On 6/10/24, at 10am, I went to the Kahala Apple Store and purchased a new iPhone 15 plus and was very happy with how everything worked. On 6/13/24, I returned to the Apple Store and turned in my iPhone SE as a trade in. I asked the kid who "helped" me how long he has been working here because I was getting a little concerned about how he appeared to be "rushing" through all the screens. He bragged, he has been with the store for 3 1/2 years but has worked for Apple for 14 years, so "I know what I'm doing". A minute later, he says, "oh oh" with a concerned look. Followed by, "I erased the wrong phone". He had completely deleted everything from my new phone. I said you were rushing. He responded, no, I wasn't. I said, I saw you rushing and why I asked you about your experience. I asked him if he's done this before, and he said, "a couple of times". But I can fix it. Who's your carrier. Consumer Cellular. Oh oh, can you call them. How, you deleted my phone. I don't know what to do. Call your supervisor.
His supervisor, Indy Mendoza Jr, comes over and the kid explains what happened. He tells me they aren't familiar with Consumer Cellular but it's our fault this happened and they will fix it. We use their phone and call Consumer Cellular who asks for my PIN number. Thank God I remembered it, because normally I have to unlock my phone for the information. CC says they will send me the Esim card through my email. They do, but we can't get it because my phone is DEAD. Indy asked me to go home and get my iPad, return to the store so they can fix my phone. With no other option, I drive home, get my iPad, fight through the extreme traffic due to a water main break a block from the Mall and return to the store.
It took them until 4pm to restore it to some degree but not fully like before I walked in that morning. Indy and Jara, another manager continua apologized for their mistake and the inconvenience they caused me, and they would be contacting me to offer something to make up for it. I told them how can you put a price or value on what they cost me for their mistake. Bad enough I had to spend my entire day trying to get my phone restored, forget about the gas I used, but I couldn't even call my 98 year old mother who I was supposed to visit, nor could I call my other appointments to tell them what happened and I couldn't make our appointment, but the stress and anxiety they caused me was excruciating. I was lucky I had everything backed up to my Cloud account so they could restore my phone.
I waited a week and when no one called me, I went to the store, but Indy and Jara were not there. Nicole Lute said she was a manager, had heard about what h to me and that she would have them call me by Sunday. Still, no one called me and I felt like they were ghosting me. All the time, I continued to have problems with my phone. I had to have a specialist w McAfee reinstall their apps on my iPhone, iPad, and laptop which took a couple of hours. My voice mail didn't work properly and people trying to call me were sent immediately to my voicemail which wasn't working. Worse, my phone didn't even ring, the calls weren't even recorded as missed with no record of their calls. I ended up emailing them, and Nicole Lute, who now identified herself as the senior manager, responded saying she tried calling me three times but she was immediately sent to my voicemail. I was holding my phone in my hand the whole time and received nothing on my phone. I called the store and she apologized and asked me to come to the store in the next day and she would take care of everything.
The next morning, she had to ask a specialist to help reset my voicemail with Consumer Cellular's help, and reset my phone so it would ring and record the call history. That took another couple of hours. After all said and done, my voicemail is not setup like before and is limited to just basic listen and delete, unlike how it would provide a written version of the voicemail message. A couple of people have told me that they tried calling and texting me but couldn't get through. Nicole gave me a charger to use in my car, and a magnetic charger, but I would prefer that my phone was completely restored and working like the day I first bought it.
Never in my entire 70 years of life have I ever experienced such incompetence, lack of follow through with basic customer service and courtesy, that caused me weeks of stress, frustration and disgust, AND STILL, MY NEW IPHONE PLUS THAT I PAID A TOTAL OF $1,000 with the case is not working like it's supposed to. THE PRODUCT IS EXCELLENT, BUT BECAUSE OF THEIR OWN MISTAKE, IT DOESNT WORK WELL LIKE ORIGINAL AND THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE IS THE WORST I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED. read more