Very poor service from O2 repairs

[Hughmungus]

Short version, my iphone 6 wouldnt charge and eventually became unusable. As it was now 14 month old it was out of support with Apple so I contacted O2 via online chat and explained the issue. They advised my not to try any form of repair and kindly arranged for it to be sent to their repair dept for inspection.

Thats when it all went pear shaped.

The repair dept had it for 3 days and sent me a nice email with photos showing me that the lightning socket on the phone had a 'foreign body' stuck inside stopping the connection between lead and phone. The photos showed some dark stuff inside the socket which I immediatley recognised as maybe fluff from being in pockets etc. Now rather than just clean the socket and test it they went to great pains to get me to stump up £212 for a new phone as in their word mine was now u/s.

This I refused and asked for the phone back which took them another 3 days to return.

When I got it back I decided to try some major and very complicated mechanical repair which required years of training. A cocktail stick and some cotton wool, and guess what the fluff was removed and the phone is now working.

Some will say why didnt I do this in the first place, but having been specifically warned by O2 not to try any repair as their skilled engineers would be the only ones able to do any work on the phone I left it to them.

My question to O2 via this community and other avenues is why were your skilled engineers unable to operate a cocktail stick type instrument and remove the foreign object, and more worryingly why try and force me to buy a replacement phone when my was perfectly ok apart from a bit of fluff.?

Mw thinks our friend Watchdog may find this incident interesting.

Yours, soon to be ex customer.

[jonsie]

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@Hughmungus wrote:

This was the picture they sent me, and the repair their skilled engineers couldnt handle !

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Obviously well knacked

[MI5]

Not an esp great picture, is it?

[viridis]

Now we know where my Z5 with the blurry camera ended up....

[Cleoriff]

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@MI5 wrote:
Not an esp great picture, is it?

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No but it does show that fluff quite clearly...Fools......

[Curr946]

Geez, that's well past it. Should have paid the £200 as I'm sure apple will create an update to brick your phone for having the gall to fix it yourself. That's classed as a non authorised repair

[Anonymous]

Don't listen to him, he thinks it's a joke, well done for doing something yourself, hope you had a pineapple on a stick afterwards. Normally you should go straight to the manufacturer as o2 repairs don't have the greatest of reputation 

[Curr946]

@Anonymous that's an understatement. OPs handset was out of warranty anyway.
My post was in jest, and clearly the OP done well to fix the issue themselves.

[anticpated]

It's laughable that some of us as customers are just as capable of fixing issues ourselves hindered by a 3rd-rate "engineering" company, who use a pick n mix approach to customer repair/support by assuming everyone is equally as clueless as each other.

[MI5]

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@anticpated wrote:

by assuming everyone is equally as clueless as each other.

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...... they are!

[jonsie]

They seem remarkably skillful at maintaining their reputation.