The glass on my new ipad air was broken one day. I have had it for about a month. 1 day I took it out of its case as usual and the screen was splintered at the top and cracked downwards. It had not received any bangs, or been dropped or anything. Help!

Question

Hi, I have had my ipad air for about a month.  The other day I took it out of its cover and it was splintered from the top with downward cracks.  It is new and under warranty so I rang the support team.  They told me that it would cost about €120 but could be repaired on the spot and they made me an appointment at the local genius bar.  I got there and they told me that I had dropped it or banged it or something.  I said I had not, they insisted that I must have done.  I repeated several times that I had not - it was obvious they did not believe me, they said I must have done.  They then told me they never repaired or replaced broken glass in any ipads, that the man on the 'Support' had been wrong.  They always replaced the whole ipad at a cost of €300.  I was devastated at not being believed and at the amount of money they were asking for.  I left and rang the support again.  I was told their system was down but to call on monday to get a quote for the reparation, I could send it to my home insurance company and they would undoubtedly cover the repair.  I asked how long this was all going to take because, I was in the middle of a big project and this was taking up my time, and also I needed the ipad for my work.  They told me it would be done in a minute.  I rang on the Monday and I was told it would take up to 5 days to send but probably it would arrive sooner (it is now thursday, I have received nothing).  I then rang my household insurance, a big company - and they told me they had never heard of such a cover.  I asked if this was because I had a very basic policy, they said, no it wasn't that - I didn't have a basic policy I had quite thorough policy, but they didn't know of a policy in any comany that would cover this sort of damage.  I was stunned - yet again I had been given false information and false hope by apple.  Yet again I was let down.  I then decided to do a further investigation on the internet and discovered a long trail of comments on Apple Forum of people who have also had splintering and cracking of the ipad air glass for no reason whatsoever.  Some have commented that the glass could be thinner in order to reduce the weight, some have said that the splintering could be caused by a weakness in the casing at the top where it is plastic (the ones that take sims) that might make it more flexible and therefore liable to crack.
All of the posts and complaints on the apple forum and elsewhere seem to point to a design fault.  However throughout all this I have been mislead by apple support staff constantly who all say different things, I have virtually been accused of lying by denying that my ipad received any kind of impact by apple staff and I have been left feeling incredibly frustrated and upset by the total lack of any kind of real help by Apple.  All this despite being acomplet apple user in my business for the last 25 years, where I have never come across this attitude towards me as a customer before.
When the screen on my iphone broke, it was because I fell in the street while I was talking on the telephone, it flew out of my hand and smashed on the pavement.  I was rolling around in agony, while my son was holding up the smashed telephone wailing 'Mama, you've smashed your iphone!!!'  This of course, I blamed on noone but myself - it broke because it fell, I paid an arm and a leg without protest to get it repaired.
This is not the case with my new ipad air.  It has splintered for no good reason at all - and noone at Apple seems to want to help me or to care!
I would really appreciate it if someone could tell me if there is anything else I can do to ge this matter resolved?

Answer 1

If it was a refurb replacing one that was under warranty, the warrany is good until the original warranty expires or 90 days from replacement, whichever is longer. In either event, it should still be covered if you've only had it for a month. (assuming you're in the US here). You can try to restore it as a NEW device rather than restoring from your backup, but this sounds like a hardware failure... I think. I'm not sure what you mean by "the top half of the screen slides". If you mean only the top half is touch sensitive, how can you determine that? You wouldn't be able to slide to unlock if that were the case...
Sorry, I'm a little confused by that description.