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Comment by nickfromseattle | Hacker News Reader

The city I grew up in had 3 Apple stores within 10 miles, I took having access to in-person Apple support for granted.

Have a problem? Drive down to the Apple store.

Then I moved to a European country without a single Apple store.

Did you know that Apple will only replace iPhones under warranty that were purchased in the same country (EU is a single market)? [0]

Meaning, if I buy an iPhone in Europe, Apple won't service it under warranty in the US and visa versa. I have to mail it to the country of purchase.

There are a lot of locations in the world without an Apple store, and I help this makes it easier to get support locally.

I recently switched to the M1 from Lenovo's X1 Carbon line and one of the things I appreciated about Lenovo was having a global 3rd party support network with a massive footprint to service warranty issues.

If I have problems with my M1 I need to mail it somewhere.

[0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250826854

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> Did you know that Apple will only replace iPhones under warranty that were purchased in the same country (EU is a single market)? [0]

When did this change? I remember global warranty for all Apple products with a battery.

I've personally had an iPhone 8 purchased in Thailand replaced under warranty in Sydney. I've had US-purchased Macbook Pros serviced in many other countries, including batteries (Canada, Thailand), mainboards (Germany, Singapore), top cases (butterfly keyboard in Thailand and Germany) and screens (Texas, Thailand). Certainly seems global to me, though countries without Apple stores are most definitely second class participants in Apple's repair network.

> Meaning, if I buy an iPhone in Europe, Apple won't service it under warranty in the US and visa versa. I have to mail it to the country of purchase.

Anecdotal, but I had my EU-bought hardware serviced multiple time by Apple in the US. In fact, Apple replaced my battery of my EU-bought laptop for free, even though my laptop was long out of warranty.

Additionally Apple US has fixed my hardware when Apple EU has refused to do so claiming it had no problem.

I Have Apple Care, if that matters.

People like to complain about Apple support all the time, but in my experience, Apple has been the only company where I've had a good warranty experience, though that was in the US. In the EU, it's a disaster.

> I Have Apple Care, if that matters.

That's the hilarious thing about Apple. You overpay on the hardware so that you can get gouged on the software, while overpaying for a subscription to be able to overpay for repairs.

while overpaying for a subscription to be able to overpay for repairs.

You might want to refine your talking points. This has been standard practice for electronics companies at least since the 1970's. Probably longer. You pay for an extended warranty. That's why it's called "extended."

> You pay for an extended warranty.

I mean sure, many stores try to flog them. But Apple is the only manufacturer that tries to make them a thing, over here at least.

(Aside from them being ~useless, since manufacturing defects are covered by the Reklamationsrätt anyway, and accidents go under your existing home insurance).

I am from Brazil... this is just normal to us.

Our taxes are stupidly insane, and often things at outright not available here, so we buy in other countries... need warranty? You are screwed.

I bought some RAM for example from US... It had an error in its ROM configuration, I told the manufacturer, they attempted to fix (and failed, the replacement had same error) and sent to me the replacement, government changed me import taxes on the product replacement, and seemly just to make a point made the taxes higher than the original price I paid in first place.

Why not simply get rid of these taxes?

Sounds counter-productive. Are they seriously hopping manufacturers are going to go setup manufacturing facilities there?

All it does is hurt the local Tech Sector.

Because countries dependent on non-value-added exports typically have serious issues with balancing a competitive exchange rate with inflation.

Promoting the purchase of expensive foreign goods dries up the supple of foreign currency generally used as a reserve, which drives down the value of local currency, generates an inflationary spiral, and increases the cost of more vital industries to acquire foreign goods necessary for production.

Hence import taxes in a lot of these countries are used to prevent bank runs, inflation, and access to critical goods.

Sounds like they should switch to a better currency.

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