Vodafone sent my phone off for repair, made it worse then washed their hands of me..

paulthe6th

Bit of a long one but here goes...

I've got a sony ericsson k800i which I've had on contract with vodafone for around 15 months. It started to go wrong a few months back with the camera freezing, buttons stopped working etc - it's on it way to the knackers, basically. I rang vodafone and explained it needed fixing otherwise I couldn't make any calls and they wouldn't get anymore money out of me. They logged the error and told me to take it into a vodafone shop.

I arrived at the shop, they gave me a courtesy phone (into which they transferred my sim, set the time etc = top service) and told me it would be about a week & that I'd get a text when it was ready for collection.

Fast forward a week and I'm stood in the store. The guy behind the counter is rifling through about 200 plastic a4 sized wallets full of returned/repaired phones. He eventually found mine then stood, read the accompanying letter addressed to me then handed it to me.

I thought he was going to tell me what's wrong but I had to ask "So what's up with it?"...

"Oh" he said "basically it's got water damage and we don't cover that so there's nothing we can do." I explained that I'd know about it if I'd dropped it down the toilet or had been making calls while in the shower but it simply wasn't the case.

This is the letter which came with the phone:



The assistant handed me my sim card back from the courtesy phone then stared vaguely at some other customers. I started to fiddle around putting my returned phone back together when he interrupted
"Oh I doubt it'll work now..." I asked what he meant. "Well the engineers have to repair the phones we send them, but if they find any damage which isn't covered by the warranty, they aren't obliged to return your phone in working order. They basically slap it back together and post it back."

I looked at my phone and sure enough, the power button has rotated 90 degrees on its axis so I had to poke it with a biro to be able to turn the phone back on. Luckily it switched on but still had the same problems.

A few weeks on, I've found that there's more serious problems occuring with the phone (both hardware & software issues).

Having trawled through my accounts package, in the past 12 months I've spent £1083.17 with vodafone and this is how the reward what I would call a 'loyal customer'.

Do I have any rights at all on this. I appreciate water damage isn't their problem but if you're car had been broken into and badly damaged, you wouldn't expect the autoglass repairman to put the rest of your windows through just because you're not on his agenda...

Basically, are vodafone trying to make a fool out of me and get me to buy another phone by making mine worse than it already was.:mad:

thanks in advance, Paul W :mad:

mcmanlyn

Sorry but water damage isn't covered under the warranty - with any phone, you'd need insurance for this.

Although i would have complained about the power button thing!! They should have returned it in the same condition

Iamthesmartestmanalive

paulthe6th wrote: »

Bit of a long one but here goes...

I've got a sony ericsson k800i which I've had on contract with vodafone for around 15 months. It started to go wrong a few months back with the camera freezing, buttons stopped working etc - it's on it way to the knackers, basically. I rang vodafone and explained it needed fixing otherwise I couldn't make any calls and they wouldn't get anymore money out of me. They logged the error and told me to take it into a vodafone shop.

I arrived at the shop, they gave me a courtesy phone (into which they transferred my sim, set the time etc = top service) and told me it would be about a week & that I'd get a text when it was ready for collection.

Fast forward a week and I'm stood in the store. The guy behind the counter is rifling through about 200 plastic a4 sized wallets full of returned/repaired phones. He eventually found mine then stood, read the accompanying letter addressed to me then handed it to me.

I thought he was going to tell me what's wrong but I had to ask "So what's up with it?"...

"Oh" he said "basically it's got water damage and we don't cover that so there's nothing we can do." I explained that I'd know about it if I'd dropped it down the toilet or had been making calls while in the shower but it simply wasn't the case.

This is the letter which came with the phone:



The assistant handed me my sim card back from the courtesy phone then stared vaguely at some other customers. I started to fiddle around putting my returned phone back together when he interrupted
"Oh I doubt it'll work now..." I asked what he meant. "Well the engineers have to repair the phones we send them, but if they find any damage which isn't covered by the warranty, they aren't obliged to return your phone in working order. They basically slap it back together and post it back."

I looked at my phone and sure enough, the power button has rotated 90 degrees on its axis so I had to poke it with a biro to be able to turn the phone back on. Luckily it switched on but still had the same problems.

A few weeks on, I've found that there's more serious problems occuring with the phone (both hardware & software issues).

Having trawled through my accounts package, in the past 12 months I've spent £1083.17 with vodafone and this is how the reward what I would call a 'loyal customer'.

Do I have any rights at all on this. I appreciate water damage isn't their problem but if you're car had been broken into and badly damaged, you wouldn't expect the autoglass repairman to put the rest of your windows through just because you're not on his agenda...

Basically, are vodafone trying to make a fool out of me and get me to buy another phone by making mine worse than it already was.:mad:

thanks in advance, Paul W :mad:

Id fight this

A lot of phone companies seem to claim moisture damage, I wonder if it happens to be when they need fully replaced:rolleyes:

Just contest their findings and state that the phone has been used only appropiatly and that any damange such as moisture has been in the normal usage and therefore it fails to comply with the SOGA and therefore you demand a replacement

They will back down

Spikie_01

Hi

I spent a good year working for Vodafone, in one of the stores, and this was the most frustrating of things.

Water damage can occur through a large variety oh things, from simply having your phone in your handbag or pocket when it's raining, sweat, etc etc, also, Water damage, as the person in the vodafone shop, is Liquid Contamination, which could be hundreds of things.

Please remember though, it's not actually Vodafone (or Indeed O2, Orange, T mobile, 3) That supplies the warranty, but instead the manufacturers do.

As for other legalities, the Network is (if you read all the small print) not responsible for keeping you with a working phone, as long as in the first case they supply you with a fully functional phone, and if it is covered by warranty, they repair it.

As for how much you have spent with them, They will still only give you another one if you have Insurance on your account, which is really tough and orrible, but thats how they work.

My suggestion to you would be this, Get the website for Sony Ericsson, get a phone number and give them a call, tell them how ludricous it is, and complain alot, they may do something.

However, both the manufacturer and the network only have to give you a 12 month warranty, and they may say no to you as well, but you should have a go anyway.

Please let me know how you get on, i'd really love to know!!!

x

Spikie_01

Iamthesmartestmanalive wrote: »

Id fight this

A lot of phone companies seem to claim moisture damage, I wonder if it happens to be when they need fully replaced:rolleyes:

Just contest their findings and state that the phone has been used only appropiatly and that any damange such as moisture has been in the normal usage and therefore it fails to comply with the SOGA and therefore you demand a replacement

They will back down

it depends on how nice the store manager is, and they usually can't give out anything free, best to do it over the phone, but I would really say go direct to the manufacture and say how badly the phone must be to go wrong this easily.....

thesaint

Spikie_01 wrote: »

Hi

I spent a good year working for Vodafone, in one of the stores, and this was the most frustrating of things.

Water damage can occur through a large variety oh things, from simply having your phone in your handbag or pocket when it's raining, sweat, etc etc, also, Water damage, as the person in the vodafone shop, is Liquid Contamination, which could be hundreds of things.

Please remember though, it's not actually Vodafone (or Indeed O2, Orange, T mobile, 3) That supplies the warranty, but instead the manufacturers do.

As for other legalities, the Network is (if you read all the small print) not responsible for keeping you with a working phone, as long as in the first case they supply you with a fully functional phone, and if it is covered by warranty, they repair it.

As for how much you have spent with them, They will still only give you another one if you have Insurance on your account, which is really tough and orrible, but thats how they work.

My suggestion to you would be this, Get the website for Sony Ericsson, get a phone number and give them a call, tell them how ludricous it is, and complain alot, they may do something.

However, both the manufacturer and the network only have to give you a 12 month warranty, and they may say no to you as well, but you should have a go anyway.

Please let me know how you get on, i'd really love to know!!!

x

It doesn't suprise me that an ex Vodafone employee saying this.

The warranty supplied is irrelevant, the consumer is protected by the sale of goods act.

The retailers often trot out the line "It's out of warranty..." contact the manufacturer.

The customer can choose to contact the manufacturer, but the customers contract is with the retailer, not the manufacturer.

Spikie_01

thesaint wrote: »

It doesn't suprise me that an ex Vodafone employee saying this.

The warranty supplied is irrelevant, the consumer is protected by the sale of goods act.

The retailers often trot out the line "It's out of warranty..." contact the manufacturer.

The customer can choose to contact the manufacturer, but the customers contract is with the retailer, not the manufacturer.

And if you look into it, the customer is only liable for a 12 month warranty, and if their phone is 15 months old, and they are still ok to send it off for repair then give them some credit for it.

Anyway, as it is the manufacturer that suplies the warranty, they HAVE to siupply it, the retailler can send it off to the warranty repair centre, but after that they can do no more, so as a matter of fact Vodafone can only do what the manufacturer tells them, which isn't great, but there are others ways around it.

As you said, the cusomers CONTRACT is with vodafone, only supplies minutes and texts, the phone is external, and therefore the manufacturer has to offer the warranty.



So i will say this now, as some people obviously don't wnat to be helped.

if you want my help, PM me, as I'm not posting here again, to be shouted down by someone else, i think it's terrible when I'm only trying to help someone out in one of only a few ways that i can.

thesaint

Anybody reading this, please look up the 'Sale Of Goods Act' or contact your local C.A.B.

Your phone is covered by the the above act, any goods purchased have to last a reasonabe amount of time, this can be up to 6 years(even if the warranty is 12 months), the amount of time is dependant on the price you paid for the goods.

if you want my help, PM me, as I'm not posting here again, to be shouted down by someone else, i think it's terrible when I'm only trying to help someone out in one of only a few ways that i can.

Get a hold of yourself. :A

reehsetin

forget the store and go straight to head office, your phone should have been returned in the same condition as it was given in even if they are not obliged to repair it, problem is they may say (apart from the power button bit) that the later developing faults are due to the liquid damage and not their shoddy repair

reehsetin

Spikie_01 wrote: »

As you said, the cusomers CONTRACT is with vodafone, only supplies minutes and texts, the phone is external, and therefore the manufacturer has to offer the warranty.

fellow retailer :hello:
there are two contracts in place
one for the mins and one is the sales of goods act covering the handset
the warranty is with the retailer where you get the phone from (SE do have their own warranty aswell) but a warranty is provided with Voda, its no concern of the customer whether voda fixes it themselves or sends it to SE
voda have to fix the phone if the good is faulty due to a manufacturing problem not if the phone has been damaged

hm71_2

Had a similar situation to you earlier this year hubby transfered a phone number the contract was in my name over to his, it had been in my name 3 years hubbys only a month when his sony ericcson K800i stopped working, went away came back with moisture damage (unfixable) wouldn't help at all hubby cancelled contract went to 02. 2 months later daughters phone contract in my name sony ericson w850i started to go wrong same rigmarol came back moisture damage, it actually came back with a new fault & the old one fixed! - I was furious in the end they agreed to a replacement fone provided I paid £25 & sent the old handset back, i said I would do neither and as I was a longstanding customer I would expect better customer service, i explained I wanted to keep the old handset due to wishing a second opinion from sony themselves. well after much wrangling they agreed to send me a new handset for no charge & keep the old handset. did send the original handset to sony who said it had obviously been taken apart and parts were damaged. in the end sold the handset as faulty on ebay for £55 so not a bad return. I have just had my upgrade time & wanted an N95 vodafone wanted £50, 02 gave me the phone & double minutes /txt for the same monthly charge as b4, the phone was free. low & behold when I requested my pac code vodafone would suddenly do the same deal after telling me for 2 weeks they couldn't. I told them not to worry I was off to 02 and my last 2 contracts will be coming with me when their upgrade is due.