Faulty Mobile Phone

[Andy MacScribe]

Hello everyone!

New here and not sure if this would be appropriate to post on here but I was hoping to get a little bit of advice from the people that might now about situations like this.

It's not concerning the business I work for but I'm having a little bit of a personal problem with my mobile Operator.

I'm in the situation where I'm not happy with the resolution the mobile Operator is offering to resolve my faulty mobile phone situation and I'm not too sure how far I can and/or should take it.

I bought a brand new Nokia Lumia 930 handset on 30th December 2014 as part of my 24 months contract with my current carrier, in fact that was an upgrade. The phone was covered by 24 months manufacturers warranty (Microsoft) and in just under 12 months of use I noticed that the phone started having an issues to connect to WiFi networks. The phone was passed back to the Operator and sent away for the repair.

After receiving the handset back it all seemed OK initially but after some time the problem reoccurred. At the time for one reason or other I failed to go back to the Operator and kept struggling on with the issue and using the temporally work around, which consisted of rebooting the phone. This solved the problem for a few days at the time but I had to reboot my phone on regular basis to get it going, which obviously gets to a point where it becomes very inconvenient.

Eventually I went back to the Operator early December 2016 with just about 1 month warranty left on the phone. The handset was sent away for the repair again and after receiving it back it appeared that it was working as it should however, the problem reappeared about two days later.

I took it back to Operator once more and again it was sent away for the repair, 3rd time now and still within warranty. After receiving it back 24 hours later I was faced with the same issue again. The phone was now officially out of manufacturer's warranty but it didn't stop me to send an email to the Operator's escalations team to relay the facts.

Before sending over my email I actually went online to search for the particular issue and found various reports on this problem and it seemed that it was being suggested that the issue is caused by some internal problem with Microsoft hardware and/or software. Looking at available information it was also being reported that other end users had sent their handsets away to various repair centers and they kept coming back in the same state as mine where phones worked for a few days and then problem reappeared. It was being suggested that all that was being done was phones being reset and sent back and no real fix was being applied as it most likely didn't exist.

I communicated my findings to the Operator and asked for their input expecting them to offer some sort of remedy but not asking for anything specific.

I was contacted by phone by the representative from their escalations team this Monday to negotiate the remedy. The initial offer was for me to take the phone to an independent repair body to see if they could repair it and the Operator would pick up the bill. I kindly explained that going by the reports I found online (mainly Microsoft forums) I strongly believed that it would be a wasted effort as it seemed that there is no fix available and would cause me more inconvenience.

Straight away I was advised that if that was the case they would be looking to replace my handset and the handset suggested as replacement was Nokia Lumia 950, which is the up to date model.

Here I would like to point out that in monetary terms my Lumia 930 was retailing for around £450 mark at the time of purchase, I am actually trying to find out what was the retail price through the Operator at the time of purchase. Since then I also confirmed with Operator's store that the Retail Price of Lumia 950 is £450. So to me it sounded like a good enough deal as they were going to swap out my faulty phone with the up to date equivalent model and I was happy to proceed. I had a couple calls that day and was advised that they are communicating with their warehouse to try to allocate stock for me and we left it at that.

Come Wednesday and I get email from the same person telling me that Lumia 950 handset is no longer available (no stock) and that he is offering me LG K8 handset instead as a final and full settlement. Straight away the alarm bells started to ring and upon looking up this product I concluded that it's a far lower spec handset and actually retailing for £80 in their own store. So my question straight away was how did we end up going from a flagship Windows Phone that supposed to retail for £450 to a basic Android handset.

I replied last night to advise that the offer is not acceptable and that they need to come up with something better and match the spec of my current phone. Today somebody else from the Operator picked up on this and called me. After arguing for about 40 minutes on the phone it was established that the Operator is now putting a monetary value of £100 on this issue and that is all they are willing to compensate. Obviously that money doesn't buy me an equivalent handset. We eventually agreed that they would look for another handset and I was sent another email to offer me HTC Desire 626 which again is a value Android smartphone with lower specification.

It didn't take me too long to figure out that they are bluntly back peddling now and trying to get away with very little on their part compared to the initial offer.

Sorry for the long post but I strongly believe that it had to be explained in a little bit more detail to enable you to fully understand the scope of this situation.

Can you guys add your two pence to this to give me heads up? I was pretty much told that if I'm not going to accept their latest low value offer then they will deem as I have refused their offer to remedy and will advise me to take it to Ombudsman instead. I don't believe the Ombudsman is worth any time and effort so if it really came to it the only real recourse is perhaps to take this to Court but still wondering what are my chances here? Or maybe I am barking the wrong tree all together?

Many thanks in advance!
Andy

 

[thelegalstop]

Hi Andy,

I'm really sorry to hear about your issues. In fact, the situation is quite straightforward. In the light of Consumers Rights Act 2015, you have given the seller more than one chance to repair or replace the item, and that clearly did not rectify the issue.

You are therefore entitled to return your phone for a full refund in cash.

You may want to accept a credit note, another form of exchange or even another handset - this is up to you. However, your statutory right is to get your full refund.

I think the easiest way would be to explain to the Operator what you require and to quote the appropriate part of the Act in your written response.

Hope that helps!

 

[Andy MacScribe]

I'm really sorry to hear about your issues. In fact, the situation is quite straightforward. In the light of Consumers Rights Act 2015, you have given the seller more than one chance to repair or replace the item, and that clearly did not rectify the issue.

Many thanks for your reply and sympathy.

I've heard about Consumers Rights Act but as the phone was bought before 30 September 2015 I believe it's governed by Sale of Goods Act instead but still it is my understanding that similar rules apply?

You are therefore entitled to return your phone for a full refund in cash.

But aren't they allowed to play it down on the fact that I was still using the phone for 2 years (albeit fault discovered after about 11 months)? And looks like that is exactly what they are doing, initially offering a good phone and then back peddling to offer a far inferior product (after finding out they don't have the stock on the model offered initially) and placing a silly monetary value on it.

Hope you can clarify further on this matter.

 

[kulture]

I think that they are indeed allowed to discount the value of the phone as you have had 2 years use out of it. How much is a 2 year old phone of that model (or similar) selling for? I think their offer of an £80 new phone is a bit too low, but a replacement at the same value as the original phone too generous. What is the expected life of a £450 mobile phone? If less than 4 years, then I think you would struggle to get better than £200. As they have already offered £100, is it worth you time going to court for £100.

I would definitely cancel the contract and move to a new supplier.

 

[thelegalstop]

But aren't they allowed to play it down on the fact that I was still using the phone for 2 years

No.

You were using the phone, returned it, then tried to use it with a hope that it will work but it didn't. In fact, you have given them enough time and opportunity to repair the phone and it clearly doesn't work.

Whether you used it for other purposes is quite irrelevant here; the phone was described to have a good wifi functionality, so saying it was fine because you were able to make phone calls with it isn't enough: it needs to be working as described for a reasonable amount of time.

You have realised there is a fault there within the first year of usage. For a smartphone of that value, I would expect it to work perfectly fine for more than a year.

In summary, you are entitled to a full refund.

Please do get in touch if you need any help pursuing this with the Operator!

 

[Andy MacScribe]

Many thanks for your input once more @thelegalstop, much appreciated.

A quick question for you, would the original contract play any part in this or would this purely relay on Sale of Goods Act/Consumers Rights Act? The reason I'm asking I'm struggling to locate the copy of the contract right now, I know I have it somewhere but my house is like Tardis when it comes to finding something. Or maybe it's just my bad bookkeeping skills.

 

[thelegalstop]

You need something to prove you purchased it from them. Now that they've accepted it and attempted repair, etc. I can't imagine them pretending you didn't buy it in the first place. However, for the future, any proof of purchase will suffice, even a bank/credit card statement.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

I think its a good offer for an old phone