Cracked Ipad Screens.

Cracked Ipad Screens = sad panda mommy.

 

This is what i came home to find on Tuesday nite. Well actually I came home to a hysterically screaming Kendall and an almost as hysterical nurse and I thought “oh crap something REALLY bad is going on” – and found out it was the iPad causing all the hysterics. Let me back up a little bit.

We were blessed to be able to purchase an iPad for the family earlier this year due to the generosity of some amazing people who wanted our family to be able to have a way to communicate with each other when Kendall was in the hospital, as well as be an instrument for Kendall to continue her learning and communication and have something to DO during long stretches in a hospital bed. (this is because of the “facetime” video calling features on the iPad, and some of the awesome apps they have available for the iPad). anyways – it has definitely been all of that and more, and on Tuesday, it once again was proving itself to be an amazing way for Kendall to “connect” with the world vs. laying in her bed all day. Instead of laying there doing nothing because of the heat and an increase in her hypotonic ataxia that day, she was able to sit in her new chair, play the ipad, “talk” with the talking app we have loaded for her (which sometimes ends up being her making it say “ cookie please, cookie please, juice please, i have to go to the bathroom” over and over and over and over and over…) I digress. As usual.

Anyways – the iPad is mostly Kendall’s, it is very highly utilized as HER iPad, and because she was a hot noodley mess on Tuesday she lost control of it at some point and it crashed about 18 inches onto the concrete porch in the ten minutes of “freedom” we let her have that day. Yes it is typically in a protective case. Yes she is supervised when playing with it. Yes she has dropped it before and it has survived just fine. apparently she dropped it RIGHT on the weakest spot – smack on it’s side, on the metal housing, near the corner.

kendall obviously knew she had done something wrong, the nurse felt horrible, and i wanted to puke. There was no way we were going to be able to replace this for her, and it was shattered in such a way that the glass was literally peeling off in little shards – one of which did get stuck in nurse E’s thumb. Even if we could have aesthetically lived with the huge crack taking up most of the screen, it would have been dangerous for HER to play with it. We do have Apple Care warranty on it, but it covers “technical defects”. And while I personally might feel its a “technical defect” to have non-shatterproof-glass on an item that is MARKETED as being kid friendly, it’s not technically their fault. Or problem.

so even though I knew i risked getting laughed out of there with the scorned sneer that most apple store “geniuses” have perfected, I took it in the next day. I figured worst case scenario we could pay $100 or so to have the glass “repaired” if they felt there was some way to do that. (I guess I was thinking that windshield glass chips only cost $100 deductible, maybe apple had something similar?) Anyways, i was in for a shock. 

i had made an appointment at the genius bar, but arrived about 15 minutes early. I walked into the store at exactly 4:30 with a cracked iPad.

and i walked out of the store at 4:39 with a brand new uncracked iPad.

Like i said – Shocked.

I did not give the genius a lot of song and dance. i simply stated that my daughter had dropped her ipad and that I understood that apple care did not cover accidents of this nature. It did come up that she had some special needs, and that she typically uses the ipad in the hospital or in her wheelchair/therapy chair, but beyond that, I didn’t say much. He just went on his way doing his typing and disappearing into the back recesses of genius-dom. And at the end when he opened up a box, apologized that it wasn’t engraved (Kendall’s had a special message on the back – Keep on fighting, Kendall Quinn), had me sign and initial on a receipt, and said that was it – my jaw was dropped. And there may have even been a couple tears in my eyes.

I’m not even sure I can verbalize exactly WHY this simple amazing act of customer service reduced me to tears. Maybe because I understood exactly how much we stood to lose if we had had a different Genius, one not so compassionate. One more “rule following” than the one we were assigned. Maybe because it was so unexpected. Maybe it was his simple understated way of waving off my gushing thanks at helping make and keep my baby’s ability to connect with her family.

And maybe it was just the realization that for all the BAD news you hear in the world, all the crappy stories of complete lack of caring on the part of businesses like Apple, the stores that seem to be totally devoid of “customer service”, the times when things seem to go more wrong than right – that there are still good people in the world.

So i just wanted to tell you all about that tonite. It’s not a guarantee that if you happen to have a toddler crack YOUR ipad screen that it will be replaced no questions asked, or that you will even be able to escape the store without a simpering sneer at your stupidity. But that every once in a while, even the big guys get it right. I, for one, will continue to be a very loyal Apple fan for this reason alone. i will continue to let my kids interact with each other and explore the world around them on the iPad (although we have since gone out and gotten a military grade cover for it!)

And I will continue to believe in the inherent goodness of people around me. Simply because I choose to.

So thank you, Apple Genius dude. You helped confirm a faith in humanity that i have always had.

 

 

terra.