I'm also a fan of Apple's support generally, but I would like to point out that "walking into a store" is incredibly inconvenient for a lot of people and Google's (and Assurion does the same thing) method of sending you the replacement overnight first and having you ship yours back to them afterwards is MUCH better than having to take off of work or wait for a weekend in order to go visit a physical location that could be hours away. It's about 90 minutes to the nearest Apple store for me. Both are definitely better than some other OEM's though, who will have you ship to them first and then you're without a device. The best thing about the Apple store isn't that they'll replace your device there, it's that when you walk up it's set up just like your old one was. Anyone can replace a device.