Some Advice

It sucks when your phone breaks. You need that phone. Your stuff is on that phone. And there are people just waiting to help get it fixed for you. But things often go a bit wrong... so some advice might help.


We will check your fault. If you say the phone gets up and walks away while you're writing a text message, we will write a text message and watch what happens. If you say the phone doesn't turn on, we will attempt to turn it on.
So please tell us what is happening! I see tickets with "Fault: N/A", "Fault: the thingie doesn't go", "Fault: phone is broken"... If I'm not sure what's happening, I will mark the phone No Fault Found and send it to the call centre so they can call you up and ask you what's going on. I am not, NOT, sending a phone as repaired unless I know it works.
And please don't lie! I catch customers every day in outright, simple, easily-caught lies. This doesn't just mean scammers who lie about the phone being broken at all; this also means people who add a few 'extra' faults to their ticket to make it all sound more serious. We will test. We will find out. Then we will repair only what is actually broken.

Liquids are bad, bad, not repairable, and out of warranty. People send in phones saying there's liquid damage. This does make it quick and easy for me to document it and send the phone back as unrepairable, but it wastes the customer's time. I also get phones asking if they can get a quote for an out of warranty repair for liquid - that's a reasonable idea, but a look through the manual or a quick search online will confirm that it can't be done.

Take care of your phone. The majority of the phones I see are scratched, dinged, dirty or absolutely filthy. This does have an immediate connection to why these phones are in for repair. Get a case. Avoid duststorms. Try not to drop it much. Avoid steam. You're carrying delicate electronics around with you - sometimes, life just happens, but a little caution will seriously improve the odds you never need a repair.

If you won't read the manual, at least look questions up online. These little dohickeys are complicated. They have a crapload of features, and apps, and bells, and whistles. If you can't find a setting or your phone is doing something odd, a quick scan through the manual's table of contents or a quick web search could save you a lot of time sending it in. Not always, but definitely worth a shot!

It's Not Me, It's You

It's been a long day. 10 hours, to be specific. The new 'Tuesday Ten' that we've been bribed into by offering us a short day Fridays.

Here we have a contrasting pair of tickets. In the first one, I know all too well what the customer is thinking; in the second one, I don't know well enough.

"Phone will not end calls, but behaves as if call has ended, this fault has run up massive bills for the customer as the call will not actually end as it implies."

Look, I know you had to try it, but sorry. That's not how it works. I feel ya, but try and arrange a payment plan.

"home screen load up screen goes blank and icon load one by one and freezes battery life is poor"

Is this translated from the original Martian? This phone was on the setup screens... as in, at some point it was given a new software install and then never used until I got it. This... does not make it easier to guess what the hell you're on about.

And then we have the usual run...

"showing as memory full, wont off write text and open keyboard for texting"

If you have undeletable gems of wisdom, go put them in a blog like everyone else. If not, just delete your old texts already. That's all I'm going to do.

Tickets of the Day

"When the lady goes on gallery from her phone it says DELETE SOME ITEMS but the phone has alot of space on there."

Translation: when the customer opens the photo gallery app, a message appears advising her that there is not enough memory left for more pictures, and she should delete some items to create space. She does not want to delete any photos, so she sent the phone in for repair instead.

If you don't know why this is funny, welcome to the blog.

The phone information (in Settings!) said that the phone had 11.35 GB of memory, and that 10.25 GB of it was taken up by photos and/or videos; after the memory taken up by other things as well, the phone had 120 Mb of space free. This is... not 'alot'.

The good news is, now she has a lot more free space on her phone...

Another happy customer! I like to help.

"headpeace and ear peace not working unable to hear anyone vice versa"

Setting aside the sorry state of the educational system that produced this, I've just been paid, in real money, to raise the volume in your phone settings.

So... you're welcome?