Lack of replacement phone - advice please?

bbopper

Hello all,

I'm new and would appreciate some advice for my Mum.

She has a 6-month-old Motorola phone on which the microphone has broken. She took it into Carphone Warehouse for repair, which was fine as it's under warranty. They told her it would take four weeks to repair and that they could not offer her a replacement phone during that time as they had none left.

I have complained about this on her behalf. I don't feel it's acceptable for them to say they have no phones to offer when it wouldn't be difficult to open the box of the most basic model they have in stock. I have asked them to provide her with a replacement model asap, they have refused saying it isn't a contractual obligation.

I then replied and basically said that if they were refusing to offer her a replacement phone, I would like them to reimburse her for a month's worth of her contract, given that they are going to take four weeks to repair hers and are not willing to offer her a replacement, so she is essentially paying them for a service they are not providing. They have refused this also.

Just wondering if there is anything else I can do? Or should we chalk it up to experience and simply never use them again?

psilvester

Your 'contract' with CPW is only concerning your talk-plan with a network provider, the phone is an 'incentive' to buy. CPW looks like they have tried to offer a replacement but as they said they do not have to. Perhaps you could try in a weeks time to see if any are now in stock.

Your mum would have kept her sim card while the phone was repaired, so buy a cheap PAYG phone to use for a few weeks and then sell it on eBay/Facebook for some money back.

d123

The phone has nothing to do with her airtime contract and they are not responsible for ensuring a replacement phone is supplied, if they do supply loan phones it's a service outside any legal requirement.

You might struggle with the "never use them again" as its pretty standard across the industry.

Why not just buy the cheapest possible PAYG phone on the same network (or buy from CPW and it will be unlocked) which are normally available for £10-15 and use the contract sim in that. It also means you will always have a spare phone in the future as well.

grumbler

psilvester wrote: »

Your 'contract' with CPW is only concerning your talk-plan with a network provider, the phone is an 'incentive' to buy.

No. The airtime contract is with the network. CPW supplied the handset and this contract is covered by the SOGA.

d123 wrote: »

The phone has nothing to do with her airtime contract and they are not responsible for ensuring a replacement phone is supplied, if they do supply loan phones it's a service outside any legal requirement.

In fact the legal requirement is to repair or replace within reasonable time and without causing significant inconvenience. One can easily argue that 4 weeks is unreasonable and the inconvenience is significant.

However, I agree that nowadays everyone has to have a spare handset that can be bought at the same CPW just for £4.95+£10 (or even cheaper as PAYG upgrade).

mehera

Some of this advice is not right!

If you were to take Car phone warehouse to court over this you would win!!!

d123

mehera wrote: »

Some of this advice is not right!

If you were to take Car phone warehouse to court over this you would win!!!

Please explain a little further....

Orrin

Grumbler is correct, however in practice there's not much you can do.

Technically you could sue CPW for damages but if you've got that much time on your hands you should find something more productive to do with it.

Have you tried the network? When I last had a contract phone in for repair the network credited my account with £20 so I could buy a basic PAYG handset.