Do I now own a brick...

busymumy

This can get confusing but I hope someone can help me.

My husband worked as a buyer and for some orders he placed he earned commission. This commission was saved up and the company bought him an iPad through Argos Outlet on eBay.

Fast forward just over a year and the ipad did an ios update and died. We contacted apple who say they cannot help us as it is out of its 1 year warranty. However they did mention EU consumer law and that we should get 2 years warranty with the people we bought it off. I contact Argos Outlet who agree a partial refund. The catch is it can only be refunded to the paypal account that paid for it.

I contacted the company that bought it and they looked back through their finances and see it was a personal members of staff's paypal account that was used and that member of staff is no longer working there and we are unable to get in touch with them.

Argos refuse to refund any other way so I am stuck. Can anyone advise me on where to go from here. I have a nearly £500 ipad that is no longer working.

I cant see why they cannot just post out a cheque when they received the ipad back, it would be addressed to the same person and posted to the same address the ipad was posted to originally.

Someone please help. Could I take them to court?

shaun_from_Africa

busymumy wrote: »

Could I take them to court?

You could but it's very unlikely that you would win.
This is because the sales contract is between Argos and the original purchaser and not your husband.
Because of this, he doesn't have any statutory rights to enforce against Argos.

You might be better off contacting Apple again and asking if they would reconsider repairing it under warranty. If they refuse, you could always ask them for a quote to carry out the repair. If it's only software related, this may not be too expensive.

tomwakefield

Alternatively, you could ask if they will give you store credit to the value of the refund, if you were planning on buying another ipad.

busymumy

tomwakefield wrote: »

Alternatively, you could ask if they will give you store credit to the value of the refund, if you were planning on buying another ipad.

Ive asked for that but they wont as its Argos Outlet on ebay, and they wont even let us put money towards another one that they are selling.

DevCoder

Its virtually impossible to brick an ipad.

Have you tried a restore in DFU mode? This works in virtually all cases. DFU mode is a failsafe to be able to recover a device that has a failed ios or other corrupt ios so wont boot.

First power off the device (shouldn't be too hard in your case )

1. First run iTunes on your computer.
2. Now plug the iPad into your computer with the USB cable.
3. Press and hold down the sleep/wake (power) button and the home button at the same time.
4. Hold them down for 10 seconds.
5. Release the sleep/wake button but continue to hold down the home button for 5 more seconds.
6. The iPad screen will stay black, and iTunes will prompt that it has detected an iPad in recovery mode.

Its a little bit tricky to get the timings right so keep trying until you get a blank screen but iTunes says it has an ipad in recovery mode.

Once you've got to this then you can click "restore" in the right hand pane

busymumy

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

You could but it's very unlikely that you would win.
This is because the sales contract is between Argos and the original purchaser and not your husband.
Because of this, he doesn't have any statutory rights to enforce against Argos.

You might be better off contacting Apple again and asking if they would reconsider repairing it under warranty. If they refuse, you could always ask them for a quote to carry out the repair. If it's only software related, this may not be too expensive.

Apple have said we have to pay £265 for a new one as they cant restore it. I dont have that kind of money at the moment, and I feel kind of annoyed that its their IOS update that has caused the problem in the first place.

MamaMoo_2

Was the iPad jailbroken? I only ask as it's usually updating the iOS on a jailbroken device that bricks it.

busymumy

krisdorey wrote: »

Its virtually impossible to brick an ipad.

Have you tried a restore in DFU mode? This works in virtually all cases. DFU mode is a failsafe to be able to recover a device that has a failed ios or other corrupt ios so wont boot.

First power off the device (shouldn't be too hard in your case )

1. First run iTunes on your computer.
2. Now plug the iPad into your computer with the USB cable.
3. Press and hold down the sleep/wake (power) button and the home button at the same time.
4. Hold them down for 10 seconds.
5. Release the sleep/wake button but continue to hold down the home button for 5 more seconds.
6. The iPad screen will stay black, and iTunes will prompt that it has detected an iPad in recovery mode.

Its a little bit tricky to get the timings right so keep trying until you get a blank screen but iTunes says it has an ipad in recovery mode.

Once you've got to this then you can click "restore" in the right hand pane

Hi, Thanks for the advise but it just wont work. Ive tried in DFU mode and it just comes up with the same error which is "The ipad could not be restored, an unknown error occurred (1)"

I took it to our local KRCS group (as we don't have an apple store nearby) and they tried to restore for us and got the same error.

Im not sure what else to try and apple care support people basically said its done in.

DevCoder

a video on how to enter DFU mode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlJR_2gioIE

Are you sure Apple have gone through attempting a DFU mode restore as opposed to a normal restore? DFU mode is special.

This assumes that the device will physically power on but wont boot or gets stuck booting at an apple logo etc.

DevCoder

MamaMoo wrote: »

Was the iPad jailbroken? I only ask as it's usually updating the iOS on a jailbroken device that bricks it.

No, updating a jailbroken ipad will just overwrite the jailbreak bootstrap.

The restore option (or upgrade) performs a low level initialise of the device with the new software, it doesn't care whats there already which is why you are warned to back up your device.

Even if that was the case, a DFU mode restore will fix it.

busymumy

MamaMoo wrote: »

Was the iPad jailbroken? I only ask as it's usually updating the iOS on a jailbroken device that bricks it.

Nope, it was doing the IOS 7.0.6 update and I think as it was being done over wifi and not through iTunes something has interrupted the installation. So after restarting it just came up with the iTunes logo and the plug, and when we plugged it into iTunes it said it needed to restore, but all attempts to restore have failed. Ive tried 2 laptops, a new install of iTunes, and setting up a new user on a laptop with a fresh install of iTunes.

Cant get it restored. I tried for 4 days.