Thoughts on warranty rejection for unrelated damage

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rscole86

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# 251502 28-Jun-2019 11:22

I have a Nokia 7 plus that I took in for repair. There was a minor crack on the screen, did not effect the usability or functionality in any way.

It was taken in to the retailer due to the USB port being faulty, cable had to be held at certain angles to get it to charge. Nokia have come back to say that they want $280 to repair the screen out of warranty, as they cannot get into the phone without doing that repair first. I assume this would also void the warranty on the phone. So I would then need to pay for further repairs to the USB port.

While I accept that they may not be able to repair the phone without further damaging the screen, it appears consumers are forced into this situation by design, effectively meaning high use parts of the phone are likely to be out of warranty due to damage to other high use parts of the phone. Secondly the retailer will want to charge me for this assessment, which I could have done for myself had I been told 'any other physical damage will void your warranty despite it not being near or related to your claim' or 'any damage to the screen will also mean the repair cannot be effected'.

What are peoples thoughts on this process?

PS I have previously worked in retail, and have faced similar situations in the past, with repairs usually being done in good faith.

Dairyxox

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# 2266182 28-Jun-2019 11:29

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-To repair the USB port they need to remove the screen.

-When they remove your cracked screen it will probably break the screen. So they need to get you a new one, but its not the repairers fault.

How do you imagine this should be sorted out? It sounds like they're being reasonable enough, if true.

Bung

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# 2266186 28-Jun-2019 11:36

Are you sure it's the port and not the cable? Have the ground springs on the back of the plug collapsed? Sometimes you can improve things by restoring the set of these. Nail clippers work as tweezers to grab them.

CYaBro

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# 2266188 28-Jun-2019 11:39

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Yup this happened a lot when we were an Apple Service Provider.

iPhone would come in still under warranty/consumer law coverage with issues like battery not charging or device not booting, but it would have a cracked display.
Apple would say the same thing, end user has to pay for a replacement display and then Apple would cover the work done on the actual issue.

Dingbatt

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# 2266195 28-Jun-2019 11:53

If they are repairing the USB under warranty, then I would pay to get the screen fixed at the same time. You are then back to effectively a new phone, with a restored warranty.
I think it is unreasonable for them to refuse to fix the USB port portion under warranty, if it is due to design or manufacturing shortcomings, unless they can prove the event that damaged the screen also affected the port.

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rscole86

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# 2266198 28-Jun-2019 11:58

I have spoken further with the retailer;

@Dairyxox To repair any part of the phone, requires removal of the screen.

The quote given by the repair agent to the retailer, did not match what they passed to us. The word being 'may' cause further damage. They have also clarified that the replaced screen would be included under the original warranty, they could then carry on with the phone warranty assessment.

If I had known that to repair any part of the phone, even to complete assessment would require a complete screen removal, or had been told that any physical damage would void the warranty (as I had been told after getting the quote for repair) I would not have sent the phone away.

Having to pay $55 for a service I could complete at home, or they could complete in store, does seem unreasonable in my opinion. Again I have been on the retailers side before, and we regularly advised customers better than I have been.

@Bung I tested Nokia and other USB C cables, multiple USB power sources, moved the cable around and could see the movement. Nokia had accepted that externally it was faulty, but cannot get inside without $$$

@CYaBro Good to hear in a way that Nokia are not the only one, but if it is more common then retailers should really be passing on this information IMO.

@Dingbatt Much my line of thinking, but they refuse to move past step 1, and once I have accepted liability then I would presumably have no recourse past that. Part of their refusal tho is that they cannot do the full assessment due to the cracked screen. So by design, they make it harder for consumers to have a fully warrantable device.

I guess my request for thoughts were in general about the assembly of devices now. I would assume Nokia are not the only ones who construct their devices this way, and therefor retails could provide advice to customers about the more complicated repair process of the device.

rscole86

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# 2266201 28-Jun-2019 12:01

My post above took a while to compose, as the retailer has called me back again.

The repair agent was not able to give any advice about removing a cracked screen, where the crack was only in the top corner, and was a complete crack from edge to edge, around 1-2mm from memory. As the $280 gamble, considering the phone is as low as $399 lately, I have rejected the repair etc. The agent would also only say the USB appeared to be warrantable external, but would not comment further until inside, and would not give any quotes for the non warranty repair of the USB port.