@BankFodder Thank you for the advice. I bought it from O2 and have an ongoing contract to pay off the phone. I am sending it off for them to assess and quote how much it is to fix and then plan to argue the case once they have told me what is wrong with it even though Apple have diagnosed the problem. I have a printed and email copy of the diagnosis from Apple themselves from September when it first began which states it does not appear to be down to misuse or negligence and also have recordings of the original issues and the new issue that has began.

Hello! I hope this is alright, it's my first time posting in here but I am hoping to seek some advice. I have the iPhone XS Max and I am on a 3 year contract with O2. I have had the phone since the 9th September 2019 on September 14th 2020 just over a year old I started to experience a common technical fault with the phone known as 'ghost touch' where the interface acts as if someone is using the phone without touching it, Apple are aware of the issue and were offering free repairs but for the XR only not the XS. They refused to fix it for free as the phone was 5 days out of the 1 year manufacturing warranty and expected me to pay £300+ to fix something that the genius appointment diagnosed as a technical fault and not down to negligence on my behalf. O2 said the same thing, I went back and forth between the companies telling me to contact the other party. After a few days of leaving the phone off I turned it back on and it was working perfectly fine so I thought maybe it was due to an update or something so thought nothing of it. Yesterday it began to happen again, but this time the display flickers and rang the emergency services without me touching anything (I was mortified). I managed to use my mum's phone to video what it was doing before I turned it off, it was letting off loads of bright light and it was like strobe lighting. I sent the video to Apple and they said I have to speak to the phone provider. After spending almost 2 hours on hold to O2 they said I need to send it off for repair to see what is wrong with it but they said that due to it being out of the warranty that I will have to pay to fix it even though it is down to a manufacturing issue. I asked about claiming my consumer rights and they said that if I wanted to do that I would have to prove that the phone was faulty when I first started the contract. I am lost on how to resolve this and I cannot afford to fix this issue, I would be more understanding if I had smashed the screen etc but I refuse to pay for something that they all know is down to an internal manufacturing issue. I still have another 2 years left to pay off the phone!! Thanks in advance