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Comment by wraptile | Hacker News Reader

> The story of getting it fixed is really why people love Apple and even Amazon.

It's really one of those anecdotal experiences. I used Samsung devices exclusively because they have RMA offices all around SEA region. On the other hand Apple's iCare in my current town has 2.2 stars on google reviews which I didn't know was even possible. When my work iPhone's battery died I decided to drop 70$ from my own pocket rather than deal with iCare - that's how bad it was.

All I'm saying that warranty service anecdotes are just that - anecdotes, and your milage might vary.

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> I used Samsung devices exclusively because they have RMA offices all around SEA region.

And how long does that take? Do you need to speak to Samsung support on the phone to get an RMA number? How easy is that? That seems to be the process according to Google. What have you had to get repaired this way? What was the process?

> On the other hand Apple's iCare in my current town has 2.2 stars on google reviews

First, what is iCare? Do you mean an Apple Store? Are you referring to AppleCare? Or something third party? I'm genuinely curious: which store? Can you point to it specifically?

> When my work iPhone's battery died I decided to drop 70$ from my own pocket rather than deal with iCare - that's how bad it was.

This story doesn't really pass the smell test to me. Who is dropping money to fix a work phone rather than having work deal with it? Was this out of pocket or expensed?

AFAIK Apple doesn't have first party stores on most SEA countries, so the stores/service centers are probably owned by 3rd party authorized distributors.

My own experience with android manufacturers' service center in SEA is you simply come in to their store, hand over the device, and get a quote later via email (if the damage is not covered by warranty). Direct device replacement on the spot is very rare, never even see it happening myself.

What is iCare? As far as I know, Apple doesn't offer any products or services named iCare, nor are their stores named iCare.

Not to nerd snipe anyone (I'm having to stop myself as I write this) but couldn't you gather the star ratings of all of these sorts of repair centers/stores and get the overall average? It could be used as a sort of proximate net promoter score and we would be able to more objectively talk about the differences in quality...

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