Boycott Noel Leeming....

Forums › One NZ (including Farmside) › Boycott Noel Leeming....

1 | 2 | 3

bbman

646 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 4

#130110 11-May-2008 22:55

itxtme: I dont understand how they can charge you to have the phone sent away!? If that was me I would refuse to pay pointing out that the phone is not working and the CGA requires they fix replace or repair it. If it fails its warranty so be it, but you need to prove to me first that it did fail it. im not going to pay you to decide that!!

I think you would find it hard to get your phone repaired in today's climate unless you paid the fee. You get it back if the phone is covered, if not then you can get the phone back as is but pay the fee.

The CGA covers you when you have a valid complaint, if the device is found to have been damaged and to have voided a manufacturers warranty with proven damage they will not intervene.

Note the $55 upfront fee is common place amongst VNZ and TNZ dealers and is designed to weed out the customers who know they have damaged there phone or the the customers who refuse to pay the cost of assessing their phone when found to be BER or requiring a repair at cost.

I know the dealer i worked with recently did not charge this fee upfront. They would have many customers refuse to pay and deny damage and even customers who ignored their calls. They now charge the fee upfront as it was costing $1-1,500 annually. They have weeded out a lot of the customers as above and dont have the issues they had before.

Why should dealers pay when customers who damage there phones, knowingly and unknowingly dont want to.

www.ultimatebroadband.co.nz
Delivering better broadband services

UFB fibre, Rural fibre on EA networks, RBI wireless, Ruralnet & Ultra wireless, wireless networks

Loismustdye

942 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 256

Trusted

#130116 11-May-2008 23:16

Can you claim it on insurance under house and contents? I dropped my OKTa touch in a portaloo and claimed insurance as the phone was knackered and had it replaced under house and contents.

What I guess we all want to know when our phones die is what is th efault and what caused it? Afterall, a phone may have the water mark sticker showing in the the phone housing, but is this (liquid) what actually caused the fault or is it a loose/wire/cable/chip/ faulty circuit board?

amigo

161 posts

Master Geek

#130122 12-May-2008 00:22

I wouldn't be surprised if the phone's design and manufacture contributed to the liquid damage. It is reasonable to expect that such an electronic device to be subject to a certain degree of non-submersive moisture. Therefore the product should be designed to cope, eg good design, seals, quality metallurgy considerations, etc. I've got a little Panasonic X200 that I've abused for about 4 years. It's always in my pocket. I ride a bike to and sometimes I get soaked in the rain and I've often wiped water off the surface. It's been completely submersed in water at least once and survived. The screen has been cracked for a couple of years now too. I've had no faults with it. Hmm maybe the crack in the screen let's the condensation out? :)

A high percentage of products that I have bought in recent years have all had some sort of manufacturing or quality fault. Not just electronic stuff either. Quality brands in particular. I have got into the habit of immediately thoroughly testing and checking everything that I purchase. In some instances i've found out that the engineers were well aware of the problems and rely on the fact that the average customers either won't notice, think they are just doing something wrong or caused by incompiblity with other equipment they are using it with, or can't be bothered going through the hassle of returning the product. In some instances. with items I've returned for a replacement due to minor faults, the shop has put the returned item back on the shelf and hope the next customer will not as particular as me.

I guess i got lucky with my cell phone. It's probably one of the more tricky products to inspect for quality, and of course it is hard to prove that it is not your fault. For some products you can find statistics on the percentages of products that have been returned on warranty, however, in these situations would not be recorded since it wasn't considered a product fault.

Perhaps you could create a webpage/blog where people can register their phone's brand/model which has been rejected for warranty repair due to 'liquid damage' or 'corrosion' where they have reasonable belief that they had not subjected their phone to any unreasonable conditions. You may be able to reveal patterns with particular brands or models that are more sensitive to everyday environmantal conditions. With such data presented on the web, purchasers could make a more informed decision to 'boycott' a particular brand or model, rather than the shop selling them. Also, if such a web page attracted enough attention, manufacturers might start taking more care with their product design and testing, to provide a quality product, rather than the most features per buck.

gished

276 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 10

#130152 12-May-2008 09:42

Loismustdye: I dropped my OKTa touch in a portaloo

I hope it wasn't at a music festival of any sort. If that happened to me I'd be inclined to leave it down there and just say it was stolen!

neilinnz

165 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 1

#130154 12-May-2008 09:44

I originally started this post and have been blown away by the response of geekzone, what a great forum.

From reading all your replies I have come to conclusion that I was very unlucky and ended up with a phone that under normal every day usage must have been damaged by liquid at some point. Before posting here I never even knew 'liquid damage' was an issue. I've been using Nokia phones for the last 10 years and never ever seen or heard anything about liquid damage before.

I do still have an issue with the fact I bought a phone, used it for a few months like I've used every other phone I've had and when it developed a fault I took it back under warranty. Now, I know Noel Leeming did the right thing in charging me $55 bond and that the outcome of the phones repair (or lack of it) wasn't down to them but a service centre. However, when asked for the bond they explained that I would be charged if the fault was caused by me, I paid the bond because I was 100% sure I hadn't done anything to the phone to cause a fault.

What Noel Leeming failed to do was to say something like 'The screen flickering could be caused by liquid damage which is common with this phone and that won't be covered by the warranty.' They could have warned me that 50% or 90% or 99% or whatever of these kind of repairs cannot be fixed. At that point I would have walked out the door with my phone and put my $55 towards a new phone.

Earlier in this thread a NL employee admitted that they had taken a customers $55 that day and he said it probably would come back as 'liquid damage'!!! So it's not like they don't know that.

Anyway, a lesson learned, don't use your Nokia flip-phone if there's moisture in the air, and if it starts raining while you're on the phone, hang up immediately and place your phone in a waterproof container until the humidity has fallen to a level that won't affect the phone. Also, if your phone develops a fault get a second opinion on the fault before you pay someone else to tell you 'Yes, you're phone is faulty'.

I'm now using my old Nokia 6230 with the battery from my faulty 6085 so it has a new lease of life. That phone has been used for years in the same way and never faulted at all so I guess the 6085 was just an unlucky phone for me.

Thanks for all your feedback and sharing your knowledge on this subject, I feel a lot better about the 'liquid damage' now but I'm still going to boycott Noel Leeming as psychologically I just don't like them any more and to be honest their Erin Brockovich adverts put me right off (that got the ball rolling).

Laters.

Loismustdye

942 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 256

Trusted

#130198 12-May-2008 12:29

gished:
Loismustdye: I dropped my OKTa touch in a portaloo

I hope it wasn't at a music festival of any sort. If that happened to me I'd be inclined to leave it down there and just say it was stolen!

it was the v8s in hamilton, needless to say it remained down there :-)

AliExpress

Shop now on AliExpress (affiliate link).

bbman

646 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 4

#130205 12-May-2008 12:49

neilinnz: I originally started this post and have been blown away by the response of geekzone, what a great forum.

From reading all your replies I have come to conclusion that I was very unlucky and ended up with a phone that under normal every day usage must have been damaged by liquid at some point. Before posting here I never even knew 'liquid damage' was an issue. I've been using Nokia phones for the last 10 years and never ever seen or heard anything about liquid damage before.

I do still have an issue with the fact I bought a phone, used it for a few months like I've used every other phone I've had and when it developed a fault I took it back under warranty. Now, I know Noel Leeming did the right thing in charging me $55 bond and that the outcome of the phones repair (or lack of it) wasn't down to them but a service centre. However, when asked for the bond they explained that I would be charged if the fault was caused by me, I paid the bond because I was 100% sure I hadn't done anything to the phone to cause a fault.

What Noel Leeming failed to do was to say something like 'The screen flickering could be caused by liquid damage which is common with this phone and that won't be covered by the warranty.' They could have warned me that 50% or 90% or 99% or whatever of these kind of repairs cannot be fixed. At that point I would have walked out the door with my phone and put my $55 towards a new phone.

Earlier in this thread a NL employee admitted that they had taken a customers $55 that day and he said it probably would come back as 'liquid damage'!!! So it's not like they don't know that.

Anyway, a lesson learned, don't use your Nokia flip-phone if there's moisture in the air, and if it starts raining while you're on the phone, hang up immediately and place your phone in a waterproof container until the humidity has fallen to a level that won't affect the phone. Also, if your phone develops a fault get a second opinion on the fault before you pay someone else to tell you 'Yes, you're phone is faulty'.

I'm now using my old Nokia 6230 with the battery from my faulty 6085 so it has a new lease of life. That phone has been used for years in the same way and never faulted at all so I guess the 6085 was just an unlucky phone for me.

Thanks for all your feedback and sharing your knowledge on this subject, I feel a lot better about the 'liquid damage' now but I'm still going to boycott Noel Leeming as psychologically I just don't like them any more and to be honest their Erin Brockovich adverts put me right off (that got the ball rolling).

Laters.

Fair call, i also agree that the Noel Leeming staff could have known more about possible faults, thats the downside of buying from an appliance store versus a Vodafone dealer or store.

www.ultimatebroadband.co.nz
Delivering better broadband services

UFB fibre, Rural fibre on EA networks, RBI wireless, Ruralnet & Ultra wireless, wireless networks

bbman

646 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 4

#130211 12-May-2008 12:55

"Perhaps you could create a webpage/blog where people can register their phone's brand/model which has been rejected for warranty repair due to 'liquid damage' or 'corrosion' where they have reasonable belief that they had not subjected their phone to any unreasonable conditions. You may be able to reveal patterns with particular brands or models that are more sensitive to everyday environmantal conditions. With such data presented on the web, purchasers could make a more informed decision to 'boycott' a particular brand or model, rather than the shop selling them. Also, if such a web page attracted enough attention, manufacturers might start taking more care with their product design and testing, to provide a quality product, rather than the most features per buck."

I like this idea, i agree that maybe some devices are more sensitive to this sort of damage, also when repairing liquid damaged phones, some makes are easier to get a good result than others.

I think though often people miss use or take little care with their handsets, often they will txt or make a call in the rain and there is a good chance that some of that water will get in there some how.

Any way good idea, it would be good to have some sort of robustness index for current models

www.ultimatebroadband.co.nz
Delivering better broadband services

UFB fibre, Rural fibre on EA networks, RBI wireless, Ruralnet & Ultra wireless, wireless networks

1 | 2 | 3