As I mentioned in my post "Nokia Phone Repair Nightmare", I planned to purchase an iPhone to replace my Nokia 6682 when the iPhone came out in June.
Well, I did purchase an iPhone and I am very happy with. However, I did manage to damage it and had to send it in for repair. This gave me the opportunity to compare Apple's service against Nokia's. To summarize my Nokia repair experience: Nokia took two months to determine that they could not fix my phone. And I had to call them repeatably to get status updates on my repair; their status web page was useless.
My Apple repair experience was completely different. I took my phone to an Apple store, they took care of the paperwork and shipping. I dropped it off on a Thursday night, Apple repair received it on the following Monday, and fixed it the same day! I received it back on Tuesday. I received emails every time my repair status changed, and was able the check the repair status on Apple's repair status page (which was always current, unlike Nokia's status page).
Apple has put a lot of thought and planning into their repair process, and as a result has a very happy customer.