My T-Mobile BlackBerry – an update

If you listen to the Mobile Tech Addict podcast that I co-host you may have heard me talking about the problems I had with the T-Mobile BlackBerry that I bought Tracy for her birthday. It’s at times like these that I’m glad that I make most purchases on my credit card. For those of you not in the know here’s a quick recap:

I bought Tracy a BB 8520 for her birthday from my local T-Mobile store. I bought it on the 7th June and put it away for Tracy’s birthday on the 17th. Come the 17th I gave Tracy her gift but within a few minutes she realised that it was faulty, the optical trackpad didn’t work. So we took the BB back to our local T-Mobile store to get it exchanged. However the store manager refused to replace the handset as he said we’d had it more than 7 days and that I would have to deal with RIM to get it replaced under warranty. Despite explaining to him what my consumer rights were and that I was fully entitled to a refund or replacement he still refused and asked me to leave the store!

So after numerous calls to T-Mobile and several more visits to the store T-Mobile have finally done what they were legally obliged to do in the first place, replaced the BlackBerry with a brand new one. I have to say thanks to the lady that I finally spoke to from the T-Mobile customer service department who saw sense and arranged the replacement for me, she was fantastic in the end but it really should not have taken so long to resolve.

At one point I’d been given advice by Consumer Direct, who confirmed my rights under the Sale of Goods Act 1979. Fortunately I’d also made the original purchase on my Credit Card so would have been covered there too.

I’m still trying to talk to someone at T-Mobile though that can tell me why they have an in-store returns policy that seems to be in breach of consumers statutory rights.

Thanks also to those among you that offered support and guidance through twitter, we got some great advice.

Posted by: Matt