My Galaxy S2 broken? (with photo's now)

I've just gone through something v. similar with Apple and an iPad. An ultra tiny chip out of the plastic surrounding the dock connector resulted in the scummers refusing to honour the warranty and fix my dicey home button.

Spent 30 mins on the phone (mainly on hold - costing me a tenner in mobile charges), whilst they explained this to me. The CSA couldn't believe that they had knocked it back and suggested I take it to an apple store to swap as it's barely noticeable. Thing is, the email alert that told me they would not honour the warranty suggested I phone them to arrange payment - but even if I did have appetite to pay for the home button fix, it was on its way back to me already!!

It's a shame when companies look for every excuse to get out of fixing stuff - but ultimately their loss. I cancelled my iPad 3 pre-order as soon as I got off the phone, and also sent back my new 4GS under their 14 day return window. That's just cost them almost £1000 and I'll be looking elsewhere for my kit now.
 
Ace Modder said:
Samsung have now returned my phone to me stating that it is unrepairable under the warranty.

So I now have a glorified device which allows internet access via wifi and nothing else. No sim card access or anything!

The fault was due to a ROM data corruption. Im furious to say the least!
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You *could* threaten the retailer with small claims action under the sales of goods act - especially since the ROM corruption has nothing to do with water ingress (and if the phone is less than 6 months old they have to prove it is!)
 
brainiac ghost said:
You *could* threaten the retailer with small claims action under the sales of goods act - especially since the ROM corruption has nothing to do with water ingress (and if the phone is less than 6 months old they have to prove it is!)
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My phone was a gift and I have no access to a receipt as it was thrown away.
 
brainiac ghost said:
Did the person who bought it pay by card? Card/Bank statements count as proof of purchase.
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It was my dad who bought me the phone and he doesn't use cards for anything he tends to deal with just cash. He is old and never uses cards... Esxcept for booking his holidays abroad.

Payday he even goes to the bank and writes a cheque to himself for cash and draws all the money out for his months spend. :(
 
Try shooting a (well written) email to: [email protected] - he's the CEO of Samsung mobile UK (what will actually happen is that your email will go to an executive complaints department who have more power to deal with things). I would mention that you won't be purchasing any more samsung products, especially considering you were going to by the G-S3 when it comes out. Also don't try fishing for any more than a repaired phone - they may give you a "goodwill payment" though!
 
Ace Modder said:
It really is a shame there is no way that I know to fix my phone via any altnerative method!

I wonder if any local independant phone repair shops have to means to repair my issue!
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Give Odia a PM over on the XDA forums he might be able to help you recover it he'll do it all over teamviewer for a fee.

But I would first try nightmare99's or Brainiac's suggestion to see if that will help shift their decision. Seems very wrong indeed.
 
Email sent!



Dear Sir.

Thanks for taking the time to read this email.

I feel a little let down with Samsungs repair service/warranty.

I have a Galaxy S2 which was bought for me by my father for my 30th birthday. As such I don't have a receipt. This isn't the issue as you offered to take the phone back for repair based on the serial number I provided.

The problem I have is that your repair centre claim that the phone cannot be repaired under warranty. The fault I have is a EFS data corruption, this is basically the file on the phone which holds all the phone ID info, including the IMEI number. The repair centre have confirmed that they are unable to repair my phone due to "moisture being found on the external part of the USB port" They provided me with the following image, which doesnt show anything really.



The repair centre confirmed to me that the fault within my phone has not and would not have been contributed to the fault that the phone has developed. The repair centre have advised that they can repair my fault for "FREE" if I was to pay £54 for a new USB port, which has not caused my fault in the first place.

I have received the faulty phone back unrepaired as I was not prepared to pay £54 to repair an external port which your repair centre claims has moisture on it. I can see no evidence of this in the image they have given me and also cannot find anothing on the actual phone.

The frustration on my part is that the fault is a software issue and has not been caused by any hardware mailfunction. I have read on the XDA Development forums since receiving my phone back that a software update (hack in my case if I was to try myself) can fix this problem. However I do not want to "root" my phone or want to have to mess with the OS level of data on the phone myself.

I feel it is unfair for Samsung's repair agent to want a payment to fix something which seems apparent after looking on the internet that is a common issue with the software on your Galaxy S2 phones.

I invite you to read my forum post on the XDA forums detailing in further detail the issue the handset has. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=23619656#post23619656

I would appreciate you taking the time to look into my issue to see if you can resolve it for me.

Regards
Lee Bryan
 
What does the moisture indicator say? It's very close to the USB jack... (take the battery out and it's a white/purple cross sticker on the bottom right. Could be wrong though :p)

Refusing warranty due to "pocket sweat" is shameful.

Oh, £45 + vat to replace the cheap USB/mic board? They're taking the p***
 
It's usually a small white square/blob, sometimes with a pink/purple/red pattern.

Grabbed this pic from iFixit. It looks like that white square on top right, Samsung could've moved it inside the chassis for different batches (see the Galaxy Nexus teardown, it appears under the back cover)
ecqad5OxALcxpuUO.medium


Edit: Yep, there's one under the back cover. (click for large pic)
BgkG2O1smAbTGNl4.medium


I could be wrong though...

Older phones have them on the battery.
image6bg.png
 
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I had the exact same problem with my S2, couldn't rectify the problem, including flashing new firmware, factory reset etc. So it went back to T-Mobile, the guy had no clue and just said the software was knackered and sent it back to samsung. It came back fixed with a note just saying software updated. So never got to the bottom of the problem or the cause, i have read of a few people sending their phones back with various problems to samsungs repair company. And all being told its due to moisture in the phone, so looks like they're trying to fob people off with the same thing, good luck getting yours sorted.
 
Ace Modder said:
Samsung have now returned my phone to me stating that it is unrepairable under the warranty.

So I now have a glorified device which allows internet access via wifi and nothing else. No sim card access or anything!

The fault was due to a ROM data corruption. Im furious to say the least!
Click to expand...

i cracked the screen on my samsung wave and had it repaired under insuranse. Got sent to a samsung service center who decided that it was neccessary to reflash the firmware when all that needed doing was replacing a piece of glass.

To a degree i was expecting this and had my stuff backed up, however they had flashed a generic copy of the firmware which clashed with the phones product code and CSC (highly annoying when the defualt language is initially set to korean...). This meant i could not get firmware updates through kies, kind of annoying when they were rolling out bada 1.2 all around.

Called up the service center, the first time the guy blatantly refused to help me, denied they would ever do such a thing and said it was something i had done, the second time, the guy didnt even know what 'bada' was. After the experience ive had with this phone and samsungs support, i wont go near another samsung product with a bargepole.
 
Surely other companies use this repair centre as well, it's a third party so to say you won't buy samsung again because of the third party is a bit odd. (i.e. LG/nokia etc might use this company as well).

Samsung not backing you up is pretty crappy however, and you would think they would look into it for you.

Good luck with the email :-)
 
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