Mobile Phone Warranty Issue
Hi All
Wondering if anyone could confirm or deny my suspicions about the legality of Vodafone's policy, told to me verbally in-store at the weekend.
My daughter's Samsung S3 Mini has a software issue, causing it to constantly re-boot. It was (just!) still under warranty on Saturday when we took it in for repair. However, due to a cosmetic crack on the screen, from many months ago, they claim the warranty is invalid and the repair would be charged for. Even the shop assistant agreed that the crack was unrelated to the software issue.
Is this legal? It sounds dodgy to me. And if not, how do I go about challenging them?
Wondering if anyone could confirm or deny my suspicions about the legality of Vodafone's policy, told to me verbally in-store at the weekend.
My daughter's Samsung S3 Mini has a software issue, causing it to constantly re-boot. It was (just!) still under warranty on Saturday when we took it in for repair. However, due to a cosmetic crack on the screen, from many months ago, they claim the warranty is invalid and the repair would be charged for. Even the shop assistant agreed that the crack was unrelated to the software issue.
Is this legal? It sounds dodgy to me. And if not, how do I go about challenging them?
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Comments
No - haven't tried that and nor did they recommend it.
Bum - it's too late now as the phone has already gone off, but under the insurance I have on it. There's still an excess to pay, but it was a lot less than the normal repair fee and my daughter needed the phone, so I did it under dispute, knowing I'd make a complaint and ask for even that money back.
I'm hoping to have some ammo from this thread for that complaint.
What the store might be thinking is that the screen has been accidentally cracked and now you have a software issue as a direct result. If you have no way to prove that the damage occured at an earlier time, or that the nature of the crack was such that it wouldn't cause a software malfunction, then I don't see what you can do. Maybe another FM will know.
When it comes back it should say what was done to it. Unless the cause is listed as "Screen cracked" then you can argue that the crack was unrelated and so the software issue should be covered under the warranty.
In fact, the person in-store quietly agreed that the two issues were entirely unrelated, but their computer system for booking in repairs is immovable! Once they have entered that there is a visible crack, the system automatically invalidates the warranty and doesn't allow for the issues to be unrelated.
My gut feeling is that this cannot be legal, but I don't know what bits of law to quote.
At best it is a civil matter as it is down to the contract you have with vodaphone, and you would have to take them to court over unfair terms in their warranty contract.
One approach you could take is through the sale of goods act as that dictates that goods should be "fit for purpose" and last "a reasonable length of time" - and you could argue that even with a small crack it should be stable, but they could argue that the small crack indicates damage that has worried the insides somehow.
Thank you. To my mind, a cosmetic crack in May 2014 is clearly not responsible for a software issue in 2015, but I wonder how easy it would be to argue this out. I feel that their blanket policy is allowing them to get away with too much.
Good point and it might be true. Dust may have contributed too.