O2 and iPhone: A Match Made in Customer Services Hell

My iPhone loud speaker has died. I can hear the phone when I am on a call as the speaker for holding it up to ones ear is fine, the bluetooth is fine, but the loud speaker isn't.

This damned device, the second one i've had to break whilst still under contract, has become such an integrated part of my life that some of my normal daily functions are actually effected.

I am suprised at just how much of my routine has been effected:

• My Morning Alarm


• My Cooking Timer


• Receiving Phone Calls


• Tuning my Guitar


• No Music as I go to sleep at night

These are the things which effect my daily routine, but there's more like in the office the other day I wanted to Shazaam a song that came on the radio... But where's my Shazaam app? Oh it's back at the O2 repair & returns centre.

But surely if it's at the O2 repair & returns centre i'll be getting it back soon right?

I don't know, probably not. Maybe never.

See, like every iPhone ever made mine has had the audacity to break down after the first year. I don't see this as a problem. Apples 1 year manufacturers warranty is Apple's business and as a consumer i'm much more protected than the terms of the Apple warranty.

The Sale of Goods Act covers me up to 6 years IF I can prove that it is reasonable to expect my phone to have lasted that long.

Well it's under contract, so how hard could it possibly be?

It took me a week to get O2 to finaly get a response from their legal team, and check this out, "Yes. It obliges us to send the phone to the repair centre for free but any work done on it is not covered.".

I tried being nice and polite but in the end I gave them a letter I took off the watchdog/rogue trader website specifically for the purpose giving them 7 days or i'd see them in court. This seemed to progress things.

Until they came back saying "I'm sorry we cannot repair the phone it has liquid damage.".

I was confused. This did not make sense to me.

From the nature of the fault I was pretty sure the phone had a damaged wire or broken connector on the loud speaker connection. I'm not a mobile phone engineer but I was curious as to how this could be liquid damage!

I asked them to prevenance this and they sent me a photo of a liquid damage sensor.

Yes, the iPhone has a liquid damage sensor. This was news to me too, and it's got two of them. One on the speaker jack and one on the dock connector. Confused, I did some research on this sensor, the terms of Apples warranty, and I chased O2 hard for an actual fault description.

I'll make a seperate post about the liquid sensor at another time, but suffice to say that the damage to the phone was not caused by water, and the water sensor status is most likely a false positive and is definitely an irrellevence to this fault because actually after many phone calls I have the engineering report and according to that the fault is with a cracked connector jack, and plastic doesnt perish in water.

The Apple warranty is Apples business (my contract is with O2) although it is very specific that it does not cover liquid damage, not that it does not cover liquid damaged phones, and as the status of the sensor is unrelated to the fault on my phone I dont see the rellevence. Also my research shows that the water status indicator on the iPhone is capable of false positives and infact has most likely been designed to induce them (more on that another time).

I am still waiting for O2 to respond to my findings, they've ignored my research on the sensor and are yet to reply on the issue of the damage to the phone not being liquid related.

My experience of this high end luxury very expensive item has been a nightmare, the phone is great - but the damned things don't work and O2 will try anything to avoid dealing with their customer services responsibilities.

My faith in Apples design & manufacturing has been effected by my run of faulty phones.

My faith in O2's customer services and their approach to their legal obligations to me as a customer are severely dissapointing.

I now consider it most likely I will permanently leave both companies. The question is whether I take them to court first to force them to fulfill their contractual obligations at least until I am able to stop paying it, or if I can find some way to force the cancellation of my contract so that I can go elsewhere - perhaps on the grounds that they have breached the contract.

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