Open Radar

 
I am one of the crazy ones, the misfits, the troublemakers, the ones with a malfunctioning 6S.

https://www.apple.com/benl/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/

So I was curious to see what my replacement options were.

First I tried the first link ("Find one here"), this led to: radar://29353060

Not to be discouraged I followed the "Make an appoint here"-link (which for some crazy reason is a POST-form instead of a regular link) which redirected me to: https://getsupport.apple.com/

My spidey sense started tingling, usually when I visit a apple.com URL without BE or BENL anywhere in its URL, it means I can't use the functionality in Belgium (yay for second class customers! Different radar) but since this was an official Apple site which redirected me to it, I went on, once more unto the breach! #yolo4life

I followed the "Send in for Repair" (an interesting use of capitals, but I expect no less from the creators of macOS) and came across the "Have Apple find your serial number", which seemed like such a good idea.

So I entered my phone number "+32474824538"

=> Please enter a valid email address

Hmm. It must have trouble with the "+", so I went to the front of the text field, deleted the "+" and typed "00"

=> Please enter a valid email address or phone number. 

Hmm. The plot, it thickens. But when I looked at the textfield again, I could see that a 0 was added at the beginning of my phone number and a 0 was appended at the end (otherwise it wouldn't really be "appending", right?) of my phone number. Ah JS-shenanigans! The JS-fairies tried to help me enter my phone number by making it harder to do so. Got it. Thanks little fairies, I know what do do! So I deleted my phone number and typed 0032474824538.

instant gratification! It even formatted it "00 32 474 82 45 38"! Jolly good show I said to myself and with a feeling of relief I pressed the "Submit" button

=> Please enter a valid email address.

Ah, foiled again. I don't think it works with a Belgian phone number. So I gave up and just filled out an email address.

I immediately received an email, opened it on my device, and was directed to the "Diagnostics" app. Color me impressed!

The website displayed "Waiting for info" and the Diagnostics.app was reticulating splines like there was no tomorrow. Life was good.

Until it stopped. About 1/4the of the progress bar was filled out and it just stopped. "No worries, Piet, I bet it's trying to fix the battery as we speak" I said to myself and went to grab a coffee. When I returned the website told me "Couldn't receive data" and the Diagnostics app managed to evaporate into the thing air it came from. Probably helping someone else with her diagnostics.

So I went through the email dance again, and this time it did work! The Diagnostics.app purred like a kitten and delivered the results to the website which promptly showed me that yes indeed "Apple has received the results". Hoozah!

Next screen: "Disable Find my iPhone to use Send in for Repair", now at this point I would like to remind you, dear reader, that I'm still not sure if this site is meant to be used in Belgium (given: a) Apple has a history of je m'en fous when it comes to international customers and b) it didn't recognise my phone number), but I was still a bit high of the success of the Diagnostics.app so I rolled the dice and pushed the "Send" button.

At this point I was greeted by a "Something went wrong" screen with a UUID (which I sadly didn't copy) and gave up on the whole endeavour. Instead focusing my efforts on filing a radar. This very radar. 

Time for another coffee, thank you for reading!