3 months ago, I entered a new contract with Orange, who I’ve been with since the year dot.
I got an 18 month contract with an HTC One Mini handset.

Recently, the phone seemed to get pretty buggy, loads of lags and freezes and generally playing up. I phoned up and after they had told me to try several things including factory resets etc, losing all of my settings and general yawnfest that didn’t work, they agreed to replace it, which they did early this week.

The replacement handset I got didn’t come in original packaging but with a courier. It turned out to have a small issue that I noticed right away in that the black part of the screen that meets the aluminium bezel had a small, ragged gap at the bottom which the backlight shone through. Cosmetic issue sure, but seeing as I’m paying several hundred quid over 18 months I got back on the phone to them again.

They agreed to replace again and I got another one last night, again, in an unbranded box. Lo and behold it had the same issue again, but smaller and on the other side of the screen.

Just got off the phone with them again this morning, they’ve agreed to replace AGAIN and also asked if I wanted to switch models.

Out of interest I asked where these replacements came from. The dude said that they were handsets which customers had returned within the 14 day cooling off period given for new contracts. I said, so I’m getting a 2nd-hand phone then?

He said no, they were returned within the cooling off period…
I’m getting a second hand phone right?
Is it ridiculous, given all these admittedly first world problems i’m getting that I should kick up a fuss?

Seems to me I’m paying lots of money for a problematical phone, and it’s second hand to boot!

Flaming or empathy sought please 😀

Fact 1; you’ve signed the contract now.
Fact 2; once that contract is signed they really don’t care about you any more!

Recently had a problem with my wife’s iphone , contract runs to December. They offered to allow us to buy out of the contract early so we could then look at paid upgrade options! They are theives and scumbags.

This is very common. A friend works for a company that refurbish handsets and sell them to insurance companies to replace broken and lost handsets for their customers.

Very rarely do you get a brand new phone in these situations. It sounds as though the issue you’ve identified is a common fault with the design of the phone so I wouldn’t be surprised if the next one has the same issue too.

It sounds as though the issue you’ve identified is a common fault with the design of the phone so I wouldn’t be surprised if the next one has the same issue too.

To be fair, the first one I had, had no such problems, but seemed to develop bugs. Cosmetically it was spot on.
HTC are generally pretty good so I’m surprised. They are well known for making beautiful handsets.

Friday afternooners clearly… 😕