The continuing story of my AirPods Pro woes
At this point I’m averaging an Apple repair swap once per year since 2019.
I was an early adopter of the AirPods Pro. I got my set in December 2019, less than two months after they first went on sale. Then as now, I absolutely love them — when they work. To be fair, that’s most of the time. But when they go bad, they go real bad.
I first encountered a “buzzing” issue within the first month of owning them. This would occur when low frequencies were present in music I was listening to, but would also happen as I was talking. And it was extremely annoying. I spent a total of five hours over two days at the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store in January of 2020. This was in the twilight of the world that was, before COVID. They first attempted to replace just the buds, but they could never get them to pair with the case. The next day they tried replacing the case too, but still with no luck. Ultimately they got permission of a store manager to get me a brand new set in-box from the back of the store. This was a stroke of great fortune for me since AirPods Pro were still very hard to get at that time, and these were from a limited stock they kept in the manager’s office for just these kind of rare situations. I was very pleased, but only temporarily.
By April of 2020 the problem had begun to exhibit itself in the new set as well in the right earbud. The problem was that by this time we were well into the world’s response to COVID and all Apple Stores were closed. They opened briefly later, but then closed again, leaving me with no option for an in-store replacement. Apple’s online support was willing to ship me a replacement earbud, but only if I agreed to a $100 hold on my debit card. I reluctantly agreed and they sent me a replacement earbud. All was well again.
In October of 2020 Apple publicly acknowledged that the issue I was experiencing was a known issue, and they began a repair extension program for this specific problem. I can’t remember for sure now, but I feel like I may have had a swap during this initial repair extension. I have a dim recollection of having this done at an Apple Store. The extension program offered people affected by this issue an extra year in which to get a free repair for buzzing AirPods Pro units.
Well, you guessed it, I started having the issue again a few weeks ago. It became severe in my left earbud, and was beginning to happen in the right as well. I wasn’t sure if Apple would still cover it, but I jumped on an Apple live chat anyway. The representative I spoke with gave me one of the best Apple support experiences I’ve ever had. She couldn’t guarantee that Apple would cover the repair under the repair extension program. It would be up to the technician, but she was prompt and didn’t force me to do a ton of troubleshooting. I was willing to roll those dice. I didn’t have time to get to the Apple Store. This time, rather than ship me replacement earbuds with a hold on my debit card, they sent me a box to ship my AirPod Pro, case and all, to an Apple repair center in Indiana. I had the support chat on a Thursday, the box arrived on Friday, and my AirPods were shipped off that day. I knew based on the tracking info that they would arrive at the repair center on Monday. I had a notification from Apple early that afternoon that they had been repaired and were on their way back to me. I got that email before the UPS tracking info even showed that Apple had received my package! I had them back on Tuesday, right as rain. That’s pretty outstanding service.
Looking a little deeper, the reason Apple covered my AirPods again this time, only a few months shy of three years since I purchased them, is because Apple extended its repair extension program to three years from the date of purchase. That means this was likely the last time I’ll be able to qualify for this repair. Apple says affected units were manufactured before October 2020. We’ll see about that. That certainly implies that they figured out what the problem was and have solved it on all models made after that time. I hope that proves accurate.
I’m glad Apple seems to know what the problem is, and I’m glad they’ve been generous with their repair extension program. This does make it somewhat hard for me to recommend AirPods Pro to others though. I do love them when they work, but I’ve had more problems with them by far than any other Apple product I’ve owned in over two decades of being an Apple customer. Here’s hoping the next generation of AirPods Pro aren’t plagued by a similar issue.