iPhone AppleCare in Asia

Question

Level 1

5 points

iPhone AppleCare in Asia

It appears that the iPhone AppleCare is available in some countries in Asia and not others. Can anyone, someone who has experience with this issue, shed any light on this??

For background, here is a post that I just made to www.apple.com/feedback:
==============================================
Hello, I am an American living in Thailand for most of the year. I want to buy an iPhone from True Move (a cell carrier) here in Thailand. I recently went to a True Move store here in Chiang Mai to purchase the iPhone and when I asked about AppleCare, they did not know what AppleCare was. So, I did a little research...

It appears that in order to buy the iPhone AppleCare, I must buy it in the country where I purchased the iPhone, or Thailand in my case. It also appears that I can "see if the iPhone AppleCare is available" in any country by examining the Apple Store website for that country. Here in Thailand that is store.apple.com/th. If the AppleCare is available on the Apple Store country website, then it is available in that country.

But, I find that the iPhone AppleCare is NOT offered on store.apple.com/th and based on what I say above, it appears that it is not available in Thailand. After some additional research I find that the iPhone AppleCare is on the country websites in Asia for Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia, but it is not on the websites for Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Phillipines. None of this makes any sense to me. There are physical Apple Stores in Japan and Australia but not in Hong Kong and Singapore, so that argument doesn't work.

I could try to speculate further, but I'm sure it would do any good here...

What is going on here???

As it stands right now, I am not going to buy the iPhone if I cannot also purchase the AppleCare for the iPhone. The 32GB iPhone 3Gs in Thailand is currently over $900US and I'm not going to spend that kind of money if I cannot get 2 years of warranty protection. I'm not the only one, it turns out, who sees it this way...

17 inch UniBody MBP, Mac OS X (10.5.8), N/A

Posted on Oct 11, 2009 10:05 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Oct 12, 2009 7:12 AM in response to bplummer

bplummer wrote:
What is going on here???

First off, iPhone warranty service (the original, 1-year warranty) is only provided in the country in which the iPhone was purchased. This is a significant difference from the warranty coverage for iPods and Mac computers.

Because of that, an AppleCare Protection Plan (APP) for the iPhone must be purchased in the country in which the iPhone is purchased. APP is subject to applicable local laws, and as a result, Apple may not offer it for all products in all countries. For example, APP for iPhone in Canada only became available a couple of months ago. In another international legal quirk, due to Canadian law, iTunes Gift Cards cannot be used to purchase App Store apps in Canada, although they can everywhere else in the world.

Bottom line, if AppleCare for iPhone is not available in Thailand, it's not available. That may change, but no one here could say if or when.

As it stands right now, I am not going to buy the iPhone if I cannot also purchase the AppleCare for the iPhone.

That's your choice, of course.

Reply