Instead of the repair, I bought a $20 Timex that’s served me faithfully ever since.
This happened during a hurricane evacuation and I went to an Apple store several states away while waiting for the airport at home to reopen so I could find out if there had been any damage (fortunately not). Of all the people I dealt with during that experience, Apple’s employees were uniquely unsympathetic to my situation, and I decided I didn’t want anything to do with them ever again.
The proximate cause was probably an impact as I treated it like the sports watch it was advertised to be. The separation wasn’t a failure of the glue, but a crack that traveled around the weak part of the glass where it is curved downwards to meet the bezel. There was a tiny nick that was the nucleus of the fracture that could have been caused by anything (in my case, probably some clay on a tennis ball).
The biggest issue for me was that I didn’t want to have to baby something that fragile, especially when it’s supposed to be a fitness object. And the completely professional, but uncaring and robotic, way their representatives handled the situation.
The screen developed a glitch where a few rows of pixels were inverted. We went to the Apple store to see if the screen could be fixed, and they found and gave her an identical new unit for no charge. “This way you’re also getting a fresh battery and everything will last longer.” They hooked up the old phone to the new phone and has everything copied over, we were out in less than an hour with “her phone” made brand new for free.
This was after the 5s was no longer on sale in the US. Maybe we just got lucky and they had some leftover inventory, I don’t know.
Whatever the reason, I felt that was impressively good customer service.
Apple of 2015 was, really, at the top of the game, I wish I had bought a 2015 retina MacBook when it was new. :(