NFC Chip Repair

Hello,

My Apple Pay abruptly stopped working when trying to pay in a store with a contactless machine. I tried with three different cards, and none of them worked.

I scheduled a call with Apple Support and they asked that I try restarting my phone through settings and paying with my phone cover off. So I did, and it still wouldn’t work.

I scheduled another call and booked an appointment at an Apple Store. The employee at the Genius Bar brought over a card machine so I can show my issue with the iPhone. I tried to pay with Apple Pay, but my iPhone stayed on the “Hold near reader” screen with no errors appearing on-screen. I tapped with another iPhone using the same Visa card and it worked, highlighting that the issue is not from my card but from the iPhone itself.

After that the employee carried out an Apple authorized Hardware test through my iPhone’s settings, where the results show on the employee’s device. My iPhone passed the test, showing that it has not been tampered with and is physically sound. The employee said if my iPhone hadn’t passed the test I’d have had to repair my iPhone out-of-pocket, so this is good news.

As my iPhone doesn’t have any hardware issues, the employee goes on to restart my iPhone using a computer, stating that the issue should be fixed afterwards. I return home and restore my iPhone from a backup, only to find that my Apple Pay sensors still don’t work.

I scheduled another call with Apple Support to figure out the next step I should take, and was told that I would be charged to repair my iPhone. How does this make sense? My iPhone passed the hardware test showing that I couldn’t have damaged it, and it was restarted by Apple to cover any software issues, and it still doesn’t work.

Why isn’t this repair covered by Apple seeing as it passed the Hardware and Software test?

My iPhone is a little over a year old, so it makes absolutely no sense to pay almost half the amount of the price of an iPhone 13 to have it fixed for something I didn’t do.