Don't Purchase Your iPhone with AppleCare+

My adventures dealing with purchasing AppleCare+ along with the iPhone.

Photo by Sam Grozyan / Unsplash

I purchased an iPhone 17 Pro w/AppleCare+ online because that sounded like a good idea. I received the phone over mail. I opened the package, set the phone up, and activated my account. A few minutes later, I received a notification from iOS to "Add AppleCare+ coverage". Red dot and everything.

I thought I didn't purchase my device with AppleCare+, so I went ahead and paid for AppleCare+, and activated it. I didn't want my device to remain uncovered. The activation went successful.

The next day, I started getting a barrage of emails from Apple with the subject "Problem with AppleCare+ coverage for your device", every half an hour:

These emails were flooding my inbox, and I wasn't even sure if this was related to my current purchase or the last one. The email said there was a billing problem:

Your purchase of an AppleCare+ with Theft and Loss plan listed above could not be completed because of a problem with your payment method.

I thought of cancelling AppleCare+ as a solution. This way, if it was the original purchase, it would kick in, if it's not, I could try purchasing it again. Because I had no idea what the problem was. So I went ahead to cancel AppleCare+, but the cancellation screen strongly warned me against that as I could never reactivate AppleCare+ again once I cancelled it. Scary warning. I decided not to do anything.

So, I called Apple Support. That wasn't straightforward either, I had to navigate through links until I get a "get me a human" link. Luckily, they called me back in two minutes or so after that. After learning about my problem, the support person told me that they had to connect me to an AppleCare+ specialist, and put me on hold.

I waited on the phone for about 40 minutes probably because it was only days after people got their first batch of iPhone 17's and the support was swamped. The support person apologized for the wait. AppleCare+ specialist greeted me, also apologized for the wait, and explained to me that the email should stop after 3 days, and I would get refunded for my initial AppleCare+ purchase along with iPhone. He told me that it could take up to 15 business days to get my refund.

Since I already had my email rules in place I said I didn't mind that. For someone else with less email handling skills, that might have been quite frustrating though.

The specialist also told me that, the emails might not stop after three days, then in that case, they had to manually intervene and deactivate that themselves. So I had to call them again in case the wait for three days formula didn't work.

Because of that, I set up a reminder for that and waited until Monday. And on Monday, it all went calm. No more emails. I disabled my email rule. Deleted the spam. I guess, I'll get a refund in 15 days or so. I'll edit this when I get it.

The issue seems to have been resolved right now, but has left a bitter taste in my mouth:

• Why did Apple fail to activate my originally purchased AppleCare+ when I activated my iPhone with my account that I also used to purchase AppleCare+ plan with?
• Why did it even recommend me to purchase AppleCare+ while I obviously had it? Why didn't it recommend to activate the existing one?
• Had I waited for AppleCare+ to kick in the next day instead of purchasing one at the time, would it cover the first day without AppleCare+? How much trouble was I looking at for that? How many support calls would I have to make?
• Why did Apple email me every half an hour for AppleCare+ coverage issue that didn't affect my AppleCare+ coverage the slightest?
• Why did they call it a "problem with your payment method" while it was in fact an activation issue with my original purchase? Why couldn't Apple identify and process an issue like this accurately?
• Why can't I get an immediate refund for an issue like this? Why do I have to bear the cost of Apple's mistake here?

I love Apple products, especially the iPhone, and use many of them. But, that kind of screwup was very unlike of Apple. I mean, Apple once made my friend's all Apple Wallet passes appear in my Apple Wallet while I was abroad (7000 miles away from him, and dismissed it as a nothingburger, but that's maybe a story for another post. Anyway, that hurt my confidence in Apple's quality of handling the purchase pipeline. I can't imagine an average person who needs access to use their email while handling an issue like this.

I believe that a three trillion (T as in Tim) dollar company could have done a better job implementing this pipeline. Add necessary checks, implement more informative notices, understand the problems of flooding the customer's inbox, put an immediate refund/cancellation flow in the pipeline in case an issue like that was detected. Achieving all that would cost Apple, I don't know, a hundred grand? It's not like AppleCare was released this year either. It's been around for a long time. I don't want to believe that nobody had thought their purchase/activation pipeline would allow the customer to purchase a redundant AppleCare+.

The next time, I wouldn't purchase AppleCare+ with my device, but purchase it right after I received it. It seems to be way less hassle than paying for it upfront.