WARNING- LONG
Mine's fairly recent.
I live in the Philippines and own an Apple iPhone 6. It's under a contract which I pay monthly and I had to shell out $200 as a cash-out to obtain it (got it when the iPhone 6 was new in markets).
It got busted on the last week of March. It was still under warranty so I took it to an Apple affiliated store.
I was told the following:
Thinking my phone was in good hands, I left it with them and paid half the amount.
Fast forward and by the end of April, I still have not received the phone's replacement. I was told that "the order had already been processed".
We (my wife and I) kept calling or dropping by the store in the next few weeks, to no avail, being told that there was either a problem with the system, or their freight providing, etc.
We planned to get the defective phone back, as well as our money, to just get it repaired somewhere else but we were told it would not be possible since the order was on its way.
We were repeatedly told that the matter was already in their "priority list" and was "being escalated". So we waited some more.
Last week, I was told by the store that the new freight orders were on their way and could arrive by Sunday. It's NOW that Sunday and I'm informed that there were problems with the store's system in that they had documents that could not be sent online so it had to be hand-delivered (something of that nature).
Again, I asked for the phone/money to be returned - still no dice - they had to contact the head office, and there was no one handling these issues because they were "on vacation".
I called Apple's customer service to tell them about the problem. It turned into a 1 1/2 hour conversation and I found out certain tidbits of information such as: "the service provided was only able to place the order in Apple's system on May 6" - even though we handed the phone to them on March 30, and by April had been told that the order had been placed successfully.
In the end though, the Apple support guy suggested:
And these are statements we've heard from the Apple service provider so many times already.
They still could not give the phone nor the money back. We might be given a discount though - which did not sit well with me since we were still expected to pay part of the remaining balance of $200 in spite of all the crap that's happened.
On a side note, a co-worker also had her phone busted due to water damage, hers even got fully submerged.
It was out of the warranty period so she took it to a third party/non-affiliated store. Only the battery had to be replaced, no data wipe. It was returned within the day.
Total bill was less than $20. Lol.
TL;DR
Took my iPhone to an Apple affiliated store for repair. Was told it had to be replaced with me paying the equivalent of an actual phone ($400). Was told I needed to wait only 15-20 days.
Now at 60 days, phone still has not been replaced; they're also refusing to return the defective phone or refund our downpayment.