VODAFONE broke my working phone

shapecontractor

I have two Sony Ericsson (SE) X10 Xperia mobile phones on a 24 month contract with Vodafone. Both were bought when they first came to the market and we are 17 months into the contract. My wife uses one for personal and I use mine for Business.

They both have problems with the USB charging ports. Mine will charge but I have to put the charger connection in carefully at an angle. Because of workload I've been unable to take it back to Vodafone. My wife's gave up almost overnight and would not take a charge unless I charged her battery on my mobile. At the first opportunity she took it to the Andover branch of Vodafone. Whilst in the branch a representative physically accessed the mobile to back-up my wife's contacts etc to her Sim-card because he stated that all content on the mobile would be lost if repaired.

Two weeks later we received a call to say the mobile was back. Once it the branch my wife was informed that the motherboard was broken and that she must have PHYSICALLY damaged the mobile herself!! The mobile is unusable and they stated that it was in that state when she gave it to them for repair!! They would repair the mobile for £100. One of their poorly trained reps even smirked whilst not even looking at her "well if it was working when you brought it to us, you were lucky" Good job I wasn't with her. "why don't you claim off your house insurance" was another Wise? remark.

Broken USB ports are a KNOWN design fault on early Xperias. You only have to Google it to find reams and reams of it. It's also on Vodafone's forum.

Sorry for the llife story but it's important because if it's a known problem on early Xperias then why are SE or Vodafone making us pay to repair their design fault? Also had my wife known that it would return in a worse condition than when given to Vodafone she may have decided to get me to charge the battery for what's left of the contract.

The contract was for 24 months that Vodafone bestowed upon me. So I expect a unit that is going to last 24 months duration of Contract. We have both looked after the mobiles adequately to ensure they're fit for purpose. Why should we now have to pay for repairs on devices that they sold to me and now have a known design fault on the USB ports? Because mine is a timebomb that will require repair also? Can anyone explain where we stand legally because I am unhappy with the Andover branch brushing us aside with what is obviously Vodafone's stance on these broken units.

thanks Jim