Abysmal HTC customer service

[Graham_UK]

As I write this im really really angry with HTC. My Desire HD went in for repair after the touch screen stopped working. Why a 2 month old phone should be faulty is beyond me.

Long story cut short. Despite several calls to HTC UK customer service over the last 2 weeks they had no idea where my phone was; the conversations I had with them all started with "it hasn't arrived" and I got pretty fed up of explaining that UPS had confirmed it had. I was promised return calls that never arrived, was promised my case would be escalated, which on a subsequent call it never was. To top it all, when HTC admitted to losing my phone, they agreed to send me a new one out - which they never - it was a refurb with a scratch on the back case by the lens.

My phone had a scratch on it (which I had offered them money to repair), so perhaps I shouldn't be too harsh if they return a phone with a scratch on - however, the point is they have replaced what was essentially a new phone with a refurbished phone (that could be much older) because of a fault they created by losing my phone and despite confirming with me the phone sent out would be new.

Should I be angry with what they have done or just accept it and move on?

Presently the phone is in the box and I plan to kick up a stink, but wondered if im over reacting or not or if HTC customer service really is that bad.

 

[El Presidente]

I don't think you should feel bad about being angry, if I'd sent my phone away for repair and I'd received and imperfect, refurbished replacement.

You can't expect every phone to come off the factory line to work perfectly, but given you've paid such a high price for the phone, and the less than seamless experience you've had with customer service, I don't think it's unreasonable to get an adequate replacement.

 

[Graham_UK]

Cheers, El Presidente

I contacted HTC today and the lady I spoke to fully understood my concerns. She has been the first person to even mention refurb, as in HTC would 'normally' only send out refurbs. She has escalated to the complaints department and said i should expect a call within 3 days.

 

[Red_Avatar]

I'd be pretty pissed off myself and it happened to me with Samsung. I had the Samsung 226bw screen which was very popular. The backlight broke and I sent it in for repairs only to get back a refurbished unit. I had several problems with it:

a) the backlight showed considerable age (a regular backlight will be white when new and grow more yellow over time) - this one was very yellow

b) the panel itself (the reason I had bought the screen originally) was completely misconfigured colour-wise. As a graphic designer, I wanted a good screen for gaming and designing but my colour calibration device couldn't correct it well enough - turns out I had a cheaper panel and because the screen was so popular, they had to use panels that were of inferior quality. My original screen had the high-quality panel yet the refurbished unit was not only more yellow in colour, it also had the cheapest of panels.

I contacted them telling them that this screen was not acceptable and did not perform any longer according to the specs. I never got a response back except for a standard one stating something along the lines of "a refurbished unit is a perfectly working unit that will perform adequately bla bla". So yeah

It's no use saying you'll never buy any of their hardware anymore because all firms are like that today. They outsource everything they can and getting a straight answer or help from them requires a ridiculous amount of effort.

 

[Graham_UK]

To add the conclusion to this sorry tale.....

I never waited 3 days to get my call back as I knew i had a 50-50 chance of it happening. When I called them after 2 days I was told that they would not change the phone (the decision had been made but no one had bothered to call back again) and after much debate they decided to replace the damaged front and rear panels of the phone and reassured me the innards were new. I sat and thought about this for awhile and decided that I couldnt go through the whole hastle of being without my phone for another 2 weeks onto of the 4 I had waited already. I called HTC back and spoke to Izzy who I had spoken too before and had been the only member of the HTC call team to return my calls as promised (give her a promotion HTC - your other staff could learn a lot). To cut a long story short, I received a spare battery and data cable for my trouble so im happy again to have a working phone......but wheather HTC will get my custom on my next contract renewal is a different story .....(what are other manufactureres like for customer service?)

 

[ninja_reject]

Next time with a new phone, I would shell out for insurance through the provider. It covers a lot more, and I think they replace with new, not refurbished phones (dont quote me). You guys are so lucky to get the Sensation first!

 

[Deleted User]

HTC are having EXTREME issues dealing with repairs. Just an FYI for those thinking of using their repair centres here in the UK

See here:

HTC Repair Complaint | Facebook

and the comments on this blog post:

HTC Repair Complaint – My Customer Service Nightmare Stewart Nash

I have not had a phone for nearly 6 weeks and the problem is still ongoing!