Help Is anyone returning this phone?

[Outlaw71]

I cant help but be like WTF? Ive jumped from carrier to carrier, phone to phone over the last 3 years, and i have only had a real "defect" once. My original Evo lost all response on the top of its touch screen, sent it back, next one was flawless.

I gotta wonder if people are being a little over dramatic on here.

Seriously?

How many Thunderbolts would you guess HTC has sold since release day? I honestly don't have any clue, but I'd say 50,000 would be a LOW estimate. But we'll use it anyhow just for the sake of argument. So if HTC sold 50,000 T-Bolts, and we were to see 50 complaints on here about them, that would be .01% of customers having problems with their device.

I suspect they've sold more than 50,000. And I don't think we've seen nearly 50 people complain on here. So I'd say the ratio is very, very low. And yet, you can't believe these people are telling the truth? Well I guess you can make that assumption if you want to. But it's just as easy to jump on here and say...

"Who are these people who claim to have ZERO problems out of their phone? Everyone I know has SOME sort of problem every now and then out of their device. What a crock"...

or,

"Do these people really expect me to believe they're getting 10, 12, 16 and 24 hours out of their battery? Heck I barely touch mine and it dies within 6 to 7 hours if it's not plugged in. I've heard some tall tales in my day, but that takes the cake"!

Yeah, it's easy to label someone who isn't getting the same performance out of their device as you are out of yours as 'dramatic'.... but they can turn it right around on you just as easy. So why don't we just let everyone have a turn telling their story without getting to excited about it. Isn't everyone entitled to telling their experience good or bad?

It's so much nicer being able to give an honest review about a product when you don't have to worry about others jumping all over you just because they don't agree with your review.

No reason to assume the worst in people.

 

[joey0480]

My wife and I got our thunderbolts yesterday.

Awesome phone. Been messing around with marketplace and a tad on the internet and battery life is at 60% after 2 1/2 hours.

Hoping this improves in the future, but I have been on it a bit today.

 

[bjanow]

My new thunderbolt will be here monday. Battery life was a not an issue for me. Doing a factory reset fixed my dropping data issues. But no matter what I did I couldn't fix my faulty gps. It often showed me hundreds of miles away or not at all.

I'm wondering that since my battery life was ok should i keep my battery.

did you try this?

Download 'GPS Status and Toolbox' from the market, then hit Menu->Tools->Manage A-GPS state, then hit 'reset' and then repeat the entire procedure again but hit 'download' instead of 'reset'

 

[chris2k5]

Seriously?

How many Thunderbolts would you guess HTC has sold since release day? I honestly don't have any clue, but I'd say 50,000 would be a LOW estimate. But we'll use it anyhow just for the sake of argument. So if HTC sold 50,000 T-Bolts, and we were to see 50 complaints on here about them, that would be .01% of customers having problems with their device.

I suspect they've sold more than 50,000. And I don't think we've seen nearly 50 people complain on here. So I'd say the ratio is very, very low. And yet, you can't believe these people are telling the truth? Well I guess you can make that assumption if you want to. But it's just as easy to jump on here and say...

"Who are these people who claim to have ZERO problems out of their phone? Everyone I know has SOME sort of problem every now and then out of their device. What a crock"...

or,

"Do these people really expect me to believe they're getting 10, 12, 16 and 24 hours out of their battery? Heck I barely touch mine and it dies within 6 to 7 hours if it's not plugged in. I've heard some tall tales in my day, but that takes the cake"!

Yeah, it's easy to label someone who isn't getting the same performance out of their device as you are out of yours as 'dramatic'.... but they can turn it right around on you just as easy. So why don't we just let everyone have a turn telling their story without getting to excited about it. Isn't everyone entitled to telling their experience good or bad?

It's so much nicer being able to give an honest review about a product when you don't have to worry about others jumping all over you just because they don't agree with your review.

No reason to assume the worst in people.

Very naive theory I say. Not everyone has time to go on these forums and most buyers aren't enthusiasts that even go online to discuss the phone. 260,000 were solid in the first two weeks I think of release so I'd say its close to 400,000 or 500,000 by now.

There isn't really a way to know the return rate but from my observations and going to various VZW stores in 4 different states, the reps are saying the return rate is high.

 

[ska.t73]

Very naive theory I say. Not everyone has time to go on these forums and most buyers aren't enthusiasts that even go online to discuss the phone. 260,000 were solid in the first two weeks I think of release so I'd say its close to 400,000 or 500,000 by now.

There isn't really a way to know the return rate but from my observations and going to various VZW stores in 4 different states, the reps are saying the return rate is high.

I've actually been hearing the exact opposite. In fact if the return rate on this phone was high it would be all over the tech blogs. The tech blogs love a good juicy story, and a high return rate on a flagship phone at VZW would be just that.

Outlaw is correct, what you are seeing on this forum and many others is a very small sampling of the overall user base. I help out over on the World of Warcraft Customer Service Forums, and you see the same dynamic over there. People think that the problem they are having is huge and effecting a large group of players because there is a 5 page thread about it. If you take into account the number of players playing the game and the fact that there are really only about 20 people reporting the issue then you realize just how small the issue is.

People that have issues see those issues everywhere, it is called red car syndrome. When you buy a red car, suddenly you see a lot more red cars. You are subconciously noticing the red cars more then you did. It is the same thing here, if you are having a problem you are going to notice a lot more people having the problem. The number of people with the problem didn't go up, but your perception did.

Outlaw is simply pointing out that the people posting problems here, while they may seem like a lot, are a huge minority in the grand scheme of things.

 

[elements]

I thought about it but decided that the upside outweighed the less than perfect battery life. It's too much fun to give back. By comparison anything else that I could get would be a disappointment next to this.

 

[joey0480]

My wife and I got our thunderbolts yesterday.

Awesome phone. Been messing around with marketplace and a tad on the internet and battery life is at 60% after 2 1/2 hours.

Hoping this improves in the future, but I have been on it a bit today.

Well, down to 29% over 9 hours which is so so....moderate usage over 2 hours. I will see if the battery improves before making a decision what to do to it, but the phone is ooohhhh so fun.

 

[chris2k5]

I've actually been hearing the exact opposite. In fact if the return rate on this phone was high it would be all over the tech blogs. The tech blogs love a good juicy story, and a high return rate on a flagship phone at VZW would be just that.

Outlaw is correct, what you are seeing on this forum and many others is a very small sampling of the overall user base. I help out over on the World of Warcraft Customer Service Forums, and you see the same dynamic over there. People think that the problem they are having is huge and effecting a large group of players because there is a 5 page thread about it. If you take into account the number of players playing the game and the fact that there are really only about 20 people reporting the issue then you realize just how small the issue is.

People that have issues see those issues everywhere, it is called red car syndrome. When you buy a red car, suddenly you see a lot more red cars. You are subconciously noticing the red cars more then you did. It is the same thing here, if you are having a problem you are going to notice a lot more people having the problem. The number of people with the problem didn't go up, but your perception did.

Outlaw is simply pointing out that the people posting problems here, while they may seem like a lot, are a huge minority in the grand scheme of things.

The blogs are posting about it. I've seen a couple blog posts on PhoneDog and PhoneArena talking about high return rates. And in many cases, stores are keeping mum about the issue because they want sales.

 

[red66charger]

Seriously?

How many Thunderbolts would you guess HTC has sold since release day? I honestly don't have any clue, but I'd say 50,000 would be a LOW estimate. But we'll use it anyhow just for the sake of argument. So if HTC sold 50,000 T-Bolts, and we were to see 50 complaints on here about them, that would be .01% of customers having problems with their device.

I suspect they've sold more than 50,000. And I don't think we've seen nearly 50 people complain on here. So I'd say the ratio is very, very low. And yet, you can't believe these people are telling the truth? Well I guess you can make that assumption if you want to. But it's just as easy to jump on here and say...

"Who are these people who claim to have ZERO problems out of their phone? Everyone I know has SOME sort of problem every now and then out of their device. What a crock"...

or,

"Do these people really expect me to believe they're getting 10, 12, 16 and 24 hours out of their battery? Heck I barely touch mine and it dies within 6 to 7 hours if it's not plugged in. I've heard some tall tales in my day, but that takes the cake"!

Yeah, it's easy to label someone who isn't getting the same performance out of their device as you are out of yours as 'dramatic'.... but they can turn it right around on you just as easy. So why don't we just let everyone have a turn telling their story without getting to excited about it. Isn't everyone entitled to telling their experience good or bad?

It's so much nicer being able to give an honest review about a product when you don't have to worry about others jumping all over you just because they don't agree with your review.

No reason to assume the worst in people.

Amen, my friend! That is one of most brilliant, level-headed posts I've ever read. If you're ever in the Clearwater, Florida area, drinks (or coffee) are on me. Well done.