Free replacement has clearly gone the way of the Dodos. My 3yr old son knocked my iPad2 off of the coffee table in our living room. It fell 21 inches to the floor and the glass looked like it had been shot twice at close range. Went in to the Apple store and told them my story, my fault for leaving it where my son could get to it, aw yeah, that's a bummer, we see that a lot. So anyway that will be $269 US to replace it. Gorrilla Glass? Not so much. More like Capuchin Monkey glass. Sneeze at it and it breaks. Mine was even wraped inside a full body case when it was sent sailing off the table to the floor. If this Gorilla Glass is so durable, why does it shatter so easily? I think Apple knows that the Gorilla glas is flawed and was willing to fix it to avoid a public outcry early on. Clearly that has changed. Think I will put both my iPhone 4S and iPad2 in a bublbe at this point. I was willing to pay something to have it fixed, but more than half the cost to buy a new iPad2 16G WiFi model is rediculous.
Same thing happend when I spilled coke on my 2007 MacBook Pro and the keyboard went out. Went in to the the Apple store and copped to the situation. I did it, my fault. Need to get it fixed. No problem they said. That will be $600 US. 1/4 of the price of the laptop new at the time($2599.00). The Genius who helped me had the audacity to tell me that $600 was less than the cost of the parts to fix my MBP. Nobody fixes ANYTHING for less than the cost of the parts so I knew that was BS. I bought the parts to do it myself off of eBay for less than $200 US and am still using that MacBook Pro today. Apple's repair prices are astronomical relative to the price of the devices new.
In that same time, I've had a drive fail on both an iBook and an earlier MacBook Pro and both drives were replaced free of charge and the laptops FedEx'd to my house. Things have changed recently and I don't think for the better.
I've been a devoted Apple buyer since I bought my first Apple IIe and IIc+ more than 25 years ago and have never been disappointed with their service until today.
Buyer beware. If a new 16GB WiFi iPad costs $499 and the glass breaks to be repaired for $269, something is wrong. Those price points are skewed, and not in your favor.