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[Anonymous]

Well here is my story.
Start of may i took my iPhone into an o2 store because the battery was running low to quick. I had had the phone for a year now so this was as i expected. Everything was all happy and working well, the assistant helping encouraged us to take out the apple care protection plan which seemed great and we did so with no worries. Long story short, phone was sent away and all was good.
THEN a week later, i got a letter explaining my phone was NOT covered by the warrenty. After a good few hours of getting to the bottom of this i rang the store and they told me my phone had water damage. I strongly dissagreed with this, as anyone would to be honest, but im so glad i took further actions as the result has left me shocked, dissapointed, and furthermore outraged!
They told me they had pictures, but i couldnt access these pictures from home like they said i would be able to, so my mum decided she was going to help sort this out. After staging a sit in till after 6pm (bearing in mind that the shop closes at 5:30) she managed to get to see the pictures of my phone and contacted Apple first hand who extremely kindly said they would help get my phone working again.
Now my mum said the pictures were terrible and there was all corrosion from the water damage all over the insides of my phone. So naturally anyone would accept this as their phone and pay the 120 pound price o2 were asking for.
Wrong, we went along with apples advice and skipped o2 and went straight to an apple store.
This is where it gets to the heat. They opened the phone ... It was so clean and nice inside it may as well have been new. NO water damage of any kind inside the phone. Crystal clear. Perfect. NOT AT ALL corroded of any sort!
I now, thanks to apple first hand, have a new phone which the battery lasts the right ammount of time, no charge as it WAS covered by my warrenty.
This means the pictures my mum was shown by o2 were not even my phone. They were trying to con me out of 120 quid by lying straight up! The worst part to my experience was realising if they were more than happy to do this to me. How many other people has this happened to? How much money has actually been conned out of people? Im sorry o2 but you made an enemy this last month, i will be leaving your network come the end of my contract and will never see me again.

I am now looking into possibly sueing o2 if this is a valid reason to do so. It has come to my knowledge that many people have wrote on these forums about the same thing happening to them and it is absolutley not acceptable that a multi-million pound company can do such a thing to its "Valued" customers!

Let me know what your take on this matter is also cause id be pleased to find out if this kind of story has actually affected anyone else recently.

[Rycal]

That is pretty appalling and I am glad you got it sorted in the end. Personally speaking if I ever deal with a customer who has a faulty iPhone I always advise them to visit an Apple store rather then send them away through us, Apple are fantastic at dealing with their own products.

Ill echo what has already been said here, O2 do not repair the phones - they send the to a contracted company who deal with repair handsets sent from all the major retailers in the UK. The process is as follows: the customer returns the handset to an O2 store which is then booked in for repair and usually shipped off the next working day. The repair agent then receives the device, books it in and checks the notes placed on the system by the advisor who first made contact with the customer in-store. The handset is then sent to the relevant repair department (they have one for each manufacturer) where it is diagnosed and hopefully repaired. If a handset is deemed OOW (out-of-warranty) and cannot be repaired or replaced then photographic evidence is taken and uploaded back onto the same system which was used to book in the repair so advisors back in the store can see the damage. At this point the customer is usually contacted so that they can be given a quote to fix the phone which is either accepted or declined and the phone is shipped back to the store (or direct to the customer) repaired or in its original condition.

I post this not to entirely absolve O2 of any blame here but to try and give you an indication of what goes on when a phone is sent away for repair. Obviously something has gone horribly wrong here and your first port of call should be to complain to O2, yes they may not have directly cheated you however they have a responsibility to see that things like this do not happen and if you can prove that Apple have checked over this handset and have given it the all-clear then someone at O2 head office should be taking this matter further to ensure that noone else has to go through this.

[Anonymous]

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@Rycal wrote:

I post this not to entirely absolve O2 of any blame here

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No because you can't, O2 are totally responsible for their appointed sub-contractors and the way that they perform within the contract provisions.

And in this instance O2 should report that sub-contractor to the Police for a fraudulent action, otherwise O2 may well be seen to have committed conspiracy to defraud.

[Rycal]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Rycal wrote:

I post this not to entirely absolve O2 of any blame here

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No because you can't, O2 are totally responsible for their appointed sub-contractors and the way that they perform within the contract provisions.

And in this instance O2 should report that sub-contractor to the Police for a fraudulent action, otherwise O2 may well be seen to have committed conspiracy to defraud.

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I agree however a full investigation need to be undertaken to rule out the possibility that this is just some simple mistake, as this is the first time I have heard of such a thing happening it could just be an isolated incident rather than a conspiracy to defraud customers. Regardless tho O2 need to be informed and action needs to be taken.

[MI5]

The first time this has happened!!!!!!
Sorry, but Pah !!!

[Rycal]

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@MI5 wrote:
The first time this has happened!!!!!!
Sorry, but Pah !!!

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Personally speaking this is the first time I have heard of someone sending their phone for repair, being showed photos of water damage on a completely different handset, going to Apple, having the phone opened and being told there was no water damage. Im more than happy to be shown other cases of it happening but as I say I am not familiar with any.

The fact remains that it could be an isolated incident. However as I have said it needs to be looked into anyway incase something more sinister has occured.

[Anonymous]

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@MI5 wrote:
The first time this has happened!!!!!!
Sorry, but Pah !!!

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You forget that some people do live in a Fool's Paradise (A state of happiness based on false hope.)

[MI5]

I would suggest the use of the search function - top right

[Rycal]

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@MI5 wrote:
I would suggest the use of the search function - top right

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To humour you I have just searched "repair water damage" and to my surprise quite a few hits came back including this interesting thread http://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Discussions-Feedback/02-Water-Warranty-Scam-could-you-be-affected/m-p/4...

I did say it needed to be looked into. I now even more strongly emphasize that!

[Anonymous]

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@Rycal wrote:

I did say it needed to be looked into. 

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But by the Police not O2.

O2 may well be complicit already because of the timespan over which this has been occurring.

Likewise the account hacking.

[Anonymous]

O2s repair service is truly shocking and I fear it will only get worse with the more cuts they are making