Are All Carriers This Bad?

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First, a little bit of a story to set the scene :).

I took out a student contract (directly) with Orange in September of last year, for £25 a month, and got a K750i. That phone did what all Sony Ericsson phones with joysticks do, and had a joystick which was very intermittent, so I phoned up and it got replaced the next day for a new one. That was back in December. That replacement lasted until a couple of weeks ago, when the joystick problems returned. I don't mistreat my phones, I had a Nokia 6100 last 2 years before I replaced it, and that same phone has now been my mums for about 9 months, and works perfectly.

I phoned Orange to report this (common) fault and was told that they only cover them for six months, and that I would have to go through Sony Ericsson. Ok, fair enough, and I phoned SE. To get warranty service involves me posting (at my expense) the phone away, and waiting for it to be returned to me. During the time I wouldn't be able to use my contract, Orange were not prepared to refund me anything, so I could be without the phone for two weeks, and Orange would charge me for line rental during that period. Unsurprisingly I don't agree with that policy. On making that clear, I was offered the option to take out insurance at £5 a month and paying an admin fee to get the phone replaced. Since this was nothing to do with insurance, and instead was a fault with the phone, I declined that offer and asked to be transferred to cancellations, where I was given the oppertunity of starting a new contract for 12 months and getting a new phone free, or paying off the rest of my contract and dropping back to PAYG. So to recap my options were:

  1. Spend my time and money arranging to ship the phone back to Sony Ericsson and continue to pay line rental to Orange during the period the phone wasn't with me.
  2. Add insurance to my tariff and pay an admin fee.
  3. Restart my contract and get a new phone.

As you can see, all of these options cost me money. Which is strange, as I'm already paying Orange over £25 a month, and had the handset less than one year. As they gave me the phone, surely any faults are down to them to sort out? I was transferred to one last guy who said that the phones are provided free as a vehicle with which to use the network with, and the £25 covers using the network only - network faults are covered, but not handset faults. When I asked him how I could use the network if the Orange-provided 'vehicle' failed to function properly he gave in and arranged a next-day replacement of my handset.

My question is, are all carriers this appallingly bad? It shouldn't have taken three different people and fifteen minutes of trying to explain that the fact I don't have insurance makes no difference when it comes to handset faults which are covered under warranty. I fear that if I had been less persistent I would have had to spend money on what is really Orange's problem. Either that or just cancelled the direct debit on my contract.

Does anyone use a network where they actually are accountable for the handsets they provide you with?
 
last time i checked, if you dont have insurance then orange are not responsible for providing you with a replacement handset whilst your current one is repaired, thats the way it is with all networks. You could always take the handset to your local se repair centre and get them to fix it, most repair places allow you to have a replacement phone like a nokia 1100 or something similar but you have to leave a small deposit. theresw no point ranting on over a service that no network provides as it isnt their fault if your phone happens to fail after a while, its se's fault. you were lucky that someone at orange decided to help you out as ive always had to hand in my phone an use a spare one that i have set aside for things like this
 
Doesn't it seem wrong to you that if a piece of hardware that your carrier supplies you with becomes faulty and needs to be replaced, that that carrier won't take any responsibility over it at all though? I had no contract with SE, it shouldn't be for me to deal with them. I understand insurance would cover me for it, but this isn't an issue which has anything to do with insurance.

Edit: I wasn't after a handset while mine was being repaired, I was asking them to refund me the line rental for the period it was being repaired.
 
Pretty much all networks have clauses in the contract regarding the handset and the network agreement being totally seperate (it's section 14 in the Orange T&C's for the record)

You've actually been given a goodwill replacement and you're still complaining? Do you have any idea how petty that actually sounds?

It's also worth noting that your handset was covered under warranty, you just didn't want to claim on it because you decided it would take too long.
 
Dolph said:
Pretty much all networks have clauses in the contract regarding the handset and the network agreement being totally seperate (it's section 14 in the Orange T&C's for the record)
I'm not disputing that that clause exists, I'm disputing the way the carriers wash their hands of equipment that they recommend for use on their network, and supply the customer with. Call it a debate if you will.
You've actually been given a goodwill replacement and you're still complaining? Do you have any idea how petty that actually sounds?
I'm not complaining that the handset was replaced, I was complaining that Orange treated it as some kind of special circumstance to be able to provide me with the equipment to use a service that I pay for. Maybe to them it was a special incident, but there's no reason why it should be.
It's also worth noting that your handset was covered under warranty, you just didn't want to claim on it because you decided it would take too long.
I didn't want to claim on it because it would have cost me money, not because of the time.

But hey, feel free to criticise.
 
Caged said:
Doesn't it seem wrong to you that if a piece of hardware that your carrier supplies you with becomes faulty and needs to be replaced, that that carrier won't take any responsibility over it at all though? I had no contract with SE, it shouldn't be for me to deal with them. I understand insurance would cover me for it, but this isn't an issue which has anything to do with insurance.

Edit: I wasn't after a handset while mine was being repaired, I was asking them to refund me the line rental for the period it was being repaired.

But when you send the phone off for repair you keep the sim, so you still have network access which is what your line rental agreement covers you for... Your lack of access to the network due to equipment specifically aquired outside the terms and conditions of the network agreement is not the providers problem...
 
Caged said:
Doesn't it seem wrong to you that if a piece of hardware that your carrier supplies you with becomes faulty and needs to be replaced, that that carrier won't take any responsibility over it at all though? I had no contract with SE, it shouldn't be for me to deal with them. I understand insurance would cover me for it, but this isn't an issue which has anything to do with insurance.

Edit: I wasn't after a handset while mine was being repaired, I was asking them to refund me the line rental for the period it was being repaired.

seems perfectly fine to me, as its the makers fault i.e. sony ericsson, not the carriers. se make the handset and supply the warranty, not the carriers, which is fair to me as. as for wanting the line rental refunded it makes no sense, especially to orange as you could easily still use that sim and contract in any other phone
 
Caged said:
I didn't want to claim on it because it would have cost me money, not because of the time.

it would have taken no more than a fiver to post it via sd or a few quid for bus fare/ fuel to get to a repair center (thats if you have one near you)
 
Dolph said:
But when you send the phone off for repair you keep the sim, so you still have network access which is what your line rental agreement covers you for... Your lack of access to the network due to equipment specifically aquired outside the terms and conditions of the network agreement is not the providers problem...
But Orange provided me with the handset, how is that not their problem? As far as I'm concerned I deal with one company for it, if they want to seperate it between network and hardware that's their choice, but it shouldn't allow them to wipe their hands of equipment issues.
gib786 said:
it would have taken no more than a fiver to post it via sd or a few quid for bus fare/ fuel to get to a repair center (thats if you have one near you)
Give me a reason why that cost should be paid by me? I offered Orange the option of collecting my phone and dealing with SE for the warranty, but they declined.
 
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Caged said:
But Orange provided me with the handset, how is that not their problem?

Because the seller's default liability has expired and you'd need to prove the handset was inherantly faulty when it was supplied if you wanted to claim otherwise?

As far as I'm concerned I deal with one company for it, if they want to seperate it between network and hardware that's their choice, but it shouldn't allow them to wipe their hands of equipment issues.Give me a reason why that cost should be paid by me? I offered Orange the option of collecting my phone and dealing with SE for the warranty, but they declined.

Then you should have taken the insurance option which creates a one stop situation, and in fact gives you a better package as you get courier replacement rather than long term repair. If you'd have checked the terms and conditions, or discussed it with an operator, they would have been able to advise you of all this.

As for collecting your phone, yes they would have declined to do that, because it's not an option provided. If you had really wanted you could have taken the phone to an Orange store and they would have arranged for it to be sent off, however they would have requested a handling fee.

It seems to me that your biggest complaint is that you didn't check the details of the services and made assumptions that have proven not to be true. The network has even put themselves out as a one off to try and help you out and you're still complaining.
 
because its your handset, its past the first 6 months of it being supplied to you, and im sure it will state somewhere in the t and c's that its your responsibility if you dont have insurance, personally i think payin a lil bit more for insurance is worth it, thats what i did with my last phone. im not trying to insult you in any way, im just sayin thats how it is, and i think thats fair
 
On the issue of insurance, has anyone looked at the cost of the insurance provided by the carrier vs. getting it insured seperately? Obviously the cost of premium increases and excesses would have to be looked at, it's just that mobile phone insuarance always came across as expensive to me.
 
Caged said:
On the issue of insurance, has anyone looked at the cost of the insurance provided by the carrier vs. getting it insured seperately? Obviously the cost of premium increases and excesses would have to be looked at, it's just that mobile phone insuarance always came across as expensive to me.

ive not noticed any places where i can insure my phone seperatley, i paid £75 for a year of insurance with cpw for a sim free 8800, covers everything including water damage which is good
 
I had the same problem with my K750i. I emailed O2 about it -as it belongs to one of their online tariffs- and simply got told to take it to one of their local stores to get it replaced under warranty (12months), which I did.
The sales guy took out the sim, the battery, and the battery cover for me to hold on to, while the rest was sent away the same day, by courier, without me spending a penny (bar the bus trip into town of course). I got my phone back 7 days later. The problem with the joystick hasn't returned since.

So that's my experience with O2...I really cannot fault them and I can't imagine the other operators being that much different. The warranty exists to cover eventualities such as this. I know where you are coming from, but asking for a refund on line rental was unreasonable on your part I thought.
As gib786 says, it isn't Orange's fault, but looking back, I would be similarly miffed if I was asked to pay an admin fee (I already pay a fiver a month to get it insured).
 
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