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My launch day s3 just died :(


mc_gusto

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Both sprint stores told me the same thing. They said its free if i go through samsung. But otherwise i would have to fork over the 50. Maybe its new for the s3. Not sure. can any sprint ppl comment on this? I also thought it was gonna be free for the replacement for 1 year.

 

Got it today. Looks great. Now to reload everything.

 

Yeah this doesnt sound right, 1 year warranty is supposed to mean if its a manufacturers defect, you get a free replacement.

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Ive worked preferred retailer repair stores and now a corp store that does advanced exchanges, if you have tep or add it this month with open enrollment you can get it replaced at the store for free in a day or so. Alternatively you can call samsung, they will provide you a RA number and u ship them your phone. They will repair or replace it if they consider the issue is under the limited warranty. It can take up to 2-3 weeks, going through spirit is quicker and easier in my opinion.

 

Sent from my LG-LS970 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

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Ive worked preferred retailer repair stores and now a corp store that does advanced exchanges, if you have tep or add it this month with open enrollment you can get it replaced at the store for free in a day or so. Alternatively you can call samsung, they will provide you a RA number and u ship them your phone. They will repair or replace it if they consider the issue is under the limited warranty. It can take up to 2-3 weeks, going through spirit is quicker and easier in my opinion.

 

Sent from my LG-LS970 using Tapatalk 2

 

Ever heard of the $50 charge for those of us without tep or who choose not to enroll?

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You get a free replacement by dealing with the manufacturer, meaning you're down a phone for a couple of weeks.

 

Dont the other major cell companies have you deal with them directly, and not the manufacturer, when it comes to warranty replacements?

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March is open enrollment. Call cust care and add tep or be friendly with a sprint rep, the system will allow us to add tep anytime its just against policy. Or call cust care and switch phones, they will ask u to add tep anytime u swap phones, then swap back to your broken phone and presto you have tep

 

Sent from my LG-LS970 using Tapatalk 2

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True but you can always try another Sprint repair center if you don't like the similar phone. I know one offered me a Motorola Photon when they didn't have an Epic (OG) in stock. Kicker was I had to wait until the middle of the week to get either device so I visited another store to get another Epic.

 

All together the process is a great value to consumers. Typically defective devices should be handled through the manufacturer so this is really a great service they offer.

 

Unfortunately most people don't view it this way. They EXPECT the carrier to handle warranty issues directly, for free, immediately, with a new (not refurbished) device. Even if the issue is software, or repairable.

 

Welcome to my day, every day.

 

 

March is open enrollment. Call cust care and add tep or be friendly with a sprint rep, the system will allow us to add tep anytime its just against policy. Or call cust care and switch phones, they will ask u to add tep anytime u swap phones, then swap back to your broken phone and presto you have tep

 

Sent from my LG-LS970 using Tapatalk 2

 

Open Enrollment requirements state the phone must not have issues with it to be eligible... officially. Just sayin'... :ninja: Your mileage may vary, if you are denied don't get angry because that's the way it is supposed to be.

 

 

Yeah this doesnt sound right, 1 year warranty is supposed to mean if its a manufacturers defect, you get a free replacement.

 

It's a manufacturer warranty. Sprint is not the manufacturer. Sprint will play the middle man for you, for a fee.

 

 

Ever heard of the $50 charge for those of us without tep or who choose not to enroll?

 

The Repair/Exchange fee if you do not have ESRP or TEP is $50.

 

If you have either of those Sprint protection plans then it is free.

 

Honestly, I think the exchange fee should be more around the $100-200 range with today's smartphones as that's usually the cost associated with sending the device back to be refurbished/etc.

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Unfortunately most people don't view it this way. They EXPECT the carrier to handle warranty issues directly, for free, immediately, with a new (not refurbished) device. Even if the issue is software, or repairable.

 

Welcome to my day, every day.

 

 

 

 

Open Enrollment requirements state the phone must not have issues with it to be eligible... officially. Just sayin'... :ninja: Your mileage may vary, if you are denied don't get angry because that's the way it is supposed to be.

 

 

 

 

It's a manufacturer warranty. Sprint is not the manufacturer. Sprint will play the middle man for you, for a fee.

 

 

 

 

The Repair/Exchange fee if you do not have ESRP or TEP is $50.

 

If you have either of those Sprint protection plans then it is free.

 

Honestly, I think the exchange fee should be more around the $100-200 range with today's smartphones as that's usually the cost associated with sending the device back to be refurbished/etc.

 

Thanks for the clarification! Do you know when sprint stopped doing 1yr replacements for free. I remember way back when I did it for free a couple of times.

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Thanks for the clarification! Do you know when sprint stopped doing 1yr replacements for free. I remember way back when I did it for free a couple of times.

 

At least a couple years. Before I switched from sales to tech.

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At least a couple years. Before I switched from sales to tech.

 

10/23/2010 is when the new policy went in to effect.

I don't think Sprint was in the wrong for changing their policy but I do agree it is more inconvenient.

 

This is why I signed up for ESRP ... $4/mo is reasonable for having continuous, in-store repair from day 31 until whenever I change phones (including after 1 year). There's too many easy things that can go wrong with phones and I'm willing to pay $4/mo to not deal with having to mail my phone in to the manufacturer, be without a phone for several weeks, etc.

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It's a manufacturer warranty. Sprint is not the manufacturer. Sprint will play the middle man for you, for a fee.

 

The industry standard (Verizon and AT&T) handle warranty claims directly, at no cost. If its a full-price phone it makes sense to go to the manufacturer. For a contract? not so much.

 

When the standard is set, and youre offering a policy that is less convenient, thats not a good thing at all. Especially because people switch from carrier to carrier and come to expect certain policies.

 

Especially when the same is true of other industries...

 

When you buy a car, you rarely ever buy it from the manufacturer, you buy it from the middle man. But they will handle warranty claims directly, at no cost. When Toyota has a recall, you dont send your car to Tennessee for three weeks, you go to the middle-man you bought it from and it's fixed on the spot.

 

When your Motorola internet modem breaks, you call Comcast and they replace it for free, not Motorolla.

 

The list goes on....if I have a dell laptop, and my NVidea graphics card breaks, I dont call them for the warranty, I call Dell, and theyy fix it (for free).

 

Honestly, I think the exchange fee should be more around the $100-200 range with today's smartphones as that's usually the cost associated with sending the device back to be refurbished/etc.

 

That makes no sense....The whole point of a warranty is an assurance that nothing will go wrong, and if it does, it will be resolved.

 

If the companies dont want to lose out on money, perhaps they should build more reliable products? It's a simple trade off. Cut costs at manufacturing, increase costs when you have to replace your bad product.....

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The industry standard (Verizon and AT&T) handle warranty claims directly, at no cost. If its a full-price phone it makes sense to go to the manufacturer. For a contract? not so much.

 

When the standard is set, and youre offering a policy that is less convenient, thats not a good thing at all. Especially because people switch from carrier to carrier and come to expect certain policies.

 

Sprint used to provide in-store warranty service free of charge. That changed. I do not know the reasoning for this, my best educated guess as a technician in the industry and working with customers daily, is that a few customers out of the many were taking advantage of this system (like always) and it was determined that the cost savings associated with no longer offering this would outweigh potential (and unlikely) subscriber loses associated with it. As an upshot, it also likely would drive more customers to purchase Sprint's protection plans as they would effectively cover not only warranty issues in store, but also wear and tear damage on the devices as well, and potentially lost/stolen/liquid if customers went with TEP and not just ESRP.

 

When you buy a car, you rarely ever buy it from the manufacturer, you buy it from the middle man. But they will handle warranty claims directly, at no cost. When Toyota has a recall, you dont send your car to Tennessee for three weeks, you go to the middle-man you bought it from and it's fixed on the spot.

 

Not all dealers provide warranty service, and they are not required to. Again, Sprint does not make the devices, Sprint just sells authorizes their use on the network, and provides a direct sales channel to customers. There's nothing preventing you from purchasing your Sprint authorized phone from any place other than a Sprint store, Best Buy, RadioShack, Amazon, etc. all sell the devices as well. Do you think they should be required to provide warranty service as well? Because that's exactly what Sprint's sales channels are in comparison to the manufacturers of the devices.

 

When your Motorola internet modem breaks, you call Comcast and they replace it for free, not Motorolla

 

Actually, I would because I own my modem. If I were to be renting it from Comcast, then they would replace it because it is their property. Instead of paying the $3/mo to rent the box, I paid $50 up front and it's mine. It's running on 8 years and counting without issues, because I take care of it (the same can't be said for 90% of the phones I see come into my store for S&R).

 

The list goes on....if I have a dell laptop, and my NVidea graphics card breaks, I dont call them for the warranty, I call Dell, and they fix it (for free).

 

That is because Dell offers their own warranty on their pre-built computers. Computers that they manufacture The physical hardware in the laptop also has a warranty from the individual part manufacturer usually. You could go through nVidia to get it replaced if you wanted in most cases, but Dell offers a more convenient warranty option. They even advertise their own warranty on their products that they build. Sprint does not build the phones, Sprint just sells them. This is where people seem to get things confused all the time.

 

If the companies dont want to lose out on money, perhaps they should build more reliable products? It's a simple trade off. Cut costs at manufacturing, increase costs when you have to replace your bad product.....

 

Again, this doesn't have to do with Sprint. Sprint does not make the phones; HTC, Samsung, LG, ZTE, etc. do and they have their own warranty service options.

 

Sprint offers TEP and ESRP to cover the manufacturer's warranty in store with no charge. Sprint also offers a very reasonably priced $50 deductible essentially for the convenience of having your phone serviced in store instead of having to go through the manufacturer. This is not your only option, and the free alternative is to go through the phone manufacturer instead. Sprint no longer wants to be the middle man eating the cost of products being exchanged that aren't going to be covered by the manufacturer under the warranty.

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Actually, I would because I own my modem. If I were to be renting it from Comcast, then they would replace it because it is their property. Instead of paying the $3/mo to rent the box, I paid $50 up front and it's mine. It's running on 8 years and counting without issues, because I take care of it (the same can't be said for 90% of the phones I see come into my store for S&R).

 

Which is why its the same as Sprint...

 

When youre under contract, youre effectively renting the phone for the duration of the contract. Sign a new two year contract with Sprint and ask them to unlock your sim (obviously for the phone that has it). Theyll say " no until x days have passed". They can do this because by getting a subsidized phone, youre essentially renting it - it's not fully your phone.

 

Which is why Sprint should provide the warranty service. As I said, if you buy full price, then yes, it makes sense to talk to the manufacturer. But as long as youre locked in, the point of contact is Sprint.

 

When your phone is acting up, and you call customer care, do they transfer you to Sprint Tier 2 tech....or to the Samsung phone system?

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Which is why its the same as Sprint...

 

When youre under contract, youre effectively renting the phone for the duration of the contract. Sign a new two year contract with Sprint and ask them to unlock your sim (obviously for the phone that has it). Theyll say " no until x days have passed". They can do this because by getting a subsidized phone, youre essentially renting it - it's not fully your phone.

 

Which is why Sprint should provide the warranty service. As I said, if you buy full price, then yes, it makes sense to talk to the manufacturer. But as long as youre locked in, the point of contact is Sprint.

 

When your phone is acting up, and you call customer care, do they transfer you to Sprint Tier 2 tech....or to the Samsung phone system?

 

Actually, that's not the reason the SIM is locked and you can only unlock it after a set time. The time frame is set to avoid fraudulent account activity. World phones have an exponentially higher fraud risk than non-world phones. The delay is designed to be long enough that fraudulent accounts/purchases/etc. are unlikely to occur. Fraud in the mobile telecom business is HUGE and most policies that seem anti-consumer are in place because of fraudulent activity in the past. Cell phone locking by carriers is covered under the DMCA (whether it should be or not is up for a debate in another thread). The ability to unlock your phone is not a protected consumer right in the U.S. (yet), and most US carriers have limitations on unlocking devices. I would also point out that every Sprint world phone released to date (except the iPhone) is unlocked out of the box.

 

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? No, they handle the warranty because they made the product. They may recommend that you go another route like through a carrier S&R store because it would be faster, but they also provide their own support options (the same as Sprint recommending you go through the manufacturer if you don't have Sprint's protection plans because it would be free instead).

 

All of this is pointless. Sprint does not provide warranty support for free, they are not required to, they aren't going to change this fact because a handful of people don't think it's right when the business bottom line results in millions of cost savings by not doing so. It's a business, during a recession, still recovering after a horribly failed Nextel merger, maintaining two separate networks, in the midst of a $20 billion network replacement, while still maintaining lower prices than the competition in most cases.

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Sprint does not provide warranty support for free, they are not required to

 

Youre right, but I think its bad policy, and bad business.

 

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.

 

Personally, Ive never had to get a phone replaced, but if I did with Sprint it would leave a very sour note.

 

Id just like the point out that one reason Walmart is such a successful business is because they have what is probably the most flexible return policy in the industry. Does it cost them? Yup, probably hundreds of millions - but they make it back in customer loyalty.

 

(Personally I buy my electronics at Costco for the same reason - warranty).

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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.

 

For 99.9% of customers, warranty policies aren't even a consideration. I'd put money on MAYBE 1 In 10,000 customers having an issue. In 5 years I've had no customers complain about warranty and exchange policies in store, if it were a big issue I think I would have seen at least one by now.

 

Id just like the point out that one reason Walmart is such a successful business is because they have what is probably the most flexible return policy in the industry. Does it cost them? Yup, probably hundreds of millions - but they make it back in customer loyalty.

 

No, Wal-Mart is just cheaper. There is no real brand loyalty to them, they just undercut everyone else in the area and once competition is gone they bring prices back to normal.

 

Their policy is flexible because they sell everything and even if they didn't sell it, the number of warranty returns to vendors are just a drop in the bucket compared to their overall business.

 

You are comparing a multinational retail conglomerate that treats their employees like complete shit (I have numerous friends that have worked for them over the years), to a phone carrier. There is no comparison.

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Youre right, but I think its bad policy, and bad business.

 

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.

 

Personally, Ive never had to get a phone replaced, but if I did with Sprint it would leave a very sour note.

 

Id just like the point out that one reason Walmart is such a successful business is because they have what is probably the most flexible return policy in the industry. Does it cost them? Yup, probably hundreds of millions - but they make it back in customer loyalty.

 

(Personally I buy my electronics at Costco for the same reason - warranty).

 

unless you purchase an exteneded warranty at one of these retailers your warranty claims are suppose to be directed thru the manufacturer. Many items actually state this on the warranty documentation.

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A subsidized phone is not a rented phone. It's a loan. My bank does not care if my car dies and needs a new engine. I still must make the payment as agreed, and I still need to get it fixed or replace it. Whether Ford offers a warranty and will replace or fix it is of no consequence to the lender.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

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Obviously it's not a loan or a rental, and is a sale where the purchaser is receiving favorable pricing based on agreeing to subscribe to the carrier's service for a certain term. Simple enough.

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If it were a loan, the cell industry would be under much strictly financial rules.
Obviously it's not a loan or a rental, and is a sale where the purchaser is receiving favorable pricing based on agreeing to subscribe to the carrier's service for a certain term. Simple enough.

 

It is a loan. It's just not a recognized loan product that is managed by Federal regulation. It's no different than if the mob gives you money, but you have to guarantee paying them back through "services" in the future. You're paying it back, and over a period. We can call it anything we want. We can call it a loan, we can call it a subsidy, we can call it extortion, it doesn't matter. But it's nothing resembling a rental.

 

Customers agree to pay the subsidized price back through services through the duration of a contract, in place of paying full price. It has a real and tangible value.

 

They are not renting anything. It's their phone. They can even sell it before the end of the contract and someone else can pay them and activate it. But they are still on the hook "paying back" that subsidy until the end of their contract. Or pay the ETF, which again, pays the subsidy off.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

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And now of course I'm getting multiple camera fails on the new refurbished unit. Oy vey.

 

Sent from my cm_tenderloin using Tapatalk HD

 

The camera is easily replaceable on the S3. A Service and Repair store should be able to swap that out no problem.

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On a side note to this....pay the fee in store and then go home and complain to the chat reps and they will credit you back the fee....done this a few times when my 3VO had software issues....you just can't give up when they say no....

 

I have always seen this as a silly policy ever since coming over from AT&T. And for a while Sprint had the same policy but then they started the whole $35 repair fee under warranty. I refuse to buy any type of insurance plan on my phone because I take good care of my phones so I am not going to pay a monthly fee for each of my devices and THEN pay a deductible in the event of a loss....its a scam and the $35 fee is ridiculous if you ask me. But I still like Sprint because they have a cheaper plan and unlimited data....you can't get everything.....

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