Comment by adarshr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adarshr | Hacker News Reader

This reminded me of my experience with HTC Desire S about 5 years ago. Bought it from Amazon, used for about 3 months with the utmost care possible only for the phone to get bricked when trying to install an over the air update.

HTC customer support asked me to post it to them. I did as I was told and after a few days they respond with a quote of about £120! According to their report, the LCD unit and the microdrive had to be replaced due to user abuse. I was totally disappointed that instead of admitting that it was a faulty device they tried to charge me for no fault of mine.

I paid £20 for return of the device without repairing and reached out to Amazon who refunded me fully without asking a single question. Notice any difference in customer service by these two companies?

Good you had bought from Amazon.

As a newcomer to the UK, I've learned I should try to purchase everything with a credit card the hard way. Then you can always use Section 75 of Consumer Credits Act to get reimbursed by your bank in cases where companies refuse to accept their liability. Somehow, customer support seems to be going downhill. Sad days.

I've noticed phone companies just don't care. Had a Nexus 5 with a faulty internal power button. One day it wouldn't turn on anymore. Was quoted $150 or so for a fix, despite it being a result of shitty parts and not abuse. I just binned it and moved on.

My Nexus 5 fell victim to the underwater camcorder defect roughly a year back. I had to start flashing a community made patch from XDA to keep it going (which also keeps me from using the stock firmware ever again). There were multiple bugs listed on Google's tracker citing the issue, but Google either remained silent, tried to shift the blame to a Qualcomm driver that they supposedly had no control over, or just silently close the thread with a self serving "won't fix" tag. CM 13 incorporates the patch automatically now, so it's gotten better. But still, the hardware on the Android side of things has gotten so bad in recent years.

All of this makes me want an iPhone as my next device solely for the hardware support.

I had the same treatment with my HTC One M7, £120 charge to fix the purple camera.

That was the last good phone they will ever build though, so I'm not going back for more.

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