Last week Jamie won the Australian Hotel Association's NSW Revenue/Yield Manager of the Year award! (!!!) I was sad that I wasn't able to go to the awards dinner to see him win, but it sounds like he had a great time there, and at the after party at Ivy Bar. Well, he was having a great time until one of his colleagues thought it would be a great joke to push Jamie into the pool. Jamie, of course, was dressed up for the evening, and had his wallet and phone in his pockets, so he was naturally displeased, cold and wet.
Naturally, his iPhone shorted out and appeared to have given up the ghost. When he got home we stuck it in front of a space heater and then put it in big tub of rice to see if we could resurrect it. It wasn't turning on when we plugged it in after 2 days, so Jamie scheduled an appointment at the Apple Store's Genius Bar to find out how much it would cost for him to replacement. (His co-worker had graciously offered to pay for replacing the phone, so at least that's a plus.)
Sunday evening came along, and about 5 minutes before I left to get on the ferry, a miracle happened! I plugged in Jamie's iPhone one last time for good measure, and what should appear? The apple logo in all it's glowy glory! It did a full boot sequence and the phone actually worked! I was able to send Jamie a text message and everything. The only thing that appeared to be wrong with the phone was that some water had gotten between the backlight and the LCD, making for some trippy-looking bubble patterns that disappear at certain angles and over darker colors. I wish I had taken a photo of the effect because it was actually kind of awesome if it didn't make reading text harder.
So even though zombiephone appeared to be back among the living, Jamie decided he still wanted to take it in to find out what the replacement cost would be given the screen issue. (Also, with all water-damage related issues, the phone could decide to die again randomly a couple days/weeks later, so really it's just better to go ahead and replace it.) So we took it in, Jamie put his name on the list when we got to the store, and we waited about 15 minutes for a "Genius" to become available.
Once they called Jamie's name, he went over to the guy and proceeded to tell him exactly what happened. "I got pushed into a pool by my friend and the phone seems to miraculously work, but I wanted to see about getting the screen replaced."
The Genius responds: "Well, since the phone has gotten wet, your only option is going to be to replace the phone. The cost to replace the phone...since I'm a nice guy and you were so honest with me......we'll replace it for free since this is the first time."
We were flabbergasted.
"You're joking!"
"Just sign here and I'll get your new phone for you."
Boom. Free replacement iPhone. (For the curious, even if he had had to pay the replacement fee, it would have only been somewhere around $230.00 for a new replacement black iPhone4 16gb. Unlocked.) Fantastic.
Jamie suddenly feels the love for Apple and has the unnerving urge to go buy more Apple products just because he feels they treated him so well. Walk into a mobile phone shop and try and do that with one of your Android phones! And that's why it pays sometimes to be an Apple fanboy.
Super Jealous,
—LL