Warranty Claim Nightmare Experience - MTN iPhone 7

On the 17th of December 2017 my iPhone 7 started to heat up and switched off, thus malfunctioning. It was still a new phone which I received in July 2017 after upgrading my existing contract of 8 years plus with MTN. I took the malfunctioning phone to the MTN shop in Waterfall Mall Rustenburg. The person there said they will send it to MTN warranty department and that was the last I heard from them. In January I started to call MTN to figure out were my phone was. The warranty department told me that they send the phone back to the MTN store in Waterfall Mall Rustenburg without assessing the phone. They said I should have switched off the "find my iPhone" application before sending the phone for warranty. Nobody informed me about this requirement when I handed in my phone at the MTN store in Waterfall Mall Rustenburg. I went back to the MTN store in Waterfall Mall Rustenburg to book my phone in for warranty again. This time I switched off the "find my iPhone" application through iCloud before submitting the phone for warranty. Another month has passed since I have submitted my phone for warranty and still I have no outcome of the process. The manager from the warranty department left me a voicemail saying that the warranty was granted. When I call the warranty office, the operators tell me that the assessment is still in progress and they cannot tell me how long it will take. They also told me that I need to contact Apple to "remove the app from the server". I still don't know what that means and what is required to close out this process. I have dealt with more than 10 different operators and made more than 40 calls to try to resolve this issue.

I have emailed customer care and only get the generic response from them saying that they are doing fault finding after a month of waiting.

This have been one of the worst experiences I had when it comes to customer service. All this time I am still paying over R1000 per month for because I have a contract with MTN. Can this be seen as *****ing? I have been wondering if I can get the SAPS involved?

Any advice or assistance will be appreciated.

Francois ******tse C: ********** 721

The warranty was rejected because the "find my iPhone" application was not switched off (nobody informed me of this requirement when I gave in the phone for warranty).

I then deactivated and removed the "find my iPhone" application through iCloud and resubmitted the phone for warranty.

MTN send me a sms saying that the "find my iPhone" application was still on and needed to be deactivated and removed. I logged into iCloud again and it was still deactivated and I deleted the phone.

Clifford from warranty department left me a voicemail on Thursday 1 February saying that the warranty was granted and the reference only needed to be send through.

When I called the warranty department today they said the warranty is granted but because the "find my iPhone" was deleted they cannot give a reference to continue with the warranty process.

I am going for almost 2 months without my phone while still paying the bill every month.

Please help me to get my new iPhone from the warranty department.