Faulty iPhone XS max Apple & O2 refuse to fix unless I pay over £300

[kmck]

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 

[BankFodder]

First thing is to forget the warranty. You are protected under the Consumer Rights Act and you are entitled to purchase a telephone which is of satisfactory quality and remains that way for a reasonable period of time. If after a year of use it develops a fault which apparently will cost £300 to repair then this is scarcely satisfactory quality in the eyes of any reasonable consumer.

Who did you buy it from? Your action is against the retailer. I have no doubt that you will have to threaten legal action and maybe issue the papers. In fact probably you will have to issue the papers. It's really discouraging that this is the way that it seems to be with all of these companies and they tend to set their face against their customers and good customer service.

What documentation have you got to support any of the discussions you have had? Are you able to get some evidence of the fault? A video of the screen flicker et cetera. You should start accumulating all of this evidence as quickly as possible.

Who did you buy it from?

[kmck]

 

@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. 

[dx100uk]

unless you signed a sep credit agreement under the consumer credit act covering your payment for the phone, it's not part of the contract and you are not 'paying it off'...it's a free gift for taking out the contract.

[BankFodder]

When you say you bought it from O2 – you mean from an O2 shop or online from O2 – but not from some third-party shop?

From the sounds of it you have an excellent report from Apple – and who would know better if not Apple. I don't think you need to do anything more.

Have you sent the report to O2? If so when? And what response of the given you?

I can tell you that if you send the phone off to O2 NOW and ask them to carry out their inspection, they will take probably a couple of months or so. They may end up simply sending the phone to Apple. Furthermore, they may well tell you that you will have to pay a fee for their inspection. In the end, even if they find that there is a fault, they will probably want to charge you for repairing the phone.

It's clear that you have a faulty phone and Apple have confirmed that and that it is not as a result of misuse. Excellent. Not only that, you submitted the faulty phone within the warranty period but even if you hadn't, you would still be covered by the consumer rights act which provides that you are entitled to have goods of satisfactory quality and that they should remain in satisfactory condition for a reasonable period of time. A telephone which needs over £300 worth repair after only one year of use is clearly not satisfactory – especially when we are talking about fault which you tell us has been documented over the Internet.

I suggest that you start collecting screenshots and any other information as evidence of the complaints that are being made about exactly the same problem.

Assuming that you have already provided the Apple evidence to O2 and they have either declined or not responded then the next step is to send a letter of claim.

Unfortunately with these companies, it simply not worth allowing things to drag on too much. The pattern is that it takes the claim papers to produce a response and then they start to take you seriously. Read around this forum about the steps involved taking a small claim in the County Court and make sure you understand the broad pattern of events.

If you are prepared to take this kind of action then let us know and we will help you with the next step.