IPhone 3G warranty replacement service NZ

Question

I have just experienced abysmal repair service for the iphone. It seems it is a New Zealand issue and I am interested to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences or whether this is just a one-off, bad-luck case?
I bought my first iphone 3G outright (at a $1000) at magnummac. It broke 11 months into the warranty period (unable to connect to any wifi network). I started by contacting vodafone, as directed by the apple website, and magnummac, and had to go through a game of being passed from one company to another for several months. In the end I had been in contact with the iphone service desk at vodafone (three times), magnummac (once on the phone, twice I drove to the shop), apple (once at the Genius bar in Paris, once in Sydney, and then on the phone to Australia), phoneinsure and finally mobilephoneRepair (twice in person at the shop and countless times on the phone). Apple eventually agreed that the problem was a hardware defect, extended the warranty (which had off course expired by then!) and replaced the iphone at no cost. It took mobilephoneRepair 24 hours to do this.
I had my second (replacement) phone 4 weeks, when it broke. This time it wouldn't even recognize any wifi network. By now I had done some searching on the internet and it seems this problem is not all that uncommon. I phoned apple direct and was assured it would be covered under warranty. I was given a case number, which would confirm this. However, this was when the truly terrible service started. Vodafone has now changed their after sales repair service provider from mobilephoneRepair to Bright Point. It will cost you $22.50, just to get the phone from one Auckland location to another. There is no option of dropping it off or picking it up yourself, because Bright Point does not deal directly with customers. The entire process of replacing a phone under warranty will take 2-3 weeks. Most of all, you will need to spend hours on the phone, speak to numerous people, explain your situation repeatedly and do all the groundwork of checking warranties yourself, because Bright point has no idea how to do this, or at least those staff dealing with customers queries, don't (and they don't seem to have access to the workshop staff, who need to make these warranty assessments). It has now been almost 3 weeks since I have handed my phone in, with all the details which were necessary to make a warranty replacement, and i still don't have a phone.
I won't bore you with all the sorry details, but I can tell you that everything I say here is true. In most other coutries, the apple Genius bar will deal with apple warranties, but we don't have an apple store in NZ. If vodafone NZ and apple NZ are trialling a new system, they need to know if it is failing miserably.
3 weeks is not an improvement on 24 hours. This is the 21st century, apple and vodafone are both big players in the market and customer service is a big issue for, well, all customers. What are they thinking??
Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Answer 1

Thanks for the replies.
I agree that apple should sort it out. But that is precisely the problem. We don't have an apple store in New Zealand, so apple seems to be uninterested. I have been to the apple stores in Paris and Sydney, but they won't have anything to do with iphones which were not bought in that country. Even the apple nz website will only allow you to contact their support services if you have bought the phone online from them. For all other iphones, irrespective of where you bought them in New Zealand, apple has conveniently passed the responsibility on to the carrier, which is vodafone in New Zealand.
Both vodafone and magnummac (which is the store I had bought it at) won't fix it either - they pass it on to this third company (Brightpoint), which has been giving shocking service. 3 weeks turnaround for an iphone replacement in the 21st century, is terrible service.
Since when does a big company like apple allow a third rate outfit like Brightpoint to handle their warranty repairs and replacements. Are they not interested in good customer service?