It seems that Apple has unilaterally declared Antennagate to be over, and has announced that it will stop sending out free iPhone 4 bumper cases from September 30 – although the program isn’t being halted altogether.
Antennagate proved to be an embarrassing PR disaster for Apple, whose response to customers’ complaints about dropped call was initially met with Steve Jobs insisting that it was their fault because they were simply, “holding it wrong.”
Eventually, the company buckled under the growing pressure and offered to give out free cases to alleviate the problem, while embarking on a horribly back-firing offensive, pointing at rivals phones and bleating, “Please Miss! Miss! He did it too!”
According to a message posted on their website, Apple are now changing their policy regarding the freebie cases:
We now know that the iPhone 4 antenna attenuation issue is even smaller than we originally thought.
A small percentage of iPhone 4 users need a case, and we want to continue providing them a Bumper case for free. For everyone else, we are discontinuing the free case program on all iPhone 4s sold after September 30, 2010.
We are also returning to our normal returns policy for all iPhone 4s sold after September 30. Users experiencing antenna issues should call AppleCare to request a free Bumper case.
Get in quick
To grab the freebie case under the iPhone 4 Case Program, users can currently fire up an iPhone app to request a bumper – so long as the iPhone was bought after July 23, 2010.
It seems that the app will be discontinued after Spet 30, so users bursting to bag a bonus bumper will have to call AppleCare instead.
