If you regret the band you chose for your Apple Watch when you ordered it online, don’t sweat it: Apple will allow you to return it within 14 days for another band. But there’s a few caveats.
According to a new internal employee training document published on Macrumors, band swaps are available for the Apple Watch Sport and stainless steel Apple Watch, but won’t be available for the far pricier Apple Watch Edition.
There are other rules. The Apple Watch must be purchased within the last 14 days, and the new band that you choose has to be within the same collection as the Apple Watch you chose, which means no free Milanese Loop for your Apple Watch Sport. The Apple Watch must also have been purchased directly from Apple, either in-store, at a kiosk, or through the Apple Store app.
Band swaps won’t be done entirely in store, which is weird, but is probably related to supply constraints. The process is that, upon going into an Apple Store, an Apple representative will confirm your Apple Watch is still within the 14 day return window, then initiate a swap through the Online Store call center. Customer support representatives will then order a new band, ship it out to the custom, and give instructions on how to return the old band.
It seems like a lot of loops to jump through, but with even cheap Apple Watch bands costing as much as $50, it’ll probably be worth it, especially if you’ve been kicking yourself for the last week and a half for ordering that dumb pink Apple Watch Sport band.
Source: Macrumors
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
One response to “Regret your Apple Watch band? Apple will let you swap it out”
Apple will only let you swap to particular colors. For example, I received my sports watch with an intense light blue strip. Apple will only let me swap to the similarly garish light green and pink, or the intense white band but not to the dark grey / bland band. Very odd as they are all in the same range. My guess would be that Apple is very constrained in the ‘black’ range as they have underestimated the demand for that color. Apparently over 60% of all orders are for the black sports model.