I don't fundamentally disagree with you, BUT, "buying something else" isn't the easiest proposition in the world when you find out on Day 8 of your 14 day return window that you now need to replace your device. I'm sure most of the people on this thread are like me: previous iPhone owners, probably have 20-40gb of photo and video stored either on the device or in the cloud, most likely own another Apple device like an iPad or MacBook, and are just for better or worse invested in the Apple ecosystem. It would have literally taken me DAYS on a whim to move everything, and even then I would have only had a temporary solution until I knew what I was going to replace the device with and figure out how to move all that stuff. It's hard to believe but not everyone has a free hard drive sitting around. Spending $60-100 on a whim just to preserve all of my data is simply another step and expense. It's not unreasonable to factor these things in to people's decision making. Never mind the fact a lot of people simply don't have the know how to even begin to backup 10,000 photos from Apple into their native images onto a stand alone device. Simply, "purchase something else" is easy for you and I, but even I found it would be a MASSIVE undertaking that with a job, and a two year old was time and money I couldn't really justify spending.
That said, wanting to help Apple figure out how to make their premium device work isn't the motivation. I decided it was a better use of my time and money to spend the odd hour a day over several weeks (Trust me when I tell you, I estimate I spent about 40+ hours on this logging, etc., aside from all of my other interactions with tech support) desperately trying not to incur additional time and expense by switching devices. A company that actually cared would appreciate that, instead of acting like it's customers are fortunate to have the opportunity to do Apple's quality control for them and PAY TO DO IT. Once something has escalated to the point of needing data logging to proceed, ON A BRAND NEW DEVICE, if they actually want to solve the problem, they should make a point of actually solving it. A $20 iTunes credit would probably do wonders for both their efforts at getting this data, and recognizing that "Hey, these people spending $1,000+ on a brand new phone and actually willing to do this data logging on a brand new device instead of just returning it and leaving us, those are people we should probably try and keep happy." For all of the talk of customer service, the sad fact is this whole experience has shown me that they really could care less except that bad news not hit the media and that they string you along long enough that you just give up.
I actually had someone there have the nerve to tell me that returning my device after weeks of data logging at their request would require an exception to the return window because I was past the 14 days. THAT's how much they value these efforts....
