Skip to main content

Am I getting a refurbished iPhone 4 from maxis

Am I going to get a refurbished (refurb) iPhone 4 when I sent mine to maxis, which is the telco who has the rights to sell iPhone in Malaysia? This is perhaps the number one question in everyone’s mind. The issue with refurb is that there may be scratches, dents and the most major concern: old batteries i.e. your refurb unit will not last as long as a brand new one.

Let me share my experience and observation.

Some background – in Malaysia, we don’t have an Apple Store nor a Genius Bar, so we can’t just walk in to get an Apple employee to look at problems with our iPhone. Everything is done through our telco, and the tech support people supports all sort of brands – Nokia, Blackberry, Samsung, etc – their role, based on my observation, is to confirm the problem, open a ticket and pass the hand set to the vendor to repair or replace.

Apple’s warranty states clearly that Apple has a right to replace the handset with a new or ‘like new’. I think that ‘like new’ means refurb.

I got my iPhone on 10 Nov and after 2 weeks of use, I discover that my Home button is acting up. Single click sometimes registered as double click and thus, it opens up the multi tasking tray, instead of going to the Home page or quitting the app as the expected behaviour of single click. It happens once a while, difficult to replicate and demonstrate and it’s just a slight annoyance. I contemplate whether to live with it or return it back to maxis for a replacement.

One of the most nagging question is will I get a refurb when my phone is replaced. What’s wrong with a refurb? Many people told me that the refurb goes through even more vigorous QC and usually works much better than the newly minted ones from factory. Look at the amount of issues that was reported on those new iPhones – yellow banding on the screen, patches or spots on the screen, proximity sensor issue, speaker problem, microphone problem, etc. These so called factory assembled handsets could also potentially give problems. So a refurb is no different, some say.

On the other hand, how many people actually have problems with their new hand set. Very low percentage as well. With this thought in mind, I decided to take my chance and get over the annoyance after about 40 days of using and living with it.

I went to maxis Taman Tun Dr Ismail. I told the tech support about my Home button issue. He reset the phone to factory default and tried to simulate it. After trying for like one minute, he was not able to reproduce. I told him that it is intermittent and I was struggling with myself on taking to maxis for repair. He took my word for it and log in a ticket. He said that normally, if he’s not able to reproduce it, that means likely the vendor whom they returned the handset to will not be able to replicate. In normal cases, the vendor will deemed it as having no problem and returned the handset but he’s going to log the ticket as him having seen the issue and that I will need a replacement. I believe he understands the annoyance and that sometimes we are not able to replicate intermittent problem.

His supportive nature and ease of getting a replacement in fact caused me to be suspicious. I asked if I will be getting a new one and he said yes I will. It is Apple’s policy to replace with new, he said. I doubted it.

I have a friend who works in supply chain. Her expertise is to fine tune process of managing returns and replacement. She said it is going to be very costly for a company to replace a new equipment for every defective item. It doesn’t make economic sense for the company so many of them implemented reverse logistics. Wikipedia: “Reverse logistics is also referred to as "Aftermarket Customer Services". In other words, any time money is taken from a company's warranty reserve or service logistics budget one can speak of a reverse logistics operation.”

3 working days later, I received a SMS from maxis. My replacement unit is available and I could go collect it from the Center. I went there and saw the tech support guy took a unit from their store. It came in a bubble wrap packaging with a “void if opened” silvery seal. He opened it and gave me the phone. It came in the two transparent hard plastic that covers the front and back. It looked new to me.

Looking at the serial number though, it starts with 5K043yyyA4T. The iPhone that I had had a serial number of 85043xxxA4T. Both yyy and xxx are different number. Many people in the Internet claims that a refurb unit starts with 5K. However, one Apple employee publicly stated in Apple discussion forum that 5K does not necessarily means refurb. This is one of the most debatable thing in the Internet and no one knows for sure.

I have a suspicion that mine is a refurb. However, what I am holding looked really new. No scratches or dent. Battery, after 2 days, is as good as the new iPhone I got in Nov. No problem with screen, speakers, mic, camera. When I went to Apple website to key in the serial number to check the warranty, to my surprise, the warranty ends on 23 Nov, 2011. The phone that I had, the one with the Home button issue, have a warranty that ends on 10 Nov 2011. This supposedly "refurb" phone is newer than my iPhone!

At the end of the day, as long as it worked, I am happy with this decision. Today is just the second day. Let’s see how it is in the next few weeks.

Comments

  1. Is it possible that the IPhone you have is jail-broken? I have a friend who doesn't get service for his IPhone from AT&T and he had it jail-broken and from time to time has issues with the home button. Just wondering...

    ReplyDelete
  2. In my opinion it's not the phone, it's just one paranoia user!

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Derrick - no the phone is not jail broken as it was about a month old.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Actually, i suspect all the Malaysia stock through telcos are refurbs...

    Think about it.
    The phone launched almost immediately in singapore...

    In Malaysia it took a longer time to reach our shores...

    It is possible, and i am merely stating the possibility, that ZERO phones from maxis and digi are new phones. There aren't anyone to confirm this though... Wish it could be confirmed...

    ReplyDelete
  5. @Randy - if I am not wrong, Apple launches product into 3 Tiers countries - 1st Tier being USA only; 2nd Tier are Singapore, UK, Malta and some other countries - this 2nd Tier was announced by Steve Jobs. Malaysia, unfortunately, fall under Tier 3. I don't think they would give us refurb - that would be bad business practice.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Well, in Malaysia, anything could happen...

    There are reports from users getting refurbished phones in Malaysia after their initial phone are sent into the service centre.

    The question is, where did they even get these refurbished phones to push to customers?

    How can consumers find credibility that their original phone aren't refurbished in the first place.

    And Malaysia isn't a country where there's a return policy (like in USA), where they can return the phones before 30 days are up.

    That is why i'm suspicious about this whole iphone business to begin with.

    Assuming that they are the same tier 3 batch, why the drastic difference in serial numbers?

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Randy Malaysia Boleh eh? Well, not discounting what you said. It's highly possible entirely .. and yet, I want to believe that a company like Apple will not bet their brand on something like this. It could backfire.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Well, there's isn't a physical apple store here... So, these are all still allegations...

    Plus the fact, is that the Maxis phone warranty is NOT AN INTERNATIONAL WARRANTY... but a maxis only warranty...

    On that basis alone, i find it hard to believe in maxis.

    ReplyDelete
  9. No international warranty!??!
    I DON'T KNOW THAT!

    Goodness! This is news to me, Randy. I better check my warranty card!

    Let me guess.. so you didn't get any of the iPhones then?

    ReplyDelete
  10. As far as i know, maxis will issue you a warranty card, and that warranty is only valid in maxis...

    That is why i've always suspected maxis...

    Please do confirm, I also wanna know for 100% sure...

    I'm using Samsung Captivate, from AT&T... Mine is refurbished, but given 1 year warranty by local importer...

    ReplyDelete
  11. Ok Ringgit...Just wanted to know! Good luck with that IPhone. I couldn't do without mine!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hi rinngit,

    How was your refurbished iphone4 now?

    Regards,
    VIN

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi Ringgit,

    How was your refurbished iphone4 now?

    Regards,
    VIN

    ReplyDelete
  14. Love it more than my new phone as I have no issues with it after 2 weeks of using!

    ReplyDelete
  15. where to check the warranty, i tried the apple support site, it kept saying error :(

    ReplyDelete
  16. i have a quest. say i jailbreak my iphone.. is warranty still valid?

    ReplyDelete
  17. I would not advise it... :)

    ReplyDelete
  18. very useful information.Sydney repair center provides all kind of services on iphone.refurbished iphone

    ReplyDelete
  19. If you want to buy Apple Certified refurbished item, make certain you check the prices in contradiction of the brand-new models at other shops.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One million daimoku

In April 2008, Anne and I started our resolution to chant 1 million daimoku in one year. It's already Jan - and I am only one-third of the way. I really need to WORK HARDER - coz I made another 1 million resolution from Jan - Dec 2009. The chart you see on the right of this post is a chart that we put beside our butsudan. It tracked our chanting progress. Every 20 minute, we coloured one box. Mine is the one on top, Anne's at the bottom - you can see that she made much better progress than me! Hmmm.. come to think of it, I am not even at one third!! --- Edit 22 March 2009: Thanks to Google, a couple of friends in faith found this post and they want to know how many hours of chanting is required to achieve one million diamoku. Here it is. Based on our publication in Malaysia, 20 minutes of chanting is equivalent to 1,000 daimoku. So, one hour is 3,000 daimoku. 1 million would take about 333 hours. --- Edit 8 April 2018: Checking my blogger stats, this post is pretty hi

Amazon Alexa in Malaysia - does it work well? A review...

Feels like Christmas in September. Thanks to Doktor Cinta, my friend who live in Australia. Back in July, Amazon Australia had a Prime Day. I joined the trial using my usual Amazon account and ordered an Echo Dot, Echo Plus (the taller one with a built-in hub) and a Kindle Paperwhite, shipping them to a dear friend in Australia. My friend visited Malaysia and brought the Echos with him two weeks ago. You can imagine my thrill to get my hands on Alexa and start using it... in Malaysia. As a side story, sometimes, you can't believe how events are aligned properly to prepare my place to be a connected home - I bought a superb new mesh network router, eero (by the way, I'd say it's one of my best electronic purchases after an iPhone! It is that good), which acts as a strong WiFi backbone as it blanket my double storey house with a reliable and fast WiFi. Then, maxis launched Fibernation program which let me to upgrade my internet from 6 Mbps (pathetic) to 100 Mbps wit

Who is the official service center for Seiko watches?

The Great Blue; Kinetic Auto Relay 100M I have a 15 year old Seiko watch which I love very much. It's a Great Blue series and kinda one-of-its-kind, because Seiko discontinued it as soon as it was launch. So, there are very limited number of units. The watch I own is a Kinetic Auto Relay which means it is powered by my arm movement. And the nice thing about it is that if I don't use my watch, it hands will not move but the Kinetic capacitor which stores energy (up to 4 years of inactivity) will continue to keep track of the time. When I picked up the watch and shake it a bit, it will wake up and auto adjust to the correct time whether it is AM or PM. But my watch is 15 year old. At that age, the capacitor cannot hold a lot of charges. These days if I left my watch unused for 2 days, the watch stopped keeping time. I need to get the capacitor replaced. But who is the official service center for Seiko? The thing about luxury watches is that if you don't send it to