Early in July my iPhone 4S started having issues with the internal earpiece; calls were very, very quiet (despite being fully turned up) so hearing people when not in a silent room was next to impossible. Decided I'd had enough of it in early August, restored it and took my phone in to the Telecom Broadway store in Newmarket to get them to send it off for warranty repair (phone was purchased on the 11th of November 2011 at the Telecom concept store on Victoria St).

 Handed over my receipt, got a few strange looks as I'm no longer a Telecom customer when asked about my details, and after this experience, I have no interest in becoming one. Signed the form stating that I'm aware if the phone is impact or liquid damaged that I'd be charged a service fee. The phone quite clearly wasn't impact damaged at all and definitely not liquid damaged. The only issue was with the internal earpiece being very quiet, everything else (including dock/headphone jack) works fine.

 Was advised by an ex-Telecom employee/Geekzoner friend that I can actually check the repair status on the Telegistics website myself, so I punched in my IMEI number and found they had diagnosed it in the morning of the 2nd of August. They denied warranty coverage stating that the liquid sensor indicator had gone off in the headphone socket, lint in the dock connector and were going to quote to fix out of warranty. The Telecom store were understandably not much help in getting any information, I called on the 3rd and asked for an update and they said they were still waiting on a quote from Telegistics, I told them not to go ahead with it and to return my phone immediately. I also called Telegistics and was rudely told by whoever answered the phone that they'd found liquid damage and thus was not covered under warranty. I asked for proof of the damage, to which he said that I could also check the photos on their website. While on the phone I found the page (not helpfully labelled at all) but it didn't list the so called photos. He claimed they take up to 24 hours to upload to the server and that they'd be up by the 4th. I asked for him to email them to me and he said he would. The phone was shipped back on the 6th to the Telecom store. I called Telegistics back on the 7th to enquire about the photos and again requested for them to be emailed to me. As of the 7th, I still haven't received these photos.

 I happened to be in the area on the 8th and called in to the store to see if the phone had arrived. It had, and still nobody bothered calling me about it. So, 9 days for them to look at and take a couple of photos of a phone and return it to the store. By the time I had returned home and checked the site again, the photos were up showing a half-pink dot in the headphone jack which they straight up denied under warranty. When prompted, they couldn't prove that liquid damage caused the earpiece to fail at all.

 I called up AppleCare and got transferred through to the customer relations team who looked into my case and asked me to send through photos of the so called "liquid damage". 24 hours later they had sent me out an advance replacement device with a box to return mine in. Above excellent customer service on Apple's part, I can't say the same thing about Telecom/Telegistics. 

 I used to work at an Apple Authorised Service Provider, the procedure for iPhones is if the customer disputes liquid damage, they are to ask Apple for permission to open the device and check the internal liquid indictors or the logic board for signs of corrosion. If the internal ones had gone off or there is any signs of corrosion to deny the claim, which I'd be okay with except for the fact they hadn't. I asked my Apple case manager to look and see if the repairer had asked for permission to open the phone, he said that they had not received any request for this to happen.

 I'm not sure what took Telegistics so long to take a couple of photos of a phone, coupled with their terrible customer experience - avoid at all costs.