My launch day s3 just died :(

[koiulpoi]

When you call up Samsung support do they send you to Sprint saying the warranty isn't handled by them because they aren't the carrier or the place you bought it from?

I once had a case of a Boost Mobile customer who was referred to Motorola for warranty support, come back a couple days later with an email printout, saying "Motorola authorizes you to fix my phone!" So, yeah, it does happen. I feel like that was a one-in-a-million situation, however.

 

When your phone breaks due to no fault of your own, I think the last thing you want to point out is that the competitors have an easier warranty program in place.

If you're in year 2 at Verizon and your phone breaks "due to no fault of your own" and you're not paying for their protection plan, you have no option for repair or replacement. You're still in contract, but they won't touch it. Period. Have fun finding one on Ebay or buying a refurb. Sprint will at least honor that $50 S&R charge, year 2, year 3...

 

And let's not even get in to failures that are customer fault but will never never ever be admitted to, or even consciously known about.

[jsa]

So what types of issues does the $50 cover? Wondering if I should get rid of one half or the other of my TEP, since both the premium and deductible are so high.

[jamesinclair]

If you're in year 2 at Verizon and your phone breaks "due to no fault of your own" and you're not paying for their protection plan, you have no option for repair or replacement. You're still in contract, but they won't touch it. Period. Have fun finding one on Ebay or buying a refurb. Sprint will at least honor that $50 S&R charge, year 2, year 3...

 

And let's not even get in to failures that are customer fault but will never never ever be admitted to, or even consciously known about.

 

Not one hundred percent true, its handled on a case by case basis. IE: If the warranty ended last week, and youre a 5 year customer, it will be handled at no cost. On the other ends, early upgrades arent exactly rare (again, depending on your personal history).

 

Also, many times reps will add the warranty (even when its not open enrollment) and tell you to wait a couple of days to call Asurion.

 

That being said, Id prefer a mix of both, wouldnt you? Hassle free in-warranty returns (no cost) and for a fee out of warranty repairs.

[koiulpoi]

Not one hundred percent true, its handled on a case by case basis. IE: If the warranty ended last week, and youre a 5 year customer, it will be handled at no cost. On the other ends, early upgrades arent exactly rare (again, depending on your personal history).

 

Also, many times reps will add the warranty (even when its not open enrollment) and tell you to wait a couple of days to call Asurion.

 

That being said, Id prefer a mix of both, wouldnt you? Hassle free in-warranty returns (no cost) and for a fee out of warranty repairs.

And the same is true on Sprint's side of things (although I bet VZW's early upgrades will shrink along with their general upgrade policy), as a CSR will handle things depending on account history, etc. The fact that fees can be waived is, um, a bit irrelevant to a discussion of policy.

 

Also, I do believe putting insurance on after the incident has occurred and claiming it happened after coverage started is called insurance fraud and is rather illegal, "open enrollment" or not. But, we're not discussing insurance; Asurion does not handle warranty claims in any way beyond 30-day reships of their own refurbished phones when they are Out-Of-Box Defective.

 

Of course, such a mix would be better. I still prefer Sprint's methodology over VZW's.

[Fraydog]

Verizon is a horse of horrors with warranty issues. With their likely move to kill contracts, it's gonna get worse.

[4ktvs]

Verizon is a horse of horrors with warranty issues. With their likely move to kill contracts, it's gonna get worse.

I know this well. It took 10 calls to tech support before they replaced my phone the first time for signal issues. Took a FCC and BBB filing the 2nd time. I had to say they ware throttling me because I could not put my sim into a 2nd phone and they said the phone was "fine". After I had sent my videos to the FCC and told them about the issue, I will just say Verizon made thing's work. But then they took flash player support away in 4.0.4 when it should have still worked. The update broke so many thing's that I nearly sued Verizon in small claims court. It was a Droid branded phone, so I felt like they ware the ones to pin down. If it was a galaxy s4 then I would have pined Samsung, but because Verizon branded it under there "Droid" trade mark and Motorola didn't want to deal with it I pined it on Verizon. In truth I likely could have taken them both to small claims court and asked for a full refund of 600-650+ sales tax. On top of that I would have gotten $5000 from Verizon if I had won and that would have not been hard because they still had flash support listed on there web site along with ICS even though flash player did not work any more on that phone with that update.