I never knew that mobile operators actually had repair avoidance centres!
An SMS Text News reader got me on instant messenger this morning to relate a tale of woe.
Grant’s handset isn’t faulty per se, it’s just that the back and front covers aren’t connecting properly. For some reason they’ve come apart. This was a problem from day one. Dust and muck is therefore getting in — thus Grant thought he’d take preventative action and whacked the handset off to 3UK support.
A few days later they got back to him. Not good. They couldn’t find the problem, apparently. I reckon because there isn’t actually a handset problem (you know, it works fine, it’s the case that he’d like sorted). This is despite Grant attaching a diagram to point out the issue.
Here is the diagram in question:
Grant’s getting more and more irate — as anyone would, sat without a handset.
But I’m willing to bet his annoyance was tripled when he was told that his issue was being dealt withby the Repair Avoidance Centre at 3UK.
Heh. Dear me. I wonder if you phoned up to make a late payment if you’d be transferred through to a new Get That Sodding Money From Him department. 😉
Looooooooooooooong ago I decided to part company with the traditional mobile operator/user relationship. I don’t bother with handset insurance, I don’t bother trying to get replacement or temporary handsets. I take total responsibility for my handset strategy. I don’t know if I could cope, at all, with posting off my handset into the ether then arsing around making call-after-call and waiting days to get anything.
In fairness to the mobile operators, it must be a total headache, having to deal with replacement handsets, repairs and the like. It would probably be cheaper to implement a new policy of no returns, just immediate replacement: e.g. If you send your handset to us for repair, we will send you a new £14 cheap-as-chips Motorola donkey phone by return post, and we’ll sell your old handset to somebody else to fix.
I have phoned 3UK and have been told that they will not provide a temporary handset, and that it may take up to NEXT MONDAY (bear in mind I’ve already been waiting…) to get my (or any!) handset back.
I’ve had this phone for less than 28 days….with most networks you receive a doorstep exchange if a fault is identified in this time!
Nice….
It’s a shame to hear 3 acting like this because I’ve been pretty impressed with them (mostly). What might be a positive is that some key 3 brand people are probably reading this blog and they ARE good at what they do (yep, I’m talking about you //de). They sorted a teething-trouble type problem out for me when every other avenue was a brick wall.
That said, you shouldn’t need special measures, but if it gets your problem solved…