Samsung Phone Warranty

STownsend

Hi,

My girlfriend woke up today to find her phone practically on fire. It had become so overheated that it actually burnt her hand when she picked it up.

The battery had been draining rapidly recently so I suspect it is linked to that as she had left it on charge over night.

The socket where she connects the USB cable to the device had actually began to melt and the USB connector actually broke inside it when she tried to remove it. She managed to remove it and the phone has since died and will no longer turn back on/charge.

The phone is currently still in warranty but when she took it to either the EE store or Samsung store they claimed that, because there was a small, hairline crack at the top right hand corner of the screen, the warranty was void.

The crack is clearly completely unrelated to the malfunctioning battery (or device) so I'm wondering where she stands on her customer rights and what approach she should take to have the phone replaced if she is entitled to it?

Regards,
Steve

DevCoder

How do you know the crack is unrelated?
Were you using the official samsung charger?

Your option, I assume it was purchased > 6 months ago, is to get an expert report (about £40-70) to prove (or otherwise) the fault is inherent and go from there.

JJ_Egan

You move against the vendor if you want to claim not Samsung .
Samsung's warranty is not your sale of goods warranty but a separate limited extra warranty . A cracked screen is enough to trigger void warranty on this extra warranty under its terms and conditions .
You require an independent phone engineers report to backup your claim that the crack has not caused the fault if the product is over six months old .

STownsend

Thanks for the response guys.

It's seems pretty poor service that Samsung/EE would expect us to pay for an independent engineer to assess it. Particularly when I took my iPhone in to Apple when it inexplicably died and they were happy to examine the phone themselves, discover it was a hard drive fault and therefore nothing I had done and replace it with no hassle.

I can appreciate from the point of view of the law that she probably doesn't have a strong leg to stand on but you'd expect big companies to do better than that to satisfy a good customer...

unholyangel

STownsend wrote: »

Thanks for the response guys.

It's seems pretty poor service that Samsung/EE would expect us to pay for an independent engineer to assess it. Particularly when I took my iPhone in to Apple when it inexplicably died and they were happy to examine the phone themselves, discover it was a hard drive fault and therefore nothing I had done and replace it with no hassle.

I can appreciate from the point of view of the law that she probably doesn't have a strong leg to stand on but you'd expect big companies to do better than that to satisfy a good customer...

They would be liable for the cost of the report if found in your favour.

You could always try talking to them again, pointing out that they're bound to be able to examine it cheaper than any independent report you can get.

Sometimes reasoning and politeness (along with putting it in writing so theres a "paper" trail) can work wonders. If this is a known fault with the phone, that coupled with the cost of an independent report may swing it in your favour.