I took my son's HTC Wildfire S into my local o2 store on saturday for repair under warranty. The phone just died one day for no reason and would not charge or turn on again. I was told at the store the phone would be repaired or replaced under warranty no problem. Today, I receive a text message saying the repair is not covered under warranty and I should ring the store I took it into, to find out what the problem is and how much it was going to cost me. So I phone the store and they told me there was a problem with the charging port and this is not covered under warranty, it would be £49.20 to repair it (or at least I think that's what they said but it was very difficult to understand due to background noise in the store)
So after thinking about it for a minute or two I thought this wasn't a reasonable explanation and phoned HTC direct. The person on the phone at HTC was much more helpful, she told me there was three reasons why the phone wouldn't be repaired under warrant. The first was water damage. If it was water damage, they wouldn't have given me a quote as they wouldn't repair it. The second reason was physical damage - if the phone had been dropped or the charger had been forced in and broken the usb port. The last reason would be if the phone had been repaired before at a non authorised repair centre. I was then told by the HTC rep that before I made a decision on what I wanted to do, I should be provided with photographic evidence of physical damage if that was the problem and to call the o2 store back to ask for more information and photographic evidence if this was the case.
So i rang back the O2 store, they told me that the fault was due to physical damage to the usb charging port but they couldn't request photo evidence and I would have to contact the repair centre myself. So onto making my thrid premium rate phone call to the repair centre! I finally get to speak to someone after 13 mins of being on hold and I had not been put through to the repair centre direct (anovo), I was speaking to someone from O2 again. I told them the situation and asked for photographic evidence, without even making any enquiries they said no sorry we can't send you any photos. So I had to then explain I had been advised by HTC that they had to send photos before i make a decision. Eventually, after about 10 mins of haggling, I got the o2 rep to enquire about photo evidence (back on hold again). The o2 rep came back on the line and says oh yes we can request photos from the repair centre and we can email them to you in 24-48 hours!
I can see that all of this will end up being a waste of time, as it sounds to me that it's just an excuse not to repair the phone under warranty. This so called 2 year warranty won't be worth the paper it's written on and as usual with electrical items it's just another con to get you to buy them. I know for a fact the phone has been very well looked after - it's been in a tough case since new, it has not been dropped or the charger forced in. Even the person at the o2 shop commented on how good condition it was in and on the repair recipt it said no signs of physical damage. Even if the usb port has broken I know these can break with normal use as I've had it on laptops etc before.
So I am now out of pocket by god knows how much due to all the premium rate numbers I have had to call and not really any further on with getting the problem resolved.
I have been an o2 customer for some years now and we have 5 or 6 other phones in the family all on o2 contracts, so I regard my self as being a good loyal o2 customer. I would expect better treatment than this.
