Hello.
I wrote this letter to apple in the states, on which they replied, "Sorry, we do not supply any phone or email support to Africa."
Does anyone else have any suggestion on what I could do?
Thanks.
My name is Christiaan. I am a South African living currently in South Africa. I upgraded from a Nokia to an iPhone 4 White 16GB, about 5 months ago, because I believe they are just the most amazing phones on this planet, and I know I'm right.
Yet I realized a significantly frustrating thing, the home button started acting up about a month ago. It will work now, and just now, it won't respond. I tried to ignore it, but it seemed to get worse. I started googl'ing, looking for answers, but can't find any. Some suggest to restore the phone, I did that about 12 times (no exaggeration), and last week I
upgraded to iOS5. Still have the same problem. I have restored my phone 3 times with iOS5 since the upgrade.
Now in South Africa, we don't have "Apple Stores" we only have authorized re-sellers of Apple products, and they're called "iStores". Yesterday I went to one of the iStores close to my house, hoping for a swop-out, but they referred me to my service provider, claiming that the iStores are just resellers, and not part of Apple, so they can't just swop it out.
I went to my Service provider, MTN, and they said that the phone needs to be booked in and sent off to a repair center where the phone will be inspected. This process will take anything from 2 - 4 weeks. In this time I will be without a phone as they don't supply any phones for their customers while the handsets are in for service.
I do find this highly frustrating, and I hope there is some way that Apple US will be able to assist me in the repair or swop-out of my iPhone without me having to wait 2-4 weeks.
Yesterday I called the iPhone support in the US on +1800 6341466. I spoke to a very friendly lady, and she said that I had to go back to the iStore and demand a replacement of my handset, which I did, on which they refused.
Apple, Please help. I really like my iPhone, and I keep promoting it among friends and family, yet, when I want to show of a cool feature, the Home Button does not work. As well, I use the phone for work, and need the phone to work.
Hope you can help.
Kind regards,
Christiaan