support and no bad ones. The one bad experience I had wasn't supports fault (there was a bug where if you tried to use a Time Machine backup on a Airport to restore onto a new machine it would sometimes backup the new machine instead and wipe out your backup) and even then they admitted it was a bug and not user error immediately.
• davidf18 3y ago
  I yearly upgrade on the iPhone for the better modem support. I always buy Apple leather case, also a yearly upgrade, to protect the phone. A number of years ago I had a screen break and I mentioned at the Genius Bar how I did the best I could using the Apple Cases, and they ended up replacing the screen, a $150 charge, for free. This is Apple. You may have had a firmware incompatibility problem. That is what had happened to me when a few month-old AirPod Pro v2 earbud battery lost charge. I have AppleCare+ (I recommend that for all AirPod purchasers because the batteries wear out after 2 years of use). I used the Apple Support app, selecting my device, and selected for Apple to call, which they immediately did. Apple did the CC hold sending out a replacement. When I received it, it did not work, and the reason was that the firmware on the case and airpod earbuds was recently updated and the earpiece sent to me was not. It is a kind of race condition that occurs whenever Apple updates firmware. In the process of trying to get things to work initially with the replacement earbud, I disconnected my AirPods from the phone, following instructions. When I could not get it to reconnect, I tried to contact AppleCare+ for the AirPod Pro with the Apple support app as I had done 2 days earlier, and this time my device was not showing up in the device list, even though I still owned the device. This is an Apple bug. So, I called 800-APL-CARE, but had to wait on hold to talk with someone a couple of minutes. Then I asked to be escalated to 2nd tier tech support. I explained the firmware incompatibility problem to the advisor. I expressed my annoyance since Apple has known about this problem since shipping Airpods, yet never fixed it. The tech rep had me go through a couple of more steps, including the 30 minute charge of the case with the earbuds (they called me back after 30 minutes). Then they resolved the issue for me. So, Apple had 2 repeatable bugs. 1. Firmware incompatibility with parts replacements. 2. Even though I still owned the AirPods Pro with AppleCare+ support associated with my AppleID, when disconnected the phone, it no longer showed up on my device list. But overall, Apple has been great at support. With AppleCare+, you don't have to go to the store for replacements. They send it to you with a CC hold and then have a prepaid label for Fedex Pickup returns. Call Fedex for the pickup, and that is that.
• giardini 3y ago
  Return the newly-purchased airpods, wait 4 days and buy some new airpods.
• mickelsen 3y ago
  To think that I've been able to mix and match left and right earbuds from the same manufacturer+model, and they pair up as the same, and be able to order replacements only from one side from Aliexpress, directly from the manufacturer after explaining myself, for very little, really tells me a lot about this unnecessary convenience baked in, where the lesser option is much cheaper and less hassle when it doesn't work, for very little sacrifice. Also, just a heads up on Apple ID's 2FA: it's different from the trusted number used in recovery, which can be repeated across many IDs. I had my parents set my number for their Apple IDs, as they seem to constantly forget their passwords and don't really understand much of the app downloading process, so I end up getting the SMS but it doesn't interfere with my own accounts.