14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has a hard time dealing with all battery repairs as part of the discount from $79 to $29 following the power management fiasco, and it looks like the company is switching to plan B in the case of older devices requiring more complex servicing.
Cupertino has already suspended battery replacements until March and April because of the limited battery stocks, and now it looks like Apple plans to substitute damaged iPhone 6 Plus units requiring full replacements with the iPhone 6s Plus until the end of March.
An internal memo obtained by MacRumors points out that Apple wants “orders for whole unit service inventory of some iPhone 6 Plus may be substituted to an iPhone 6s Plus until the end of March 2018,” but no specifics were provided as to what models qualify for the replacement and why the company turned to this decision.
The cited source speculates that Apple offering iPhone 6s Plus instead of iPhone 6 Plus to customers requiring whole unit service comes as the result of the constrained stock of the older model.
Replacements won’t be free
Apple no longer produces the iPhone 6 Plus, and a significant number of customers requiring a full replacement might have used the company’s entire inventory, so the only available option in this case is to upgrade to the 6s Plus.
The replacements, however, aren’t offered free of charge. iPhone 6 Plus is no longer covered by warranty, so units that receive critical damage requiring a full replacement can only be exchanged for $329, according to Apple’s own servicing pricing scheme.
This means that while Apple could indeed upgrade the iPhone 6 Plus to 6s Plus, the process won’t happen free of charge, but for a $329 fee, which is still a good price given that for the same price customers would only get an iPhone 6 Plus.
The more intriguing information is the March-end deadline, as Apple appears to be confident that whole-unit servicing would no longer be an issue beyond this date. It remains to be seen how the company handles complex damage on older models, but it’s pretty clear that the battery fiasco has become one of Apple’s biggest headaches since the release of the iPhone a decade ago.