Mobile phone manufacture fault without warrenty, what can I do?

Sam_G

Hi all,

In June 2014 I bought a Nexus 4 (Google phone running Andriod) off ebay. Now before you think it's off Ebay so I can't do anything please hear me out.

A week ago I had a notifacation to say the new Lollipop update had been released on my phone telling me to update it, so I did. Then this Tuesday when I woke up my phone was frozen on my lock screen. I turned it off to turn it back on again to fix it and it wouldn't turn on. It just stayed on the loading screen, I tried this a few times and nothing changed. Without boring you all with the technical side of it the phone has gone into a "Bricked" state making it effectively useless. I gave it to a friend at work and he ran the Andriod Developers Kit through it to find out what was wrong and it said there was a corrupt file on it. So I did a bit of research and it's a documented hardware fault in the phone, there are multiple posts in various forums where people have all suffered the same fate, some managed to factory reset others lost their phones. For those under warrenty some managed to get a replacement. I've tried everything on my side to make it work from a technical perspective and achieved nothing (everything I've done has been completely kosher) .

Now the way I see this is that there is a fundimental manufacture fault with the phone itself which has been shown on multiple devices, therefore the goods were sold as faulty right from the original sell. So after speaking to LG who are the manufacturers of the device they've told me I need to get the date of purchase from the original person I bought it from to see if it is warrenty or they wont touch it.

Now I don't expect to hear back from the Ebay seller I purchased it from and even if I do as the phone was made in 2012 I'm expecting it to be outside the warrenty. So I want to know what else I can do. I don't see it right that I should lose out and have to buy a new phone purely because of a manufacturing fault and down to nothing I have done myself. LG are being as slippery as possible and any advice on the law around this and where I would stand if I took it to a small claims court would be much appreciated. I have no idea where to go next!

Thanks in advance for any help,

Sam

wealdroam

Sam_G wrote: »

Hi all,

In June 2014 I bought a Nexus 4 (Google phone running Andriod) off ebay. Now before you think it's off Ebay so I can't do anything please hear me out.

A week ago I had a notifacation to say the new Lollipop update had been released on my phone telling me to update it, so I did. Then this Tuesday when I woke up my phone was frozen on my lock screen. I turned it off to turn it back on again to fix it and it wouldn't turn on. It just stayed on the loading screen, I tried this a few times and nothing changed. Without boring you all with the technical side of it the phone has gone into a "Bricked" state making it effectively useless. I gave it to a friend at work and he ran the Andriod Developers Kit through it to find out what was wrong and it said there was a corrupt file on it. So I did a bit of research and it's a documented hardware fault in the phone, there are multiple posts in various forums where people have all suffered the same fate, some managed to factory reset others lost their phones. For those under warrenty some managed to get a replacement. I've tried everything on my side to make it work from a technical perspective and achieved nothing (everything I've done has been completely kosher) .

Now the way I see this is that there is a fundimental manufacture fault with the phone itself which has been shown on multiple devices, therefore the goods were sold as faulty right from the original sell. So after speaking to LG who are the manufacturers of the device they've told me I need to get the date of purchase from the original person I bought it from to see if it is warrenty or they wont touch it.

Now I don't expect to hear back from the Ebay seller I purchased it from and even if I do as the phone was made in 2012 I'm expecting it to be outside the warrenty. So I want to know what else I can do. I don't see it right that I should lose out and have to buy a new phone purely because of a manufacturing fault and down to nothing I have done myself. LG are being as slippery as possible and any advice on the law around this and where I would stand if I took it to a small claims court would be much appreciated. I have no idea where to go next!

Thanks in advance for any help,

Sam

As a manufacturer's warranty is in addition to your statutory rights, they can include any reasonable. No idea if it is the case but such a term might be "warranty isn't transferable".
And as you say, the warranty may have run out anyway.

The manufacturer is not responsible for a 'manufacturing fault' outside the warranty period (unless of course the terms of the warranty say otherwise).

Your only other remedy is possibly with the seller. If this was a purchase from a private individual, the seller is only responsible for the goods at the time of the sale.

If you bought from a business, please post back saying so, because things might be different.

Sorry, but if the manufacturer is not willing to help, you are on your own here.

JJ_Egan

((Now the way I see this is that there is a fundimental manufacture fault with the phone itself which has been shown on multiple devices, therefore the goods were sold as faulty right from the original sell ))

If so that would come under Sale Of Goods Act against the vendor . Original purchaser would need to pursue that .

Phone was working so no claim against the seller to you .
You then updated it and it failed .

You are claiming its a file at fault . It should not be hard to delete this file and totally wipe the phone and then install new firmware .Though a file is not hardware and i don't really understand the connection .
However in your shoes i would go to XDA Developers forum your phone model and do some reading to try and save the phone .

enfield_freddy

there is a small plug that is available for the samsungs for a few quid , google "microUSB jig " , this goes into the usb socket , then you press certain buttons (instructions on web) and this gets you into recovery mode , from there you can delete the upgrade and restore


ebay


http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.TRS0&_nkw=microUSB+jig+&_sacat=0

Sam_G

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the feedback. As to the actualy phone itself I've spent 3 days reading through forums and also spoken to a few people who know their way around android as much as is possible. The phone wont let me get into bootloader, when connected to Android Developers Kit it plays ball and says that the bootloader is unlocked, however as soon as you actually try go into it it blocks you out. So bassically it's telling you its open when it isn't and there's no way around it. The error it was kicking out when I tried to factory reset say "file write error" followed by a few number repeated and streaming down the screen. From what I can gather from what i've read and heard from people when you run an update there's potensual for it to write to this corrupt file, so a certain number of devices will write to it when it updates and those who do have this problem. But unless your updating nothing gets writen to this file so there's never a problem. This explains why in the forums all the posts tie up date wise with the updates from Jellybean to Lollipop and it's just a lucky dip on whether your phone puts anything into this file.

So for the "Sale of goods act" to apply I would have to get the person who i bought it from to follow them up? The guy i bought it off sold it to me as described and I see no reason to bring him into this as he bought it and sold it without any change to the device. I just think there must be a way to put this back on them as I don't see why I should end up having lost my money because of a fault they built in. And where do Google stand as they have pushed the update out onto my device? Should they not have tested it worked before rolling it out?

enfield_freddy

instructions , and links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc_6Eq7Gocc&feature=youtu.be




took 5 seconds on google