Man breaks his four-year-old Samsung phone by dropping it in water

Is mad because Apple won’t give him a new one for free

By Sharon Miki , Humour Editor

Apple Inc. is offering its deep sympathies—in the form of one guy saying, “Er, I’m sorry that you’re… upset?”—to a disgruntled man who took to social media to complain about the company’s customer service. The only hitch? The man did not buy his phone from Apple, nor was it an Apple phone.

“Just because I dropped my phone while aggressively Tindering in the bathtub, and it shattered on the tub floor, and also had water damage, doesn’t change the fact that I feel that Apple should be responsible for the quality of my phone,” said disgruntled customer Ryan Ronaldo, 25, in a series of statements released over Twitter last week. “Don’t any companies take pride in ensuring that the public is happy anymore?”

Indeed, after breaking his phone, Ronaldo went to his local Apple store and demanded a full refund for his first-generation Samsung Galaxy (a product never carried by Apple) and a new iPhone 5. When a bemused employee turned him away because the phone “was nearly four-years old, was never under any warranty, had obviously sustained physical damage by the customer, and was in fact a Samsung and not an Apple phone,” Ronaldo began an aggressive anti-Apple social media campaign. Ronaldo’s “Take a bite outta Apple” campaign drew limited media attention from other people that like to complain about things that are their own fault.

“I support Ronaldo because this is just like that time that I ate raw chicken from the grocery store and then the store refused to reimburse me for my lost wages when I got food poisoning and couldn’t go to work,” said one supporter, Lloyd Dobler.

“Yeah, or it’s also like that time I tried to sue my bank because there was no money in my account. Just because I don’t deposit money in the account doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have the right to freely use my debit card!” sympathized Erica Kane.

It remains somewhat unclear as to why Ronaldo feels that Apple should be held responsible for his mistake, a fact augmented by Ronaldo’s own explanation: “I don’t know why I picked Apple… but why not them? Why should I have to pay for my own mistakes?”

In the end, however, all that Ronaldo has received at press time is re-tweeted support and a few hugs from his mother.