Took in a Sony Xperia Z3 compact for a screen repair and waited over a week before phoning in to check on the progress, to be notified it had been ready for some time - I hadn't received a text. However, this in itself didn't bother me, seeing as my temporary nokia might have been acting up.
I collected the phone on the day of a trip, and so when I finally used it some days later I found the screen was a poor quality third party screen that shrank everything on the display, altered colours and wasn't very responsive to touch. The screen was sticking out from the phone, there were patches of discolouration on-screen, the sim card wasn't being read and the sound wasn't working. The screen then stopped being responsive altogether. I phoned the shop informing them of the problems and explaining that I couldn't make it back up to the shop for another week, which I was told was fine.
Upon entering the shop I cheerfully told the man at the desk I had phoned in earlier in the week and relayed the problems. He immediately looked sceptical and irritated. I nervously mentioned that my friend, the head of tech support at an international company had thought the backing had just been pushed in too forcibly and set a chain of problems off. I was then given sarcasm about my friends' knowledge, - with him actually asking about his background - told that it was 'impossible' to have a 'wrong' screen put on. When I repeated I had said 'third party' rather than 'wrong' like an iPhone screen, he just became more irritated. I was then accused of breaking the phone myself, bitterly asked if I just wanted a 'proper' screen - as if that was the only problem, and as if a decent screen was too much to ask - and repeatedly told it was my fault for not having brought the phone in immediately rather than taken my booked flight. I was also told *repeatedly* they checked the phones over before sending them out and they had no obligation to fix it for free. I couldn't believe then that after all that he had the gall to angrily ask me "what I wanted." To which I could only reply, somewhat baffled, "I just want it to work." I was being polite but he really couldn't resist repeating things and insinuating I was untrustworthy and too incompetent to be taken seriously.
I wouldn't be writing this if the repair went wrong and was sorted politely. I hadn't cared about the time, a mistake, or the price. But when I went to pick up the phone after he had agreed to take a look at it and 'review CCTV' of the repair, he repeated again - as if I could have forgotten the prior horrible exchange - that I had been the one to break it and I had merely gotten lucky that they decided to 'foot the bill for me' [I had already paid £70 to have my phone broken, be treated rudely and have it take over two weeks to get sorted.] Just before I left, I asked out of curiosity why my sim card had been affected, to which he replied with a great smugness that it had been rammed into the memory card slot by accident; insinuating bitterly and with no subtlety whatsoever that I was the idiot for not noticing. (Rather than being apologetic they had that to add to the list of mistakes.) I would not have cared if he had simply apologised, said the policy was to review the repair and CCTV and get back to me, but he seemed incapable of not injecting a bizarre amount of personal condescension, distrust, judgement and bitterness. I may even have written a good review about them trusting me. What has brought me to write this is that in spite of all of this and being £70 down, the sound still doesn't work and I have that man's sourness in my memory from now until I lose my marbles. read more
