Yeah, they sell each part individually, but apparently cannot cover them separately under warranty.
Anyway, even if they still refuse to do anything, the only option is to keep using this till they die and not purchase a disposable Apple product again.
If they still dont listen, file a case with consumer court. I did the same for oppo as they were not entertaining my warranty claim on the pretext that it was damaged whereas there were only day to day scratches on it. Within a week of filing the complaint, I got a call from the local service center that they will replace the buds but they asked me take down the complaint, which I did only after receiving the new unit as I didnt want to waste more time on this matter.
This is a sad state of affairs, corporates only act when you threaten them with legal action.
Does this require physical meetings or can it be done online?
The complaint can be filled online
Yeah, I use that regularly, but in the first step, they only contact the escalation team. Some of the companies are brazen and simply close the complaint stating it is invalid.
I know the second step is to take it to consumer court but I think that will require a lot more administrative work and visiting the court for hearings.
I have always got the resolution in the first step itself but if you want to pursue further you would need to visit consumer court and is a tedious process. I havent done so till now but I will say it is not worth it in terms of the time and mental efforts required.
Yeah, it has always worked against small merchants who take this seriously as if it is coming from the government.
But at the end of the day, the first step is only the helpline, where they drop an email to the merchantâs escalation team. From my experience, at least Flipkart and merchants with bad online reputation simply close the complaint stating âitem deliveredâ.
Also as a learning point, the Apple escalation team completely disregarded the âauthorized service centresâ, essentially saying they do their own thing and can charge what they want, comparing it to Apple products being sold on Flipkart at a different price.
So, simply take it to an official store if you can as that is the only one they will consider as correct in the service process. Should have gone to the Apple BKC store in Mumbai, but that is for another time.
To update on this, I had registered a case on the NCH portal following which a different person from the escalation team called me.
They basically repeated the same thing but the key difference is that this time they mentioned that the 10.5k they charged me was for the left AirPod which was corroded and that the right one was replaced under warranty.
Essentially, this person is now contradicting the earlier person from the escalation team who mentioned that I was charged for a pair because in case of corrosion, both have to be replaced.
What makes it worse is that now I am facing the same issue again where randomly one of the AirPods doesnât fully charge. So they are asking me to send it back again and I suppose now they will find an issue with the case.
Simply one of the worst experiences I have had with customer support in ages.