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DylanReeve

67 posts

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#114311 15-Feb-2013 11:56
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My wife's six-month-old HTC One V recently stopped receiving any cellular signal at our home in Henderson. 0-bars, not even showing "Emergency Calls Only" with signal on another carrier. My One X and SGS2 in the same area both receive full signal.

We tried the obvious things with reseating SIM card, factory reset etc, even swapped the SIM for a new one at local Telecom store. No luck.

Oddly it does occasionally show signal in some other areas, but calls tend to fail even then and signal often drops away again soon after.

We took it to Telecom store who have sent it to Telegistics. After examining it Telegistics have claimed "liquid damage" that voids the warranty (with no mention of the actual fault). 

The only liquid damage they cite is corrosion on the data port contacts (in an uncovered external port) and on the SIM card contacts.

I've had their technical manager re-evaluate it and he came to the same conclusion. And on a subsequent call they've added that "due to corrosion on the data port we're unable to reflash the system ROM which may help resolve the issue" - which seems absurd given the data port was working fine shortly before the phone went in for service.

I'm currently waiting to hear from the Telecom area manager as I've stated that we consider that a phone that becomes corroded enough in normal usage to void warranty is not fit for purpose.

The only photo available on Telegistics site is hardly damning on the issue of corrosion I don't think.


The staff in the Telecom store have been helpful (and one mentioned he'd seen exactly the same fault previously). Unfortunately my experience with Telegistics hasn't been good - they're terse, a bit argumentative and unwilling to really provide any insight into their evaluation. It really seems like they've opened the phone, immediately looked for anything that could possibly void the warranty and then stopped as soon as they find something.

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DylanReeve

67 posts

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  #762952 15-Feb-2013 12:04
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Just called them to clarify something...

Apparently, in saying they couldn't reflash the software because of the corrosion, what they mean is that if there's any signs of corrosion at all they don't even make an attempt to reflash, not that they'd attempted but weren't able to.

freitasm
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  #762954 15-Feb-2013 12:10
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The famous "water damage" excuse is always something we don't want to hear. It seems only one company in the country does repairs and we have no second opinion around.

On the other hand almost half of water damaged mobile phones in the UK were dropped in a toilet bowl.




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DylanReeve

67 posts

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  #762955 15-Feb-2013 12:11
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freitasm: The famous "water damage" excuse is always something we don't want to hear. It seems only one company in the country does repairs and we have no second opinion around.

On the other hand almost half of water damaged mobile phones in the UK were dropped in a toilet bowl.


Haha, I've come dangerously close to dropping my SGS2 in the toilet once. Lucky escape...



DylanReeve

67 posts

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  #763135 15-Feb-2013 15:34
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I've spoken to the area manager now. She's agreed to instruct Telegistics to repair the phone, at Telecom's cost.

Hopefully that will resolve the issue.

Fundamentally I still have a problem with their declaring "liquid" damage over such a minor and, in my opinion, unavoidable amount of corrosion. I don't think it's fair to consumers.

freitasm
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  #763137 15-Feb-2013 15:35
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Good outcome overall... Good job.




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openmedia
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  #763150 15-Feb-2013 16:24
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My recent SII repair was flagged as follows

Fault verified, charging screen shown while pressing power on button, checked internal contacts, battery on mainboard corroted

Replaced sub pcb, send to level 3

mainboard replaced and sw reflashed, test passed


I'd read that as corded yet there was no obvious damage to any of the contacts and they returned the original battery which is working as expected.

Given the high humidity levels in a lot of NZ I'm not surprised we get a lot of false "water damaged" calls.




Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.


ubergeeknz
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  #763153 15-Feb-2013 16:28
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Actually that photo looks like just a little dust on the external contacts.  Pretty normal for a device that lives in people's pockets/handbags, right?



MikeSkyrme
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  #763159 15-Feb-2013 16:43
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ubergeeknz: Actually that photo looks like just a little dust on the external contacts.  Pretty normal for a device that lives in people's pockets/handbags, right?


Right.

There are obviously some examples where the device had actually been drenched in water (or other forms of liquid) and the warranty should not have to cover those.

However, for a device that appears to have suffered from normal humidity levels and a bit of dust, it really does ask the question "are these devices just not fit for the purpose for which they are marketed...?"




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  #763219 15-Feb-2013 19:39
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freitasm: The famous "water damage" excuse is always something we don't want to hear. It seems only one company in the country does repairs and we have no second opinion around.

On the other hand almost half of water damaged mobile phones in the UK were dropped in a toilet bowl.


Having nearly dropped a phone or two into the toilet bowl over the years, I can understands why and how....Mine would (almost!) slip out of my shirt pocket while bending over to pull the last spare roll of the "roll post" in the corner. Only the lest roll...as all rolls above aren't low enough to make me (190cm) bend over that far.

Sweat is a major source of phone-wrecking moisture. So is condensation due to moving back and forth between warm and cool spaces. 

I sometimes move my phone into a snaplock bag in the winter. If the screen is on the blank side of the bag, the touchscreen works just fine through the plastic....and I can walk in the pouring rain and use my phone this way.  
  




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uglyb0b
335 posts

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  #763308 16-Feb-2013 01:20
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Is it just me or should the person in the picture be wearing gloves when handling the internal components? I repair phones regularly without gloved but not in a professional environment.

One could argue that damage could have been done to the phone by handling the PCB without gloves (not in this specific case, just in general). Unlikely to happen of course but when dealing with sensitive electronics professionally I would have thought there would be certain procedures in place.

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