O O Ø O O O O
Daddy Long Legs
Sometimes, I think the giant is toying with us—a cosmic 5-year old ripping the legs off a daddy long-legs until it can walk no more.
The story starts with a month-old Blackberry Pearl that wouldn’t charge. The reason is obvious: the pins inside the mini-USB connector are mashed. Apparently, the act of plugging and unplugging the USB charge cable from its mating port is dangerous operation, requiring care, attention to detail, and possibly even prayer. It does not matter that the very purpose of a “connector” is to be either connected-to, or disconnected-from. This connector is a connector-no-more, and the important question is a simple one: is this repair covered by warranty?
The answer is a little more complicated.
The first part of the answer requires a trip to the store it was purchased from—a store whose name you likely don’t know, since the cellphone giant operates entirely through authorized dealers. You make the trek, and ask the inevitable question: “Is this covered by warranty?”
You receive the expected reply: “I don’t know. All I can do is send it in.”
Next, you ask how a warranty claim works. You are informed that nobody actually repairs these phones. They are simply shipped to a warranty gnome somewhere in the bowels of Telusland. You are given a replacement phone, and are asked to give a credit card imprint. If, sometime in the foreseeable future, the warranty gnome deems your problem to be “physical damage, water damage, or other unwarranteed damages” then your credit card is charged, to the tune of $250.
If you are to ask whether “damage occuring via the simple act of plugging-in your phone” constitutes a “manafacturer’s defect,” or “physical damage,” you will once again be hearing the phrase “I don’t know. All I can do is send it in.”
Of course, if you could get an answer to your warranty question, then you would have some options:
- You could ask yourself it it is worth spending $250 on a phone you now know to be fragile.
- You could attempt to fix the phone yourself, knowing exactly what the problem is, and having no fear of voiding your nonexistent warranty.
- You could choose to spend your $250 on a phone elsewhere, to avoid having to go through this next time something happens.
Of course, you can’t do any of these. The warranty gnome does not talk to outsiders. He is reachable only via snail-mail, sent from the back room of a Telus Store, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Telus Corp. In short, your only choice is to plunk down your credit card, and cross your fingers.
At which point, you are told it will be 72 hours before a replacement phone is available.
And once you return to collect your replacement phone, you will be told that it was 72 business hours—9 days in human terms. You don’t believe this story, but it doesn’t matter.
And when you go back again, you will be told that you are likely receiving a “refurbished” phone—likely, one that experienced the very same build quality issue that brought you into warranty hell in the first place.
And you will go through all this like the daddy-long-legs does: painfully, and powerlessly, because there’s no escaping the sadistic giant.
Kjell Wooding
January 29, 2008
OOØOOOODCCCLVIII
January 30th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
So very true.
February 26th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Don’t forget that Verizon in the US had the alternative charger that the stupid Telus retailer didn’t even know existed and the Blackberry never even had to be “exchanged” in the first place.
February 27th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
To be fair, they might have not understood the question.
“Is there any other way to charge this, other than the USB port?” might be considered ambiguous…
If you’re a monkey, that is.