Home › Blogs › carneeki's blog ›

Warranty Woes for the HTC Dream

Submitted by carneeki on Fri, 05/22/2009 - 16:47

Sunday, 17th May 2009:

I purchased an HTC Dream running Android 1.1 from TeleChoice Eastgardens. I was very pleased - Casey was a pleasure to talk to whilst setting my account up and porting my number between carriers.

Upon getting home and turning it on for the first time, I find there's a dead pixel near the top of the screen just beneath the letter "h" of the HTC logo near the ear piece. Dammit. Ok - I'll just go back and get it fixed. It's a manufacturer's defect and according to the NSW Office of Fair Trading's bill of Rights and Responsibilities I am entitled to have this remedied.

Monday, 18th May 2009:

I call TeleChoice the next day, they say they have replacement phones in stock and so I drive out to visit. When I get there, TeleChoice don't have stock, but Josh says they will call me back later in the week.

Thursday, 21st May 2009:

I call TeleChoice and I am told they will no longer be stocking my model of handset contrary to what I was told earlier in the week. I am further told that they will not replace a handset on the spot, despite the defect being on the very screen. I'm now a very annoyed customer because,

 

  1. TeleChoice did not reserve a phone for my replacement on Monday 18th.
  2. TeleChoice did not order a replacement when they said they had told me replacements would arrive.
  3. TeleChoice did not contact me to inform me that no replacements would arrive.
  4. TeleChoice fobbed me off to HTC to lodge a claim with them, only after making me wait 4 days.

So now starts the warranty claim process with HTC.

HTC Phone call #1 - Arlene is very helpful, she opens a case for me and asks me to take a photo of the phone with the dead pixel and to email it to anz_services@htc.com (reading back the email address just to be certain).

Friday, 22nd May 2009:

Having not heard anything in over 24 hours (not even an automatic response from their ticket system) I decide to call HTC again.

HTC Phone call #2 - I give my reference number to Alexis. She cannot find her email in the system. I give her my name, email address and case number as things to search by, with no record to be found. I read out the email address I sent it to, apparently it's anz_service@htc.com. This time I remain on the line until I hear her say she can see it in her Inbox. She presses Send/Receive a couple of times and eventually "ooh there it is in *Unread* items". By now I really pissed off - ofcourse it's unread it only just arrived!

I feel like I am doing everyone else's job at following up on my own support issues.

I feel like I am not a valued customer.

I feel like I am less than a number in a ticket system because atleast they are acknowledged and looked after. I am not even getting that from the retailler, TeleChoice, or the manufacturer, HTC.